Oakland Geology

The Head-Royce School occupies a lovely secluded site next to Lincoln Avenue. Naturally, it was once a quarry.

Not just any quarry, although its product was ordinary: crushed rock of indifferent quality. It was the quarry for Easton & Wilson, a paving and construction company founded in the late 1890s by Kimball G. Easton and Arthur R. Wilson. (Wilson also partnered with Easton’s brother Stanley in the Leona Heights Quarry.) In approximately 1905, the business was liquidated by transferring its assets to a new venture by Easton and his brother-in-law Warren Porter named Granite Rock Company. The firm is still in business today as Graniterock, which operates a large quarry on the San Andreas fault in Aromas, near San Juan Bautista.

The rock here was described by the state bureau of mines as “a blue metamorphosed sandstone” mixed with softer sandstone and shale that created a lot of waste. It is right at the edge of the Piedmont block of Franciscan sandstone, a district I described in more detail as the Oakmore block. Near the upper end of the school property, the rock walls are still exposed, as seen from Lincoln Avenue.

Stone magazine reported in 1900 that Easton & Wilson was sued to stop from opening a quarry on Fruitvale Avenue, on the grounds that the blasting would “addle the eggs in the chicken ranches, which form the leading industry in the neighborhood.”

Apparently this ground sat for 60 years after the quarry closed. The Head-Royce School relocated to the property in 1964. The MacArthur Metro gave more details about the school’s history in 2013.

This entry was posted on 6 March 2014 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Quarries and mines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.