Redstone is a village

Village (United States)

In the United States, the meaning of "village" varies by geographic area and legal jurisdiction. In many areas, "village" is a term, sometimes informal, for a type of administrative division at the local government level...

 within the town

New England town

The New England town is the basic unit of local government in each of the six New England states. Without a direct counterpart in most other U.S. states, New England towns are conceptually similar to civil townships in other states, but are incorporated, possessing powers like cities in other...

 of Conway

Conway, New Hampshire

Conway is a town, the largest in Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 10,115 at the 2010 census. Parts of the White Mountain National Forest are in the west and north. Cathedral Ledge and Echo Lake State Park are in the west...

 in Carroll County

Carroll County, New Hampshire

-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 43,666 people, 18,351 households, and 12,313 families residing in the county. The population density was 18/km² . There were 34,750 housing units at an average density of 14/km²...

, New Hampshire

New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It is located on the road from Center Conway

Center Conway, New Hampshire

Center Conway is a village within the town of Conway in Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. From the late 19th century until the Second World War, Center Conway was known for its corn cannery. Today the homes are mostly residential, with many vacationers visiting the scenic Conway Lake...

 to North Conway

North Conway, New Hampshire

North Conway is a census-designated place in eastern Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 2,349 at the 2010 census. A year-round resort area, North Conway is the largest village within the town of Conway, which is bounded on the east by the Maine state line. The White...

 at the base of Rattlesnake Mountain. From the late 19th century until circa 1950, Redstone was famous for its quarry of "red" granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 which was mined extensively.

History

The first road through Redstone was made in 1765 and 1766. One of the first products to be taken from the hills nearby were rattlesnake

Rattlesnake

Rattlesnakes are a group of venomous snakes of the genera Crotalus and Sistrurus of the subfamily Crotalinae . There are 32 known species of rattlesnake, with between 65-70 subspecies, all native to the Americas, ranging from southern Alberta and southern British Columbia in Canada to Central...

s, whose venom was valued for medicinal properties (thus the name Rattlesnake Mountain). This practice stopped after a fire raged over the hills in the 1870s, killing the rattlesnake population, and exposing the rocky slopes to erosion. This led to exploiting the mountain for one of the most important mineral products of New Hampshire, which has long been known as the "Granite State". The Conway quarries, four in number in 1908, were on either side of the Saco River

Saco River

The Saco River is a river in northeastern New Hampshire and southwestern Maine in the United States. It drains a rural area of of forests and farmlands west and southwest of Portland, emptying into the Atlantic Ocean at Saco Bay, from its source. It supplies drinking water to roughly 250,000...

, south-east and south-west of North Conway; their output is coarse constructional stones, all biotite

Biotite

Biotite is a common phyllosilicate mineral within the mica group, with the approximate chemical formula . More generally, it refers to the dark mica series, primarily a solid-solution series between the iron-endmember annite, and the magnesium-endmember phlogopite; more aluminous endmembers...

 or biotite-hornblende

Hornblende

Hornblende is a complex inosilicate series of minerals .It is not a recognized mineral in its own right, but the name is used as a general or field term, to refer to a dark amphibole....

, but varying in colour, pinkish ("red") and dark-yellow greenish-grey ("green") varieties being found remarkably near each other at Redstone, on the east side of the Saco valley. The finer varieties take a high polish and are used for monuments, and the coarser grades are used for construction, especially of railway bridges, and for paving and curbing.

The Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad

Portland and Ogdensburg Railway

The Portland & Ogdensburg Railroad was a railroad planned to connect Portland, Maine to Ogdensburg, New York. The plan failed, and in 1880 the Vermont section was reorganized and leased by the Boston & Lowell Railroad. In 1886, the Maine and New Hampshire section was reorganized as the Portland &...

 built the rail from Center Conway through Redstone to North Conway in 1865, but the Redstone stop along the line was formed after the Maine Central took over. The quarry received orders for stone abutments for three bridges between 1876 and 1880; the North Conway bridge, the Center Conway bridge, and the Mill Brook bridge south of Center Conway. It was during this time that the granite's splitting qualities drew the attention of the Maine Central roadmaster George W. Wagg, and Redstone was adopted by the Maine and New Hampshire Granite Company. A railroad station was erected in 1888, and the village got its own post office the following year. There was also a small nondenominational church built on the Quarry Road. The quarry workers were housed in tenements and a large boarding house called "the Schooner", which itself could house 80 men whose pay was reduced by fixed costs for their room and board. By 1889, 300 men were employed at Redstone, shipping six to nine railroad cars of rough granite daily.

Redstone granite can be found in many old station buildings of the Boston & Maine Railroad. In its heyday, the quarry at Redstone had more than twenty derrick

Derrick

A derrick is a lifting device composed of one tower, or guyed mast such as a pole which is hinged freely at the bottom. It is controlled by lines powered by some means such as man-hauling or motors, so that the pole can move in all four directions. A line runs up it and over its top with a hook on...

s in operation. Huge slabs of red, pink, or green granite were shipped near and far with the Boston & Maine railroad, whose cars went directly into the quarry for loading. You could say the growth of the quarry matched the growth of the railroad line, as each new train station was built with Redstone granite.

New Hampshire granites were used for building as early as 1623. The value of granite quarried in the state increased from a few hundred thousand dollars worth in 1887 to upwards of a million dollars worth in 1902, when building stone was valued at $619,916, monumental stone at $346,735 and paving stone at $101,548. In that year New Hampshire ranked fourth among the states in output of granite, with 6.3% of the total value of granite quarried in the entire country; in 1908 the value of granite ($867,028) was exceeded by that of each of seven other states but was more than one-half of the total value of all mineral products of the state.http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/N.H.

Hiking

The quarry closed in 1942. Today, the granite is protected through The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy is a US charitable environmental organization that works to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive....

, thanks to a 1990 bequest by Anna B. Stearns for the Green Hills Preserve. When in Redstone, tourist can easily avoid the shopping malls of Conway by hiking the trail behind them, which leads along a ridge with spectacular views of the White Mountains

White Mountains (New Hampshire)

The White Mountains are a mountain range covering about a quarter of the state of New Hampshire and a small portion of western Maine in the United States. Part of the Appalachian Mountains, they are considered the most rugged mountains in New England...

and ends at the old quarry site.