With an understanding of modern stone quarrying practices, design teams can bring enhanced creativity to projects featuring nature’s most beautiful, enduring and unique materials: natural stone. An in-person or virtual visit demonstrates the high-tech capabilities and skilled people powering today’s most advanced quarrying operations.
Coldspring Quarries: Abundant Domestic Supply
As one of North America’s largest and greenest natural stone quarriers, Coldspring offers an abundant supply of quarried materials from multiple domestic quarries across the nation.
Sourcing stone domestically continues to offer advantages alongside today’s relatively stable import environment. With shipping times and potential delays from overseas, domestic quarries reduce disruptions and help ensure timely production. Because Coldspring owns and controls both quarry systems and manufacturing facilities, lead times are met and stone matching across domestic colors is more consistent than import alternatives.
Coldspring’s quarries support designers, builders, and fabricators with an extensive range of stone options, sustainable practices, and a dedicated team of specialists applying industry best practices at every step.
This network of domestic quarries supplies exceptional stone, including Mesabi Black® from Minnesota and Carnelian® from South Dakota. Below, learn more about these quarries, meet the teams behind them through our Story of the Quarry videos, and see how their stone shapes landmark projects.
Mesabi Black® Quarry
One of these quarries, located in Babbitt, Minnesota, produces a beautiful and versatile domestic black granite known as Mesabi Black®. Coldspring’s Mesabi Black quarry has been in operation for more than 20 years, supplying material for high-profile as well as smaller projects across the country.
Located within the Superior National Forest, this certified quarry operates year-round. Mesabi Black offers exceptional character and finishing capabilities, possesses low embodied energy, has no toxic chemicals, is harmonious with nature, infinitely versatile, and reliably sourced. A large amount of Mesabi Black is featured on notable projects across the country, from memorials to architectural installations.
An example of Mesabi Black in use is Turn to the River, a public art project in Terre Haute, Indiana. Designed to reconnect the downtown area with the Wabash River, the project features a black granite water sculpture by artist Brad Goldberg, positioned between the Vigo County Courthouse and Terre Haute City Hall. Crafted from Mesabi Black® granite supplied by Coldspring, the sculpture incorporates carved abstractions of the river valley and gently flowing water, creating a calm and reflective gathering place within the city.
Carnelian® Quarry
Another key member of Coldspring’s domestic quarry family is Carnelian® granite, quarried in Milbank, South Dakota. Known for its warm hues and rugged beauty, Carnelian has been a material of choice for memorials and architectural projects that demand depth of character and longevity.
One of the most striking examples of Carnelian in use is the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Memorial in Washington, D.C. For this iconic memorial, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin selected Carnelian granite because of its rich color and durability, qualities that echo the legacy of President Roosevelt. The memorial’s walls and paving use hundreds of thousands of square feet of Carnelian, creating outdoor “rooms” that reflect light and shadow while preserving FDR’s words and spirit for generations to come.
Leveraging Quarried Materials
When it comes to using quarried materials for civil construction, memorials, architectural work, or landscape projects, superior product availability and proximity are only part of why Coldspring is a preferred partner. You’ll also have a dedicated, experienced team working on your behalf, from specification to installation using industry-leading processes.
Learn More
To learn more about Coldspring’s Mesabi Black, Carnelian, and other quarries or to request a natural stone sample, please contact your local Coldspring representative today.
We would love to have you tour one of our quarries and earn credits while doing it. The course Tour: Quarrying Natural Stone – Selection to Extraction is approved for 1 LU/HSW by the American Institute of Architects (AIE/CES) and the American Society of Landscape Architects (LA CES). For more information and to register, contact your Sales Representative.