THE PORTLAND BROWNSTONE QUARRIES, PORTLAND, 
CONNECTICUT

	GUINNESS, Alison C., 418 Tater Hill Road, East Haddam, 
		CT 06423

The arkosic sandstones of the Newark Supergroup have been an 
important source of building and research material since the earliest 
days of European settlement. Of particular significance is the Early 
Jurassic Portland formation, the youngest and uppermost of the 
Hartford Basin in Connecticut.  From a site on the east bank of the 
Connecticut River in Portland, stone has been utilized from the mid-
1600s to the present for contruction, especially for the New York City 
³brownstone,² from which the building received its name. At the 
location of the quarries,  this chocolate-brown  sandstone of the 
Portland Formation lies atypically in subhorizontal layers of varying 
thickness, which not only influences ease of extraction but also the 
quality of the stone. 
	The quarries in Portland, no doubt the type locality for the 
formation, developed into a huge industry, which greatly influenced 
the socio-economic development of the community, supporting local 
shipbuilding, agriculture, and mercantile enterprises. Newly arriving 
immigrants, particularly the Irish, were hired right off the ships in 
New York City to work in the quarries.  These quarries also 
influenced the founding and housing of Wesleyan University in 
Middletown, Connecticut, which once included what is now the town 
of Portland.
	During the second half of the 19th century, millions of tons of 
stone were extracted at the Portland brownstone quarries.  At the same 
time, scientists and students visited in search of fossil material.  In 
1874, a recently discovered trackway was the subject of a field trip 
during that yearıs meeting of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science held in Hartford. The trackway was 60 feet 
long and contained 20 footprints of Otozoum moodii, but, according to 
Rice and Foye (1927), even this notoriety did not save these tracks 
from being discarded during the normal course of quarrying. 
Many reptile tracks, however, came into the possession of quarry 
workers who offered them to universities and museums. Extant 
footprints classified by Hitchcock as Otozoum, Anchisauripus, 
Grallator, Anomoepus, Eubrontes and Batrachopus are on display at 
Wesleyan University and Dinosaur Park in Rocky Hill, CT.
	Brownstone was used extensively for gravestones from the 
earliest days of the Middletown settlement. One of the most 
interesting is the two piece monument for  Dr. Joseph Barrett, a well-
known local physician, botanist and geologist. Dr. Barrettıs stone was 
donated by the quarries and contained one large block of dinosaur 
tracks and a second block containing two large casts of tree trunks.
	Few bones were found in these sandstone quarries. A 
specimen of pubis, tibia and ribs studied by Colbert and Baird in 1958 
survives only as a fragile cast (AMNH 7636) at the American 
Museum of Natural History, the original having been discarded in 
1961 when the Boston Science Museum  moved to its new facility.
	Despite wars and floods, these quarries operated into the early 
20th century, closed permanently by the spring freshet of 1836 and the 
Great Hurricane of 1938, which filled the quarries, creating two large 
lakes. Recently, however, a small operation has revived quarrying on 
an upper bench of a previously quarried cliff face with the potential 
for new fossil discoveries.


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