Carrera - Marble mining museum
We stopped high in the mountains surrounded by all sorts of mining activities to hear about how marble is mined then and now and to see the implements used. A lovely old man who created and runs the museum told us wonderful stories about the early days. Before modern mining equipment was available, it would take two men all day to saw through THREE INCHES of marble to free a cubic meter chunk of marble from the mountain. I didn't realize that marble is just calcium carbonate and is one of the end products of a sedimentary process that started with shells from long-ago oceans. Or, that marble dust is an ingredient in all sorts of products, including toothpaste. It is incredibly heavy and there are all sorts of rules about the weight of the loads that the trucks can haul down the mountain. Driving down in front of one of these very heavily-loaded trucks reminded me of the early days on Hwy 17!
We stopped high in the mountains surrounded by all sorts of mining activities to hear about how marble is mined then and now and to see the implements used. A lovely old man who created and runs the museum told us wonderful stories about the early days. Before modern mining equipment was available, it would take two men all day to saw through THREE INCHES of marble to free a cubic meter chunk of marble from the mountain. I didn't realize that marble is just calcium carbonate and is one of the end products of a sedimentary process that started with shells from long-ago oceans. Or, that marble dust is an ingredient in all sorts of products, including toothpaste. It is incredibly heavy and there are all sorts of rules about the weight of the loads that the trucks can haul down the mountain. Driving down in front of one of these very heavily-loaded trucks reminded me of the early days on Hwy 17!
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