This place really rocks!

   The picture below might make you think I took my granddaughters, KayLynne and Brittany to some exotic land far, far away. But, no, I snapped this shot right in Norcross at Vulcan Materials, the biggest granite quarry in America.

   This 600 acre spread (about one-fourth the size of the city of Norcross) is home to the biggest hole in the ground in Gwinnett County. At 700 feet deep, it’s sort of like an antithesis of Stone Mountain, a chunk of granite rising just about the same distance out of the ground.

   When I parked my car at the overlook, just inside the main entrance on Beaver Ruin Road, our tour guide, Derrell, promptly welcomed us in to his pickup truck.
Down we went, twirling layer by layer to what seemed like a bottomless pit of gray matter, looking nothing like the view, or should I say non-view from Beaver Ruin Road. Steep cliffs, murky ponds and giant mud puddles popped up at every turn. Conveyor belts and rock crushers crept up around corners like dragons about to devour us. 

   When we reached bottom, Derrell invited us to look at the 100 acres we had just whirled around.

   “Like Pooh’s Hundred Acre Woods?” KayLynne asked. “Yes,” I said, “Quite a lot for a bear of little brain to handle, huh?”

   Derrell radioed a haul truck to stop so I could get a picture of the girls with an eight-foot tire, which costs $6,000.

   The girls were totally blown away with the magnitude of it all. But the magnitude of the quarry is not limited to physical ground. Vulcan Materials is well grounded in its community, both in Norcross and the entire USA.

   Vulcan has won numerous environmental awards. The company sponsors the arts at Meadowcreek High School and encourages volunteers to work with HOSTS, a reading tutorial program at Meadowcreek Elementary School. In every way I’d say Vulcan is rock solid! (Info: www.vulcanmaterials.com/norcross 

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