“The Marble Capital of the United States” was initially settled by prospectors who formed a camp known as Yule Creek, named for pioneer George Yule. Gold, silver, and lead were mined there from 1880 into the 1890s.
Even before the prospectors found their deposits, geologist Sylvester Richardson had noted in 1873 the beds of marble in Whitehouse Mountain. The marble was merely a curiosity then, because it was on the Ute Reservation.
After the Utes were moved west to allow prospectors in, attempts to quarry the stone in the 1880s resulted in limited profitability because of the area’s remoteness from a railhead. That changed when the standard gauge Crystal River & San Juan Railroad was completed from Carbondale to Marble in 1906, connecting Marble’s finishing mill with the Denver & Rio Grande branch line to Aspen. That rail link, combined with a four-mile-long electric railway that transported marble from the quarry to the huge finishing mill, made production much more lucrative. The first large order, for a Cleveland, Ohio, courthouse, invigorated the community.
The best years followed, peaking from 1912 to 1917. The town was, literally, made by and of marble. Entire buildings were constructed of it, as were foundations and even sidewalks.
The town of Marble had its share of setbacks. A fire in 1916 destroyed much of downtown. Avalanches buried the finishing mill and the railroad tracks. Financial problems forced the closure of the quarry in 1941, as consumers began to order veneers instead of blocks or to choose cheaper marble substitutes. Mudslides in that year destroyed large portions of the town’s business section. Machinery, rails, even metal window frames were salvaged for scrap during World War II. Its glory days apparently over, Marble became a town of pleasant summer cabins.
The quarry reopened in 1990, when the first new block of marble in almost fifty years was brought down to Marble itself, causing a “Block Party.”
WALKING AND DRIVING AROUND MARBLE
When you come to a stop sign in Marble, you’re in central downtown at Park and Third streets. A right turn takes you to the town’s major attraction, the ruins of the Yule Quarry Finishing Mill, where blocks were cut, polished, and carved into everything from monuments to building blocks to tombstones. Exploring this enchanting place, for which a donation is requested, is like wandering through an Indiana Jones adventure—an ancient city with its marble pillars, brushy overgrowth, and occasional quarry blocks. One finished slab is a huge octagon about six-and-a-half feet high that looks like a sacrificial stone from some primitive civilization.
This octagon, according to the mill site tour brochure, was to be turned into a column cap, but the work was never completed.
Downtown Marble is quietly alive with a bed-and-breakfast inn, a general store, several residences, galleries featuring marble sculptures, and a museum housed inside the old high school—a wooden building with a marble foundation and marble columns on its porch. The museum is located on Main west of Third Street. There you will find a pamphlet of a self-guided walking tour that directs you to the town’s attractions.
One curious place nearby is at the southeast corner of Park and Third streets. It is an RV park with marble pieces standing in a bewildering assortment of shapes. It looks rather like a graveyard in which the headstones were carved by Salvador Dali.
Farther east is the Marble Community Church, moved from Aspen in 1908 on a railroad flat car. The graceful bell tower was added in 1912. The Marble City State Bank Building is on Main near First Street, and beyond it are some attractive residences. Farther east is the Beaver Lake Lodge, which features accommodations including old quarry workers’ cabins. East of the lodge is Thompson Park, where Marble’s two-cage jail sits. Beyond the park is Beaver Lake and the four-wheel-drive-only road to Crystal.
You pass the Marble Cemetery on your way into town. It is on the north side of the road 2.2 miles west of the intersection of Park and Third. As you would expect, most markers are indeed made of marble. One of the most attractive is a tall column back in a corner of the cemetery. The largest stone is a particularly well-carved Woodmen of the World marker that features five stacked logs for John Franklin Clayton, who died in 1911.
WHEN YOU GO
Aspen, a former mining town, later a near-ghost town, and now a world-class ski destination, is 63 miles from Buena Vista and 59 miles from Leadville over spectacular Independence Pass on Colorado Highway 82.
From Aspen, drive northwest on Highway 82 for 30 miles to Carbondale. Turn south on Colorado Highway 133 and proceed south for 21.9 miles. Turn east on Gunnison County Road 3 and go 5.9 miles to downtown Marble.
The Marble Community Church stands invitingly open on a lovely summer day. Inside is an operating pump organ.
Yule Marble Quarry
Yule Quarry marble is considered the finest in the United States because it is almost pure white, and it can be quarried in remarkably huge blocks. It was used for the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Tomb of the Unknowns. For the latter, only this quarry could produce the fifty-six-ton slab required.
When I first visited Marble in 1987, the Yule Quarry was closed and without a barrier denying access. We took the old road up and stared at the piles of marble strewn along the way, with huge slabs creating artificial waterfalls along Yule Creek. Near the entrance to the quarry itself was a mass of marble rubble that dwarfed us. Looking inside the quarry from two vantage points, we peered into an alabaster monolithic city with sculptured walls and pillars sitting in a blue-green lagoon. Ropes, pulleys, and fragmented wooden ladders clung to the marble walls. It was midsummer, yet the water had places where the sun had neglected it, and it had frozen—not universally frozen, but solid in the shapes of the surrounding marble cliffs, etched in straight lines and parallelograms.
When I revisited Marble in 1997, the quarry was open and the road was blocked. On my most recent visit, in 2008, the road up was open to the public, even though the quarry is still active. I couldn’t wait to peer into that chasm again.
The parking area for the quarry is 3.1 miles from the bridge crossing the Crystal River at Marble. It took me about a half hour from the parking area (elevation 9,116 feet) to make the uphill climb to the quarry (elevation 9,580 feet). A modest fee is requested to cross private land to reach the quarry. You will climb alongside cascading Yule Creek, where those tons of apparently inferior quality marble still form those dramatic waterfalls.
Eventually, the trail leaves creek side and you will climb a very steep slope (at one point with the aid of ropes left at the site) to the old upper entrance.
I was gazing into the quarry from the same vantage point as twenty-one years before. But the water had been drained from the workings, and heavy equipment waited at the bottom for its next load of marble. The ropes, pulleys, and ladders that I had seen before were gone, but the sight remained entrancing. If you go to Marble, and if you are physically able, take the trek up to the quarry. And it is so much easier heading back down.
The Yule Quarry in 1987.