Lane's Brownstone Quarry

Hidden the woods past Ashley Ponds, and just over the border in Westspringfield is the old Lane Brownstone Quarry. I don't have much historical information about it, but this is one of the places much of the brownstone you see in Holyoke's old buildings came from.

The trail into the quarry is well traveled. Looks like the work of dirt bikes, and quads.

Along the trail I quickly snapped a picture of this familiar native plant. I can't for the life of me remember it's name, but even as a kid I appreciated their deathly beauty.


The quarry can be hard to find if you've never been there before. The bike trails circle around it, and the site is totally overgrown. After more than 100 years of abandonment trees and bushes have rooted in the cracks of the bedrock. It never ceases to amaze me how fast mother nature will take back what was originally hers.

This is where the quarrying stopped. You can see the thick layer of brownstone they were after. Above and below are thinner sandstone layers, all laid down about 200 million years ago when the whole valley was a vast flood plain.

The stone used to build the retaining dam at Whitting Street reservoir supposedly came from this quarry, and those stones contain dinosaur tracks.

Hmm.. is that a dinosaur track?

Paleontologists would have a field day going through all these stone layers, but the site is now protected under Westspringfield's watershed zone. The town has been hostile to people even going in there, despite the fact its private property.