Two Miles North to Site of Maurin Quarry

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, and I'm taking it straight from the official record, here's what happened two miles north of where you're standin' right now. Sometime back in 1882, a man named Firmin Maurin set up a quarry out here in Gonzales County. Firmin had come a long way to do it, all the way from Marseilles, France.

And for the next twenty-six years, this patch of Texas ground gave up its sandstone to the towns that needed it. Gonzales, Shiner, Moulton, Flatonia, Hallettsville. You want a building put up in that part of the country, there's a good chance Maurin's quarry had something to say about it.

Now the work itself was not gentle. First they dynamited the stone loose from the earth. Then men cut it by hand.

Block by block, in the heat and the dust, shaping it into something a town could use. And getting it out of here? Before the railroad came through, every piece of that sandstone rode out on a wagon.

Just imagine the slow haul of it, loaded heavy, rolling toward a skyline that the stone itself was going to help build. The railroad came eventually, and the shipping got easier. The quarry kept working until 1908, when it finally went quiet.

Firmin Maurin had carried something from Marseilles, France all the way to Gonzales County, and he left it carved into the walls of towns that are still standing today.

What the marker says

In operation 1882-1908, this quarry supplied sandstone for buildings in Gonzales, Shiner, Moulton, Flatonia, Hallettsville. Stone was first dynamited, then cut by hand. It was shipped by wagon until railroad was built. The founder was Firmin Maurin, from Marseilles, France. (1969)