Granite Falls

images from Montello, WI



Quarrying granite was once the chief industry of Montello, WI. The quarries produced fine road pavers, beautiful building faces, decorative crushed gravels, and stately monuments. The stone for Grant's Tomb was taken from these quarries.



The largest quarry hole is approximately 150 feet in depth, but at one time a test hole was driven 900 feet into the earth and still found the same granite.



Now some of the quarries have become city parks, memorials to their earlier usage. There are waterfalls that run year-round into the quarry ponds. There are approximately ten acres of parkland that include the quarries, some with small-scale attractions.

These waterfalls over the edge of the stone are half-covered with ice in late winter. I stopped on a cold wet day where the sky was giving us rain mixed with ice, slicking the roads, chilling my arms and legs for the few brief minutes I walked out from the truck's warm cab, to take these photos.