The Dorset Quarry has been a fixture in the small Vermont town of Dorset for over 200 years.  First opened for marble mining as the Norcross-West Quarry in 1785, it is considered the first commercial marble quarry in the US.  By WWI, the demand for marble decreased and the quarry was closed, but not before it supplied marble for projects across the world. The empty pit filled with ground water and runoff from mountain streams overtime after work stopped, and it became a swimming hole for local children and field workers alike seeking respite from hot summers.  Today, it has become a must-see tourist attraction, gaining fame in 2003 when it was featured in the New York Times' Weekender Newsletter.

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​Yet, when the crowds have gone for the summer, and the last brave local has packed away their swimsuit, the quarry becomes a respite of a different kind.  Those seeking serenity can be found  soaking in the colors of the earth painted upon the once-white walls.  An artist or two can usually be found painting en plein air and the click of a camera shutter or raise cellphone echo in whispers where laughter and joy once played crescendo.

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What is really an open scar in the earth, a place where men have pulled out the bones of these mountains to build monuments, carve gravestones, and line the walls of important civic structures, the quarry has become a monument of its own story.  Tales of summer love now withered are etched into the stones as hearts with initials.  Carvings of laughing faces and the names of far off places dapple the insides of small crevices.  If you know where to look, there is even a stone pipe for indulgences of other kinds carved into the corner of one usually overlooked slab.  All of it, generations old or left from the most recent summer, remind all who visit that the way things used to be is never how they really are for long.