This quarry was one of numerous quarries along the Beaver and Connoquenessing Rivers. In 1852, the Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad was constructed through the developing hamlet now called Homewood. The arrival of this efficient and economical transportation mode greatly stimulated the growth of Homewood and the quarrying of stone from this site.
Several kinds of rock were extracted from the area. In addition to bituminous coal and limestone, one of the principal rocks was Homewood Sandstone, named by geologists for the nearby town. This stone's hardness made it a marketable commodity, and was used in the construction of roads, canal locks, bridge abutments and buildings, including the Western Penitentiary located near Pittsburgh.
The quarrying of the Homewood Sandstone remained an important industry through the twentieth century. The sandstone occurs as a massive, coarse-grained or conglomeratic bed 20 to 60 feet in thickness. However, the sandstone is characteristically irregular in thickness, lithology, and in its relation to the overlying beds deriving from the Allegheny Group.
At the home of Homewood, the stratum extends for over one-quarter mile and apparently dips downstream making the bed appear to be at least 25 feet thicker than it actually is. When I.C. White identified the type at Homewood, he believed the bed was 155 feet thick due to the extension of the Homewood sandstone above its usual horizon to a position in the beds above the Vanport limestonoe. Later studies indicated that the sandstone stratum at Homewood represents the Homewood and Upper Connoquenessing combined and that the entire Allegheny sequence overlays both. This can be compared to the stratigraphy at Slippery Rock Creek. At Homewood, Clarion coal occurs 30 feet above the sandstone.
The altitude of Homewood sandstone at Homewood is 950 feet. At this site, the sandstone is described as an exposed bed of massive to thin-dedded, hard, and conglomeratic sandstone that is coontinuous with the Upper Connoquenessing sandstone. The durable Homewood sandstones ranges from light gray and white to yellow and pink. (DeWolf 1929:50).
The Homewood sandstone, known to drillers as the "Forty-foot" measures 20 to 60 feet and averages 30 feet thick. It was frequently quarried along the Beaver River from Beaver Falls to Wampum, and farther north in Edwards Run and Hickory Run.
