Halibut Point State Park

Halibut Point State Park sits on the northeast tip of Cape Ann in Rockport, Massachusetts.  Originally termed “Haul-about” Point in the 17th Century due to its location, a spot where the prevailing wind currents, northeast and southwest, tend to shift, indicating mariners should “haul-about” their sails, this uniquely beautiful coastal landscape of fifty-five acres is managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation with twelve abutting acres belonging to The Trustees of Reservations.  Halibut Point is open year-round for you to explore its trails and tidepools, picnic on its rocky ledges, enjoy its sweeping views, and learn about the nature and history of Cape Ann.  From Memorial Day to Labor Day, the park is open from 8:00am to 8:00pm daily with a $2.00 parking fee per vehicle; the rest of the year the park is open from sunrise to sunset.  Site of the former Babson Farm Quarry and with a Visitors Center and museum in a former World War Two artillery fire control tower, Halibut Point features an onsite park interpreter and free educational/entertainment/nature programs for the public from April thru October.  Click here to download a park brochure. Directions: Halibut Point State Park is located approximately forty miles north of Boston.  The best approach is to take Rt. 128 north toward Gloucester and Rockport.  After crossing the Annisquam River bridge, go three-quarters way around the first rotary, following signs for Rt. 127 north (Annisquam and Pigeon Cove).  After approximately six miles, turn left at the park sign by the Old Farm Inn onto Gott Ave.  From downtown Rockport, drive north on Rt. 127 for three miles, turning right onto Gott Ave.  The phone number at Halibut Point State Park is 978-546-2997. This is the blog of park interpreter John Ratti (johnrai@aol.com) and will be used to inform the public about Halibut Point State Park events and programs, answer questions and field comments, and to provide historical, cultural and environmental information about the park and its programs. 

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Before checking out our May schedule, take a moment to learn about the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Great Park Pursuit. Part of the DCR’s No Child Left Inside initiative, The Great Park Pursuit is a team challenge adventure activity meant to connect families with over four hundred outdoor places across the Commonwealth to be discovered, treasured and shared.  Teams are challenged to visit different sites during a six week period as part of a Massachusetts State Parks Family Adventure.  Hike to amazing views, learn to fish, pitch a tent, discover secrets of the past, ride a horse-drawn wagon, see birds of prey and even learn hows cows are milked.  Complete tasks at all six state parks and be deemed a semi-finalist eligible to compete for grand prize packages.  To find out more about The Great Park Pursuit, go to www.greatparkpursuit.org    

In May, Halibut Point will feature its Quarry Tour every Saturday at 10:00am and Tower Tour on Sundays at 1:00pm.  The park’s Tidepools programming will commence on May 26 at 11:00am and continue with another trip down to the rocks for some intertidal exploration on May 30 at 1:00pm.  Special programs in May are the DCR’s Park Serve Day on Saturday May 17 from 9:00am to 2:00pm.  This statewide volunteer effort to beautify and protect Massachusetts state parks, forests and reservations will conclude with a presentation of The Frog and Salamander Show sponsored by The Friends of Halibut Point State Park.  To register to participate or learn more about Massachusetts Park Serve Day, go to http://parkserv.env.state.ma.us/.  On Sunday, May 18, Peter Van Demark will lead another Birding for Beginners, meeting in the parking lot at 8:00am.  On Saturday, May 24 at 2:00pm Ed Jylkka will lead a Wildflower Walk around the park and on Saturday, May 31 The DCR will parnter with The Trustees of Reservations for The Atlantic Path.  This 2-3 hour walk along Rockport’s resplendent public coastline from Halibut Point to Pigeon Cove entails negotiating some moderately challenging terrain and features some extraordinary geology, tidepools and birding.  Unless otherwise noted, all Halibut Point programs leave from the Visitors Center and all of them are always FREE.  To download a copy of the Halibut Point May schedule, click here.

Upcoming 2008 programs and events at Halibut Point State Park will include standard programs Geology Rocks!, Ceremonial Time: The Fifteen Thousand years of Fifty Acres, Reading the Forested Landscape and more!  Special events this year will include another season of Sunday Sounds concerts sponsored by The Friends of Halibut Point (kicking off with Livin’ on Luck on June 1 and followed by Alek Razdan and A-Train on June 22), Stargazing, Birds of Prey, Dragonflies in the Park, a special family program from natural light photographer Leslie Bartlett, monthly Birding for Beginners, Snakes of Massachusetts and the World and more to be announced.

The 2008 season of interpretive programming at Halibut Point State Park kicks off on Sunday, April 13 at 8:00am with Birding for Beginners.  Peter Van Demark is again hosting this monthly 2-3hr. moderate stroll along the park’s paths and rocky shore.  Halibut Point, a significant viewing location along the North American migratory path, features frequent sightings of pelagic species such as gulls, terns, gannets, purple sandpipers, alcids, shearwaters, loons, jaegers, grebes and more, while in the park’s inland regions quail, towhees, tree swallows and wild turkeys are often spotted.  Like all programs at Halibut Point State Park, Birding for Beginners is FREE to the public.  Meet Peter in the parking lot.  Bring your binoculars! 

On Saturday, April 26, Halibut Point State Park will begin its weekly Quarry Tour.  This popular program, beginning at 10:00am in the Visitors Center and running every Saturday thru October, features a twelve minute video about the park’s history, a granite-splitting demonstration by Halibut’s interpreter, and a one mile walk around the onsite former Babson Farm Quarry that details the physical aspects of quarrying, the history of building with natural stone in America, and Cape Ann’s unique geology.  This program lasts approximately 90 minutes and is FREE to the public.

On Sunday, April 27 at 1:00pm Halibut Point State Park will debut a new standard program, The Military History of Halibut Point.  Running for approximately one hour every Sunday thru October, this program features a tour of the park’s new military history display and a climb up to every level of the park’s artillery fire control tower.  Halibut’s new ground-floor overview of the park’s military history dating back to the War of 1812 features text, photographs, lithographs, documents, artifacts, memorabilia and period reproductions.   The five-story tower, built with steel-reinforced concrete, was constructed by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1943 and staffed by the Army Coastal Artillery Corps, originally housed sighting instruments for aiming 16″  long-range guns as part of both the Boston and Portsmouth, NH harbor defense systems.  After World War Two, the tower and its attached barracks (now the park’s Visitors Center), were staffed by US Air Force personnel engaged in radar research in conjunction with MIT’s Lincoln Lab, a classified project that led to the development of semi-automatic ground environment (SAGE) and the Cape Cod Radar System, the prototypes for the Cold War radar defense systems that blanketed the United States for decades.  This program meets in the Visitors Center and like all programs at Halibut Point is FREE to the public.  Check back soon for more information about Halibut Point State Park’s 2008 programming schedule that will include standard programs such as Geology Rocks!, Tidepools, Ceremonial Time: The Fifteen Thousand years of Fifty Acres, Reading the Forested Landscape and more!  Special events this year will include another season of Sunday Sounds concerts sponsored by The Friends of Halibut Point (kicking off with Livin’ on Luck on June 1 and followed by Alek Razdan and A-Train on June 22), Stargazing, Wildflower Walks, Dragonflies in the Park, a special family program from natural light photographer Leslie Bartlett, more Birding for Beginners, Snakes of Massachusetts and the World, the DCR’s Park Serve Day, a trip along Rockport’s resplendent coastline in The Atlantic Path with The Trustees of the Reservations Ramona Latham and much more. 

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Perhaps the most popular visual feature of Halibut Point State Park is the Overlook in its northeastern corner.  Standing above a 50′+ granite grout pile over the rocky shore, the Overlook is the site of several weddings a year and even more marriage proposals.  Perhaps that’s why Outdoor Recreation has named Halibut Point one of the top ten romantic spots in America.  From the Overlook, one can see Ipswich Bay, the mouth of the Merrimac River, the miles of sandy shore at Salisbury Beach Reservation, the Isle of Shoals in New Hampshire, Mt. Agamenticus and Boon Island in Maine, and even more on the right day.

When you stand at the tip of the Overlook at Halibut Point, you are on the closest spot in the continental United States to the continent of Europe - (that’s continent-to-continent) - the next stop is Cape Finisterre, Spain.

Staring down from the Overlook, the significant mountain of granite beneath you (known in quarry slang as a “grout pile”) represents the unused remants of the long abandoned Sandy Bay Breakwater project.  As far back as 1830 there was advocacy to make Rockport a national harbor of refuge, one reason being the lack of a large harbor between Portland and Boston.  It was over fifty years later before the idea took steps toward rock-solid reality, finally commencing in 1885.  Yet by thirty years later and after nearly two million tons of cut stone, from Babson Farm Quarry and other Rockport quarries, was placed onto sloops and scows and set beneath almost a thousand acres of sea bottom, the project remained barely one-quarter complete.  Perpetually behind schedule and over budget, the federal government declined to continue financing the project, leaving  what was intended as a refuge of safety to become the manmade hazard many see it as even today.  From the top of the Overlook you can see the unfinished breakwater as the long line of stone offshore to the far right.  You can find a detailed story about the early history of the Sandy Bay Breakwater in this 19th Century archival issue of Harper’s Bazaar.

After gazing to the far right at the Sandy Bay Breakwater, gently swing your  eyes slightly left at the gull-bleached mound warting up from the sea:  It’s the Dry Salvages -  a bare knuckle of granite with a name controversy too convoluted to detail in a few words, this slab above the spit is best known as the title of the third segment of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.  Eliot, born in Missouri, spent many summers of his youth on Cape Ann and  The Dry Salvages  is the only one of Eliot’s Four Quartets with an American setting.

(The Dry Salvages—presumably les trois sauvages—is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E. coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages.  Groaner: a whistling buoy.)

That’s how Eliot described them in this work.  Four Quartets, each one written between a span of years, was published in 1943 and many view it as Eliot’s masterpiece, even going so far as to say it’s the work most responsible for his 1948 Nobel Prize award.  The work draws upon Eliot’s lifelong reflections upon symbolism, philosophy, mysticism and Christianity. 

“I do not know much about gods;” …

is the famous beginning to The Dry Salvages.  Eliot starts by writing about the river but soon alters focus: 

“The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale’s backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.”

It’s quite an experience, bringing a copy of the text out to the Overlook and reading it while pondering the Salvages and the stoney shore below.  Eliot, some say, is “out of favor” today, but that’s hard to truly believe - type in T.S. Eliot on Google and you’ll come up with nearly two million hits!  Granted, Eliot as a writer does make you “do your homework,” but he’s well worth it.  For more about T.S. Eliot, Wikipedia’s article about him is a good information source, as is this one about Four Quartets.  For the entire text of The Dry Salvages, go here.

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In September, Halibut Point is featuring more of its popular standard programs: the Quarry Tour, Reading the Landcape, Tidepools, and one more presentation of Ceremonial Time: The 15,000 Years of Fifty Acres.  Special events for the month include The Atlantic Path, a walk along Rockport’s resplendent public coastline with The Trustees of Reservations interpreter Ramona Latham on September 8th and another Sunday Sounds concert on September 16th with an encore performance by Livin’ on Luck.  On Sunday the 23rd, Halibut Point will host another Birding for Beginners with Peter Van Demark.  And on  September 29th, the park will present The Military History of Halibut Point, an event to honor those who have served and featuring the debut of a new interpretive display inside the Visitors Center.  This event, the culmination of three years research and including contributions from the DCR, Friends of Halibut Point, Coast Defense Study Group, Sandy Bay Historical Society, MIT, Lincoln Lab, the US Army Center for Military History, MITRE, the US Navy Historical Center, the Computer History Museum and others promises to be a special day at the park and all are invited.  See below for September’s schedule.  If you want to download a flyer with September’s calendar of programs dates and times, just click here.

Quarry Tour                                                   Saturdays  10:00am  

Attend our weekly granite walk around the former Babson Farm Quarry.  Beginning with the showing of a short film, this program features a stone-cutting demonstration, explains how rock is quarried, details the unique geology of Cape Ann and presents the history of building with natural stone in America.  Later, the Visitors Center will be open for a climb to its five-story World War II observation tower.  This program lasts approximately 90 minutes and entails a one mile moderately paced stroll around the quarry.  The Babson Farm Quarry, in operation from the 1840’s until 1929 (though stone was cut at the site from the 1790’s, perhaps even earlier), is an excellent place to view evidence of progression in stone-cutting techniques and learn about the role stone harvesting, transporation and building played in the development of technology that led to the Industrial Revolution. 

 Halibut Point State Park’s

Military History Interpretive Display

Unveiling!

Please Join

the Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation (DCR) and the Friends of Halibut Point State Parkas we unveil a new interpretive display at Halibut Point State Park’s Visitors Center

Saturday, September 29, 2007

1:00 p.m.

Halibut Point State Park

16 Gaffield Ave.

Rockport, MA

This new ground-floor overview of Halibut Point’s military history dating back to the War of 1812 features text, photographs, lithographs, documents, artifacts, memorabilia and period reproductions.  This project is the result of a partnership between the DCR and the Friends of Halibut Point State Park and features contributions from the Coast Defense Study Group, Sandy Bay Historical Society, MIT, Lincoln Lab, MITRE, the US Army Center for Military History, Osprey Publishing, the US Naval Historical Center and others.  Please join us at Halibut Point for the completion of Ohase One in fully interpreting the Park’s military history and its World War Two artillery fire control tower.

Refreshments will be provided by the Friends.

For more information, call the Park: 978.546.2997

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August at Halibut Point State Park features another full month of standard programs and special events.  There are special events every weekend, beginning on Saturday, August 4th at 3:00pm with photographer Leslie Bartlett’s program, Halibut Point in Winter.  Les will present images from his extensive portfolio of the park created over the years, this time focusing on Halibut Point in the “off-season.”  For more about Leslie Bartlett and his work, you can find his website here.  On Saturday, August 11th, Halibut Point will serve as host to the Essex National Heritage Photo Safari.  This event, held in two sessions at 8:00am and 1:00pm, features demonstrations, lectures and tips from professional photographers and camera manufacturers followed by participants imaging the park.  Registration is required for this event - find out how at www.essexheritage.org.  On Saturday, August 18 at 2:00pm Halibut Point will have the very popular live animal program, Snakes of Massachusetts and the World with Rick Roth and the Cape Ann Vernal Pond Team, with another month of Birding for Beginners the next day, Sunday, August 19th at 8:00am.  And on Sunday, August 26th at 3:00pm there will be a Sunday Sounds series concert, this time with the jazz, funk and hip-hop sound of Otis Grove.  Besides these special events, Halibut Point  in August is scheduling these 2007 season standard programs: The Quarry Tour, Tidepools, Geology Rocks!, The Mineral Club and Ceremonial Time: The Fifteen Thousand Years of Fifty Acres.  Coming in September, Halibut Point will feature more standard programs and special events like The Atlantic Path, a trek along Rockport’s resplendent public coastline with The Trustees of Reservations interpreter Ramona Latham, another Sunday Sounds concert, and on Saturday, September 29th, the unveiling of a new interpretive display inside our Visitors Center about the military and technological history of Halibut Point.  See below for the dates and times of August’s programs and events, or you can download a flyer here.

Quarry Tour                                                   Saturdays  10:00am  

Attend our weekly granite walk around the former Babson Farm Quarry.  Beginning with the showing of a short film, this program features a stone-cutting demonstration, explains how rock is quarried, details the unique geology of Cape Ann and presents the history of building with natural stone in America.  Later, the Visitors Center will be open for a climb to its five-story World War II observation tower.  This program lasts approximately 90 minutes and entails a one mile moderately paced stroll around the quarry.  The Babson Farm Quarry, in operation from the 1840’s until 1929 (though stone was cut at the site from the 1790’s, perhaps even earlier), is an excellent place to view evidence of progression in stone-cutting techniques and learn about the role stone harvesting, transporation and building played in the development of technology that led to the Industrial Revolution.  

The War of 1812 is one of America’s least understood military conflicts.  Though it was ignited by a number of ostensible causes, at its core that war was about eradicating British influence in North America.  For decades after the American revolution Canada remained a British colony, allowing England to contend for settlement of the upper-Midwest of America.  By the early 19th Century Britain still remained the world’s greatest colonial power, but its military might was being stretched thin.  The war started over the issue of the British Navy’s “impressment” of personnel on American merchant vessels.  On the high seas, Britain would not hesitate to stop and search American ships in hopes of recovering sailors they viewed as deserters, which included many naturalized American citizens.  Britain, long at war with Napoleon’s France, was in desperate need of sailors for their fleet to the degree of even “press-ganging” native-born Americans.  Due to the conflict in Europe, the United States Congress cut-off all trade with European nations, a move very unpopular in New England.  In an attempt to further foment dissention, the British Navy didn’t interfere with New England merchant vessels violating the trade ban, a policy that lasted until New England trade was seen as benefiting France as much as or even more than Britain.

By 1813, frigates of the British Navy were patrolling outside harbors along Massachusetts Bay.  Henry Edward Napier, a lieutenant on the H.M.S. Nymphe, wrote in his diary segment called Prizes at Halibut Point of “laying in wait, like a spider for flies, for coasters from northward and southward.”  The citizens of Sandy Bay (now Rockport) finally extracted a measure of revenge on the Nymphe in the battle of “Sea Fencibles,” leading to an eventual negotiated stand-off  where the captain of the Nymphe agreed to vacate the waters off Cape Ann. 

The War of 1812 is most remembered for the burning of the White House, the writing of The Star Spangled Banner and the concluding Battle of New Orleans.  It brought Andrew Jackson into the national spotlight, made heroes of “Tippecanoe” Harrison and Oliver Hazard Perry, and gave us some well-remembered slogans such as, “We have met the enemy and he is ours.”  The War of 1812, fought mainly on the sea and in the Great Lakes, is said to have “made” the American Navy.  One of the pivotal naval battles from the War of 1812, the encounter of the U.S. frigate Chesapeake and its British counterpart the H.M.S. Shannon, took place in the waters off Cape Ann.  The Chesapeake left Boston Harbor on June 1, 1813 flying a special flag proclaiming “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights” in recognition of America’s grievances against British policies.  Before the end that day, the Chesapeake found itself in one of the most famous battles in the history of the US Navy.  Though James Lawrence, captain of the Chesapeake, had a brief opportunity to rake the Shannon, he did not do so, instead boldly placing his port broadside against the Shannon’s starboard battery.  Both ships opened fire, but the British guns did more damage, producing crippling casualties on the Chesapeake’s quarterdeck.  Captain Lawrence, mortally wounded by small arms fire, gave his final order, uttering the immortal words, “Don’t give up the ship!”   Here are the later words of one witness to the encounter:
 

“At 0.55 p.m. Cape Ann bearing N.N.E½E distant 10 to 12 miles Shannon filled, and stood out from the land under easy sail. At 1 p.m. Chesapeake rounded the lighthouse under all sail, and at 3.40 hauled up and fired a gun. Presently Shannon hauled up and reefed topsails. At 4.50 Chesapeake took in her stunsails, topgallant sails and got her royal yards on deck. At 5.30 to be under command, and ready to wear if necessary, thinking it not unlikely that the Chesapeake would pass under Shannon’s stern, Captain Broke divided his men, and to be prepared to lie down as the enemy’s ship passed. But Captain Lawrence, at 5.40 gallantly luffed up, within about 50 yards, and squaring his main yard, gave three cheers. The captain of Shannon’s 14th gun (William Mindt ?) and was fired, in a second or so the 13th gun was fired, then the Chesapeake’s bow gun went off, and then the remaining guns on the broadside of each ship as fast as they could be discharged. At 5.56, her helm, probably from the death of the man stationed at it, being for the moment unattended to, Chesapeake came so sharp to the wind as completely to deaden her way, with her stern and quarters exposed to her enemy’s broadside. The Shannon’s aftermost guns now took a diagonal directon along the decks of the Chesapeake, beating in her stern ports, and sweeping the men from their quarters. At 6.p.m. Chesapeake fell on board the Shannon, with her quarter pressing upon the latter’s side, and hooking with her port quarter the fluke of Shannon’s anchor stowed over the chess-tree. Captain Broke ordered the ships to be lashed together, the maindeck boarders and the quarter deck men, under Lieut. G.T.L. Watt to be called away. Mr. Stevens the boatswain, and Mr. Samnell, midshipman, were mortally wounded. At 6.2 Captain Broke stepped from Shannon’s gangway rail on to the muzzle of Chesapeake’s aftermost carronade, and over the bulwark, upon the quarterdeck. Here not an officer or man was to be seen. Upon Chesapeake’s gangway made slight resistance 25 or 30 Americans but the remainder laid down their arms and submitted. The act of changing Chesapeake’s colours proved fatal to a gallant British officer, as owing to the halliards being entangled he commenced to hoist with the American Ensign above instead of below the British ensign. Observing the American stripes going up first the Shannon’s people re-opened their fire, and killed their own first-lieut and four-five of their comrades. Between the discharge of the first gun and the period of Captain Broke’s boarding (9 ?) minutes only elapsed, and in 4 minutes afterwards the Chesapeake was completely his. Captain Lawrence was killed in the action, and buried at Halifax with military honours such as a post-captain in the British Navy would be entitled to.”

The battle between the Chesapeake and the Shannon, lasting about fifteen minutes, had total casualties of nearly one hundred dead and one hundred and fifty wounded.  Details of this incredibly dramatic encounter and the events leading up to it are best detailed in Kenneth Poolman’s book, Guns off Cape Ann.  The other significant source material for information about the events off Cape Ann and Halibut Point in the War of 1812 is The Journal of Henry Edward Napier, Lieutenant in the H.M.S. Nymphe, published by the Peabody Essex Museum of Salem, MA in 1939.  Some great resources for information about the War of 1812 are this Wikipedia article, the US Naval Historical Center site and Benson J. Lossing’s 1869’s Book of the War of 1812, which you can view here.   

This is but the latest information we at Halibut Point have gathered in research of our site’s military history.  You will be able to learn much more in the new exhibit debuting inside our Visitors Center on Saturday, September 29, 2007.  This permanent installation, titled, The Military History of Halibut Point, is the result of efforts by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, its Bureau of Ranger Services Park Interpretation and Environmental Education Program and the Friends of Halibut Point State Park.  The Military History of Halibut Point, with information and artifacts ranging from the War of 1812 through the early 1960’s, is dedicated to all the men and women who have served in the United States armed forces.  Everyone is invited to this unveiling.  More details will be posted in August.  We hope you all will consider attending.

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July features a crammed calendar of programs and events at Halibut Point State Park, getting underway on the 1st at 3:00 pm with a Sunday Sounds concert featuring the Squatcho Bondo Band.  Other special events in July are Stargazing with the Gloucester Area Astronomy Club on July 7th, another Birding for Beginners on July 15th, and more Sunday Sounds on the 29th with Midlife Crisis.  Standard programs in July are our Quarry Tour, Geology Rocks!, The Mineral Club (our geology program for kids), Tidepools, Reading the Landscape and our new program, Ceremonial Time: The Fifteen Thousand Years of Fifty Acres.  See below for the dates and times of July’s programs and events.  Coming in August Halibut Point will have natural light photographer Leslie D. Bartlett hosting the program Halibut Point in Winter (August 4th) featuring his extraodinary images of the park, some of which can be seen here as well at this website about Halibut Point State Park.  August will also have the live animal program Snakes of Massachusetts and the World, as well as Dragonflies in the Park and the Essex National Heritage Photo Safari.  In September Halibut Point will feature The Atlantic Path, a trek along Rockport’s resplendent public coastline with The Trustees of Reservations interpreter Ramona Latham.  September will also feature a very special event at Halibut Point that will be announced in the near future.  And please remember, all programs and events at Halibut Point State Park are FREE.  You can download a flyer with the Halibut Point July schedule here.

Quarry Tour                                                   Saturdays  10:00am  

Attend our weekly granite walk around the former Babson Farm Quarry.  Beginning with the showing of a short film, this program features a stone-cutting demonstration, explains how rock is quarried, details the unique geology of Cape Ann and presents the history of building with natural stone in America.  Later, the Visitors Center will be open for a climb to its five-story World War II observation tower.  This program lasts approximately 90 minutes and entails a one mile moderately paced stroll around the quarry.  The Babson Farm Quarry, in operation from the 1840’s until 1929 (though stone was cut at the site from the 1790’s, perhaps even earlier), is an excellent place to view evidence of progression in stone-cutting techniques and learn about the role stone harvesting, transporation and building played in the development of technology that led to the Industrial Revolution.