Beauty From the Earth: The Cold Spring Granite Company

If you want your granite mantle or countertops in a beautiful color called Mountain Green, you won’t have to travel far. The Adirondack Mountain Green quarry is located only a few miles south of AuSable Forks off Route 9N and it produces a product that is world-renowned.

The more than 110-year-old company called Cold Spring Granite, based in Minnesota, purchased the Lake Placid Granite Company in AuSable 50 years ago and now owns some 30 quarries in North America. The local site is called a dimensional quarry, where special diamond wire saws are used to cut out the blocks of granite for building purposes and monuments.

The local general manager, Rickie Barber, who has been with the company for 31 years, worked his way up to quarry supervisor, and was named general manager in 1995. Barber says he enjoys his 15-minute commute to the Lake Placid Granite Company location outside AuSable Forks from his Keeseville home, adding, “I defy you to find anyone who has a more scenic ride to their job.” Looking at the Au Sable River and the majestic Adirondack peaks, it would be hard to argue that point.

Barber describes Cold Spring Granite, as a “family-oriented company and a wonderful company to work for.” He has a personal relationship with owner Patrick Alexander who now lives in Minneapolis and the two meet at the Cold Spring corporate offices several times a year. The company has been in existence since 1898 and Barber says, “Pat is part of the latest of at least three generations of Alexanders who have owned the company.”

While looking at the huge Mountain Green Quarry outside his office, Barber pointed to the smooth surfaces on the granite and explained, “Those cuts used to be made with drills, but now we use a diamond wire machine that runs on tracks. It simply pulls back and does its work, sawing either vertically or horizontally, as the job requires.”

Barber walks past giant blocks of the uniquely green granite which, he explains, are shipped far and wide. The greatest weight for a tractor-trailer is a block weighing 46,000 pounds or 23 tons.

Barber added, “The Mountain Green granite quarried here ends up all over the world in buildings, large and small monuments, for paving and many applications.”

He showed this writer other so-called “saw blocks” that he said will be cut into three-inch thick slabs. With great pride, Barber explained, “They’ll be going to Ground Zero at the site of the former World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City. They will be used as part of the paving base being laid at that location.”

He continued, “The builders originally looked at another company, but we were the ones they chose. The blocks go onto a big loader and are brought on rails into our plant where they’re cut into the proper size, finished, edged and placed on pallets bound for New York City.” He illustrated how the granite slabs are burned with propane and oxygen to create a non-skid surface.

Standing at a window, he pointed to a tractor-trailer load of pallets stacked high with the granite slabs, ready for shipment. “That job alone has been on-going for about three years,” he said, “and, at one point, extra shifts of workers were imported from the mother company in Minnesota to keep up with the demand as we worked around the clock. When all is said and done, 35,000 square feet of Mountain Green Granite from this quarry could end up at Ground Zero.”

Further along inside the fabrication plant, Barber focused on slabs of countertop-sized granite. He said, “We make countertops right here in our plant.” He added, “See that over there? That isn’t our own stone. We import granite from many places and have one of the largest slab yards in the area. Our customers can pick the actual slab used in the fabrication of their countertop. We do all the work on the premises. We have all the machinery and talented workers to do fabulous finish work of all kinds. We have 17 employees from this area. The quarry and fabrication work go on here year round.”

Barber strolled over to slabs of the famous Mountain Green and explained that it is much sought after, not only here in the United States, but also in many distant lands, including Singapore and Japan. He showed off a wall containing dozens of polishing pads and wheels that are utilized in one phase of the fabrication business.

Inside Barber’s office is a desk that is (of course) topped with a stunning Mountain Green surface from his quarry. He showed examples of finished products ranging from highly polished desktops, countertops and tiles, to much larger and bulkier paving and quarry blocks.

To spotlight how much their granite is desired, Barber mentioned an ongoing job with a repeat customer in Washington State. This quarry will send 15,000 cubic feet of stone in block form for fabrication to the parent facility in Cold Spring, Minnesota.

Barber has high praise for his workers. He explained that the company has what is called the Chairman’s Club, which is comprised of employees who have worked there for a quarter-century or more. There are currently six members at the quarry in Au Sable Forks. One worker has been on the job there for more than 35 years. Membership nationwide amounts to almost 200.

Old timers in the area might recall that there is another quarry on the other side of Route 9N across the Stickney Bridge. It’s called the Blue Quarry and began operations back in the 19th century. Until production demand slowed in 2001, a great deal of the blue block was sawed out and sent to places such as New York City, as well as to Korea and Italy. Barber said an effort is underway to resume the Blue Quarry production and he hopes it will be successful in the coming year.

When asked how he views his long employment in the business, Barber said, with no hesitation, “I’m really proud of what I do for a living. It’s a unique business. It’s also a hard business, but it’s truly satisfying and I find it great to work right near my hometown, especially in the only dimensional quarry of its kind for miles around.”

Even though he likes to talk about the granite he ships to places like Ground Zero and Washington State, Barber is quick to stress that a great deal of the stone from his quarry is used right here in the North Country and the company’s 50-year plan with the Adirondack Park Agency should keep the machinery humming for a long time to come.

Besides the green color of the granite, efforts by Barber and the company he manages are being made to engage in more and more energy-saving “green” quarry practices. He explained, “We started crushing our waste this year under a test permit and hired a sub-contractor to crush all of our grout or waste instead of putting it onto a huge grout pile. We used 100 percent of our product during this time of crushing. If we are allowed to continue in the coming year, we’ll save a lot of money for the local community. The crushed granite is great for roadwork and the like. Contractors won’t have to travel nearly as far to an aggregate quarry to pick up their crushed stone.”

What kinds of products are made in the plant besides the granite building and paving blocks? Barber said, “We make steps here. We also do chimney caps as large as 10 by10 feet and six inches thick. We make wall caps in our fabrication plant as well. Granite blocks are shipped to our home plant in Cold Spring to be turned into monuments.”

Barber ran through the rest of items produced in AuSable Forks. “Hearths, mantles, vanities, benches or anything odd or unusual that stone masons bring us drawings for. We just completed a granite facing to be used on a massive cement heating stove for a local homeowner.

Whether you call it Cold Spring Granite Company or the more local name of Lake Placid Granite Company; the company is a force to be reckoned with in the dimensional granite quarry and fabrication business. Barber assures customers that they need not feel confined to the color mined in his quarry or the Lake Placid blue stone he hopes to be cutting next year across the river. The company has access to more than 100 hues from their two-and-a-half dozen quarries in North America. Whatever your preference in shade or finish, he promises satisfaction.

Cold Spring calls itself “one of the largest natural stone manufacturers in the world serving commercial, landscaping, memorialization and residential customers. The small-town business has earned the respect of architects and gained an international reputation on its ability to provide a complete array of services from mining and finishing to installation.” Its Au Sable Forks arm is not only pulling its own weight, but hopes for profitable expansion and improvements in the coming years.

Cold Spring defines granite as “an igneous rock created deep within the earth pro magma, cooled slowly under great pressure. It is a rock composed primarily of three different minerals.”

Lake Placid Granite in Au Sable Forks defines its Mountain Green as the best granite in all the North Country.

To quote the National Building Granite Quarries Association, “Granite is ageless.” Who could disagree?