Butler, Bates County,  Missouri

“This quarry, owned and operated by J. T. Day, is located four miles south of Butler, in the S.W. ¼ of sec. 4 T.39, R.31W. 

The Day Quarry is now the site of a housing development and the massive stone boulders are now used for landscaping.

It has been worked intermittently since 1882.  It consists of a single heavy bed of fine grained, micaceous sandstone from 16 to 18 feet in thickness, which has been worked 160 feet along the north side of a hill.  The quarry is being worked to the east and the operating face extends 20 feet north and south at the east end of the opening.

The stone in the upper six to eight feet is quite soft and is used only for foundations.  It contains considerable brown oxide of iron, in the form of small specks, giving the stone a light buff color.  The lower ten feet has a bluish gray color and contains occasional small nodules of iron sulphide which decomposes into iron oxide and eventually weathers out, leaving cavities.  The lower three to five feet is practically free from iron sulphide.

Parallel to the bed the stone contains thin leaf-like deposits of carbonaceous matter. When the stone is cut normal to the bed; these either do not show or appear simply as dark pencil marks.  A piece of coal was observed imbedded in the sandstone near the top of the present working face.

The stone from this quarry is used almost exclusively for monument bases, although it is suitable for caps, sills and coursing.  The massive character of the stone permits the quarrying of blocks of any desired dimensions.  The quarrying and dressing are both done by hand.  The rock is quite soft when first quarried, but hardens upon exposure.

The stratification planes dip to the southwest.  In lifting the rock from west to the east, as practiced at present, it breaks upward along the bedding.  If the quarry were opened at the north and worked to the south or west, the stone would split downward instead of upward.  The could be done easily, as the stone is exposed for a considerable distance along the side of the hill.

Hand channeling is practiced in getting out the blocks.  The stone is channeled with long sharp picks to the required size and then lifted with plugs and feathers.  This is the only quarry in the State where hand channeling is practiced.”

Source: Quarrying Industry of Missouri, Vol. 2, 1904.

Thomas Day owned and operated this quarry and used the majority of the stone for bases under memorials he produced at Day Bros. Marble Works.

At his death, his family donated this marble statue to Oak Hill Cemetery in memory of his many years of work in stonecutting.