Greenstone Slate

Greenstone Slate® Company is a third generation Hill family business with quarries and facilities operating in Vermont and New York State. Most of these quarries share a similar history since slate mining was a cottage industry for local construction from the Colonial Era until after the Civil War. Until the advent of a viable railroad system, roof... ing slate production was extremely limited due to the difficulty of transporting heavy stone to eastern cities. After the Civil War the railroad line from New York City to Albany was upgraded and extended into the slate-producing regions of Vermont. Greenstone's present Poultney, Vermont quarries were divided into several leases; the largest of which was conveyed to the "Auld and Conger Slate Company," a Welsh business around 1882. Production from the leases increased steadily for the next thirty years and reached its peak around 1915 when the Poultney quarries produced 20,000-30,000 squares of roofing slate per year with a work force of several hundred employees. The Great Depression of 1929 decimated the entire slate industry and the few surviving quarries were extremely small operations with a handful of employees; usually family members. World War Two dealt a further blow to the industry as slate production was considered non-essential and the local workforce either entered the military or worked at the large defense plants located in metropolitan areas. After World War II, the first quarry to be re-opened on the Greenstone property was known as the "Culver Slate Company. It was a very small operation with three or four employees located on a small lease of Greenstone's present sea green vein in Poultney. The property had been part of what was known as the Nathaniel Griffith Lease, and in 1955 Ernest I. Hill began production. The quarry, and the equipment located there, had been neglected by years of little use or maintenance. Two of the large veins had been covered with rubble by Depression era cost cutting efforts, and it took more than a year to remove the ...Read More