Applied Ecological Services, Inc.

Is there a better playground for a kid than an old quarry? Well, maybe there’s a safer one; but we can debate the question about "better". In St. Cloud, Minnesota, the debate gets enlarged: Is there a better playground for anyone than the old granite quarry?

Even statewide, perhaps, the answer is no. Stearns County, Minnesota, has transformed one of the country’s most rare geological areas into one of the country’s most unique and enjoyable public parks, with the hope that Quarry Park and Nature Preserve will serve as a prototype for quarry reclamation and park development across the country.

The Quarry Then…

To begin at the beginning…early pioneers discovered granite bedrock exposed at the surface of the land in central Minnesota. Scottish immigrants familiar with the volcanic stone first blasted away at their geologic treasure in 1868. Initially, because railroad tracks hadn’t yet reached central Minnesota, it was cheaper to import granite from Scotland to Chicago via barge and horse team. But once the tracks were laid, millions of tons of beautiful red, pink and gray granite were mined and shipped throughout the world from this small plot of land east of St. Cloud.

On the site of today’s Quarry Park and Nature Preserve, the Empire Quarrying Company began mining in 1913. Since then, hundreds of resolute men have pitted their will against the mass. Amid the din of their Herculean efforts, they couldn’t have known their drilling and blasting would one day create a 220-acre park where their descendents would find quiet leisure and reflective recreation.

The Quarry Now…

It’s the heart of winter and the lone skier is zipping along between monstrous rock piles. Brown leaves clinging to red oak chatter in the wind. Sinuous trails lead toward the boardwalk over the wetland. The late afternoon sun casts an orange hue over the landscape. The quarry is in full winter bloom.

It’s the joy of summer, and the kids run ahead of mom and dad to the ol’ swimming hole. Rock piles encircling the quarry lake stand high above, creating a fragmented coliseum as the youngsters leap from the floating pier into the deep clear-black water. The surrounding woodlands, prairie and wetlands resound with birdsong. The quarry is alive with the myriad of summer life.

The Story How…

How this industrious work zone became one of the country’s most unique parklands is the story of a master planning process that held strongly to four foundation stones: honoring ecological principles, a commitment to true public involvement, a respect for geologic and cultural history, and a creative approach to think outside the box of standard reclamation tools.

Typically, mine or quarry reclamation begins with the assumption that the land surface should be restored to its original contours, or at least to reshape the disturbed terrain to make it as gentle or natural as possible.

The wonderful opportunity at Quarry Park and Nature Preserve, however, was to keep the landscape as rugged as were the actual mining operations…while providing much-appreciated, safe outdoor recreational opportunities within the craggy landscape.

That was the conclusion of the park’s Master Plan, completed in 1995 by Brauer & Associates, Ltd., of Hopkins, Minnesota—to keep the grout (waste rock) piles in place, to feature the site’s 20 quarry pits as fishing, swimming and even scuba diving holes, and to connect the unusual landscape with a trail system that honored the high quality ecological resources on site.

"This was the first project we did where the health of the ecological resources really became the starting point for all the planning," said consultant Jeff Schoenbrauer, RLA, of Brauer, who directed the master planning process. "The Audubon Society had previously done a huge plant inventory which served as a baseline. And, on our project team, we partnered with Applied Ecological Services (AES) of Edina, Minn., who conducted ecological surveys to develop a clear understanding of the ecological quality, condition and value of the natural resources."

Ironically, it was only 12 years earlier that state officials were considering Stearns County for hazardous waste storage, and federal officials were looking into the deep quarry rockscapes with a notion of disposing spent uranium rods from nuclear power plants across the country into the stable crystalline bedrock as a repository.

Foundation Stone: Ecological Assessment

Protecting the water quality of the crystal clear quarry ponds has created extremely popular scuba diving opportunities.

Surveying the property, ecologists Steven Apfelbaum and Susan Lehnhardt of AES, found high, dry granite outcrops, high quality natural wetlands, fallowed farm fields, prairie and oak savanna remnants and forest. In their study, they also found a high recuperative potential of the diverse plant life and remnants of native plant communities.

"Restoring the native plant communities and reclamation of the quarries was integral to the overall master plan, but in this case, ‘reclamation’ focused on stabilizing rather than eliminating the grout piles and quarries," Apfelbaum said.

"In characterizing the vegetation communities, we found there were relatively high quality natural area remnants that would serve well as restoration templates, and which could provide genetically local seed needed for the restoration work," he said. "We felt the site would respond very quickly to restoration treatments, and in fact, it has responded beautifully."

AES recommended restoration of the natural communities throughout the property, in coordination with other elements of the master plan. On a site-specific basis, restoration treatments were to include prescribed burning, removal of non-native shrubs (i.e., European buckthorn), selective herbicide treatment to reduce persistent non-native grasses (i.e., quack and brome grasses), seeding with native prairie grasses and forbs, stimulation of oak regeneration and seeding of acorns, establishing trail-side vegetation to control erosion, and various strategies to protect water quality in the mine pits and tributary areas.

Since then Stearns County, with the help of the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University, has restored 20 acres of a central prairie. In addition, students from St. Cloud State University have designed and installed an 8-acre wetland to connect with the drainage of a large natural wetland complex. Access is available to this natural wetland via a floating boardwalk that bisects the wetland ecosystem without damaging it. Because it floats on segmented pontoons, the boardwalk allows water to flow through, which maintains the natural hydrologic regime. This alleviates the typical hydrologic alterations and ecological damages that would occur if a hard-surface trail had been constructed.

"That’s part of an ecological approach to trail design," explained Schoenbauer. "With a good understanding of the ecological processes involved, you can use alternative technologies and eco-sensitive trail routing to avoid negative impacts. But ecological trail design and routing is not always so intuitive; the science is important."

Restoration of the natural landscapes has also been greatly augmented by local college, high school and elementary students and instructors who have found the park to be a marvelous outdoor classroom. A long list of student research and restoration projects includes propagation of native cactus in the park, design and construction of an 8-acre wetland mitigation bank, and design and permitting of a prairie pond by two master’s degree students at St. Cloud State University. School teachers at Discovery Elementary School adjacent to the park have a key to the east gate, giving them open access for outdoor education whenever they want it.

"It’s amazing how much usage we get in the park without having to hire any program staff," said Stearns County Park Department Director Charlie Wocken. "Environmental education is a really important component to the park. A modest estimate is that we get 50,000 to 60,000 visits each year, and one study showed that 42% of reserved usage is for environmental studies and educational field trips."

Foundation Stone: Public Involvement

The "Deep 7" quarry overlook sits atop a grout pile, offering dramatic vistas of the park and its natural areas. Access to grout pile overlooks is via trails created during the grout pile stacking operation or created by hikers and mountain bikers prior to the site being acquired for a park.

Growing up in St. Cloud, you’d have known about the swimming holes out in the old mine pits. And more than likely, you’d have spent plenty of refreshing, leisurely and sometimes daring afternoons swimming and diving out in the abandoned granite pits.

Most likely, you’d have known someone who worked at the mine. The park property was purchased from the Cold Spring Granite Company, the largest granite company in the world and the fourth largest employer in the county with 1,000 employees.

So when Cold Springs Granite sold the property in 1992 to the county, the local culture held that those swimming holes belonged to the people...or at least to all those who had been willing to crawl through a hole in a fence on a hot, summer day.

The cultural paradigm was that…sure, you might get hurt, or killed, diving off the rocks, but it’s your own neck. No one else is to blame if your own actions result in your own detriment. When the property became public, that culture was challenged, but in the public process, it prevailed. Swimming is allowed in one of the largest quarry pits, a 2-acre, 116-foot deep pond that attracts 600 to 800 people on some summer days. A floating dock is provided, but not so a lifeguard. Signage gives blunt, graphic warnings about the dangers of diving off rocks. "We started out with the philosophy that we were not going to babysit people. The rock piles are off-limits, except for one climbing area, and the signage is clear so everyone knows that if they’re going to climb or dive off rocks, they’re doing it at their own risk," said Wocken.

"Early on, we brought a group of local officials out here, and it was really a bell-ringer for them that we were going to require people to be responsible. But, by involving the public to a great degree in the master planning process, we’ve created a park that provides reasonable access to different opportunities, and we haven’t felt it was appropriate or necessary to put up barriers."

In addition to county board members, the planning team sought insight and input from an Ad Hoc Advisory Committee, a Technical Advisory Committee and a User-Group Advisory Committee. Local citizens with single interests in recreational activities such as scuba diving, mountain biking, fishing, and cross-country skiing were active in planning for these opportunities.

A local ski club advocated the installation of lighting on trails so members could tour the park after work. Today airport runway lights illuminate 4.3 miles of trail. The lights, mounted on 4-foot tall PVC pipes, automatically turn on at 4:30 p.m. and shut off at 11 p.m. In the spring, the pipes are removed and sockets are capped, making the winter lighting system totally unobtrusive during summer. Wocken estimates they had well over 10,000 ski touring visits last winter.

"Once the master plan was adopted, we made it a top priority to get some trails built quickly because we wanted people to be able to use the park right away—to further develop the sense of ownership and participation by the public," Wocken said.

Eventually, more than six miles of trails within the park will be linked to a developing regional trail system including the county’s Lake Wobegon Trail. And someday, as grant monies become available, an interpretive center/trailhead building and outdoor amphitheater and lecture/gathering area will serve as a focal point of outdoor recreational and educational activities.

Additional expansion is also taking place, as envisioned in the Master Plan, on a large parcel of land adjacent to the park’s southern boundary. Following development of the Master Plan in 1995, the county acquired an additional 325 acres that is designated as a state Scientific and Natural Area (SNA) by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, as well as an additional 70 acres to develop as a southern entrance and active recreation area. The SNA will remain undeveloped—except for a perimeter trail that will be off-limits to pets—making it, essentially, a large wilderness area within minutes of one of Minnesota’s most rapidly developing urban areas.

"We’ve implemented nearly everything Jeff (Schoenbauer) recommended in the plan," said Wocken, "or if we haven’t, we’re still planning to, once grants become available".

Foundation Stone: Respect for Geologic and Cultural History

The physical characteristics of the park, created initially by geologic anomaly and subsequently altered by the human culture of hard-rock mining, have provided the unique landscape upon which the planning process was founded.

"The open quarries and grout piles are dominant and interesting site features," Schoenbauer said, "while the natural resources of the park are arguably the most important. It is these resources that give the park its enduring qualities and sense of place.

"Within the park, you can witness first-hand the interconnection of all aspects of our natural environment— bedrock, overburden (layers of earthen material or soil lying above the bedrock), water, plants and wildlife."

Most of the earth’s granite deposits lie well below the surface, often at depths of 2,000 feet or more. However, in deposits near St. Cloud, this rare and valuable bedrock lies at surface level, providing scientists a coveted opportunity to study the formations of the earth and the interrelations of geology with other natural elements: soils, vegetation, wildlife and hydrology.

In Quarry Park, the intensity and diversity of historic volcanic and geologic activities created granite of varying color and texture, fault lines, basalt dikes and overburden to form a tapestry of geologic features—observable by man— that allows for greater insights into the workings of the earth we live on.

During the master planning process, geology professor Dr. George W. Shurr of St. Cloud State University, led a study team that characterized the quarries of Quarry Park according to their geologic significance. Twelve of the 20 quarries in the park were deemed geologically significant and were therefore recommended for minimal modification, or reclamation, in order to preserve these sites for research and education.

Foundation Stone: Creative Approach

The master plan for the Quarry Park and Nature Preserve created a wonderful opportunity to keep the landscape as rugged as were the actual mining operations of years past, while simultaneously providing many outdoor recreational activities.

"Mine ‘reclamation’, in this case, was approached from a significantly different angle than usual," said Apfelbaum, a research and consulting ecologist who has been reclaiming mine and quarry sites since the late 1970s. "Typically, the goal of reclamation is on re-contouring the site as much as possible, to provide an adequate layer of topsoil, and then to re-vegetate the site with predominantly native species.

"Our focus, however, was on ensuring protection from unexpected events, such as granite debris falling from the grout piles. So we brought in Barr Engineering of Minneapolis to conduct technical studies and provide stabilization strategies for the rock piles that were found to be particularly subject to dynamic shifting. "We were also concerned with rehabilitation strategies for hydrology and water quality in the mine pits, and this is often the case in quarry reclamation. But in general, the reclamation planning relied very much on thinking that was clearly out-of-the-box," Apfelbaum said.

Reclamation Lessons from Quarry Park

Schoenbauer, who continues to work with park staff in the on-going plan implementation and parkland expansion, points to a pair of important themes that emerged from the year-long master planning process.

A keystone of the process was that of involving, truly listening and responding cooperatively to interested participants. While this is typically a goal of park planning, he said, the difficulty for a consulting Landscape Architect

lies in creating a receptive environment for

such interaction.

"Finding direction from a prevailing, local cultural perspective made this process one of the great experiences of my life," Schoenbauer said.

Another keystone was the up-front establishment of a solid scientific foundation focused on natural systems and ecological processes which helped meld divergent opinions into consensus on seemingly divisive issues.

Apfelbaum concurred, "At the time, it was quite new in the Midwest to recognize the importance of abandoned quarries and mines as habitat for plants and animals, especially when there were important goals to integrate these with active recreational opportunities. This project demonstrated the potential in mines and quarries both for ecological restoration, aquatic and terrestrial, and for development of inter-related human systems.

"Quarry Park and Nature Preserve offers a great opportunity to further this area of planning in quarry reclamation, ecological restoration and public recreation."

About the Author: Jack Broughton, Marketing Manager for Applied Ecological Services, of Brodhead, Wisconsin, is a frequent author on topics relating to ecological issues and cutting-edge natural area restoration. In recent years, he has published articles in professional publications on issues such as conservation development, non-traditional stormwater management, native landscaping, wetland mitigation banking, stream restoration, mine reclamation and ecosystem health.