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Blasting The Palisades

Blasting The Palisades image
Parent Issue
Day
28
Month
September
Year
1894
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Until comparatively recently the Palisades escaped tho ruthless hands of contractors and quarryruen, despite the faot that there are few spots in the country where richer deposits of granite are to be found. A few quarries within the last flve years have sprung up at Fort Lee, but they have all been located away back from the Palisades, and the front of these beautiful hills have been unmolested. Now, however, a íirm of contractors, by exploding dynamite, 3,000 pounds at a time, is gradually making lrage excavations in front of the Palisades, which will in the course of a very few months transform the historie Palisades from things of beauty to ordinary stone quarries. Nothiug that the lovers of natural gpenery eau do will in any.way stopjhe destructivo work from góiiig'on. The Palisades are prívate property, and that part of them which is at present being torn open by high explosives has been leased by the owuers to eontractors, ■whose love of the beantifnl pales into insignificance beside their business instinct. Aside from tlje destruction of the Palisades, tho work going on in the quarries at Fort Lee is of moment on account of the enormous amount of dynarcite ■which is being exploded there. People marveled at the explosión of 500 pounds of dynair.ite in a projectile thrown by a pnenuiatic gun at Sandy Hook some weeks ago. Six times that nmch was exploded at Fort Lee on Thursday at noon and again on Friday at the same hour, and although it was not thrown from a gun neither did it explode in the water, but in a solid bed of granite. The terrific force of these two explosions cannot be imagined by anybody who was uot in Fort Lee to hear them, or who has not since visited the quarries to see their effect. The little village of Fort Lee shook as though an earthquake had visited it, and strangers in the place who were nnaware that blasting was goiug on in the vicinity were firmly convinced that some

Article

Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News