To access the former Lowville Quarry you need to park in the Mt Nemo Conservation Area parking lot which is gated and will need a reservation for you to get in. You will need to follow the main trail where there is a possibility of encountering insects and animals. This is a given knowing it’s on a trail in the middle of the woods. When making it to the quarry be wary around the cliffs of the quarry as the fall is about 50ft and could lead to serious injury or even death. All things considered, this is a pretty safe place to visit.

In the 1877 county atlas Lot 3, concession 4 of Nelson Township belonged to three different people.  The front 100 acres belonged to Jos. T Blagdon while Benjamin Eager owned the portion of the east 100 acres that was on top of the escarpment.  Below the escarpment, Nathan Lamb has added the most arable part of the east half to his farm. It is Benjamin’s lot that would become the quarry.

Fast forward some time and the quarry was opened in the Summer of 1958 by Lowville Quarries Limited and provided crushed stone for road construction and concrete aggregate. Operations continued through 1959 by Lowville Quarries Limited.

The property was then purchased in the early 60s by Bay Crushed Stone. In the later part of 1958 or the start of 1959, a proposed expansion of the quarry alerted the Twelve Mile Creek Conservation Authority. So then between the years 1959 and 1965, 88 acres of land along the northeast escarpment and all around the quarry were slowly purchased by the Conservation Authority for protection. Seeing that expansion of the quarry was impossible and that resources in the current quarry were dwindling, Bay Crushed Stone sold the quarry property to the Conservation Authority. When this occurred current operations in the quarry ceased immediately.

The date of closure is not exact, but a D.F Hewitt writing a report on the limestone industry of Canada wrote that the quarry was not in operation as of July 1963. Eventually, the Twelve Mile Creek Conservation Authority conglomerated with other Conservation Authorities to the point where we are now, where the property is owned and managed by the Halton Conservation Authority.

About The Quarry and Its Operations

The 70-foot quarry face consists entirely of Amabel dolomite; this is light-buff to medium-grey in color, light-buff- to light-grey-weathering; medium- to coarse-crystalline; irregular massive bedded and reefy to thick-bedded; fossiliferous; crinoidal, coralline; porous in places. The quarry is worked on an upper 50-foot lift and a lower 20-foot lift. The south face of the 50-foot lift discloses massive reef-rock with west-dipping reef flank beds. The east wall is mainly porous reef rock. The north wall is thick to massive bedded and non-reefy to partly reefy. There are a few clay seams. The lower lift appears to be massive to thick-bedded and lacks reef rock. Thin color lamination may be present. The quarry face exposes 17.7 metres of dolostones of the Middle Silurian Amabel Formation. The dolostones are typically massive, with a distinct lens-like structure to the beds, with some beds dipping away from the lenses, indicating this quarry is in the reefal facies of the Amabel Formation.

Overburden is thin, but the irregular surface is difficult to strip owing to reefy hummocks. The upper few feet of weathered stone is quarried separately. Drilling is done on contract, with 6-inch holes drilled on a 12- by 12-foot pattern. The blasting agents are dynamite and prilled ammonium nitrate. Stone is loaded by a 2.5 cubic-yard, Lima, diesel shovel. Haulage is by three 22-ton, rear-dump, Euclid trucks. The primary crusher is a 48 by 60-inch, Traylor jaw-crusher. The crusher product is carried by the 36-inch, No. l conveyor to the screening and secondary-crushing tower. The feed is split into two lines, each consisting of a 4 by 12-foot scalping screen, two 4 by 12-foot, 2-deck Dillon screens, and one 4 by 12-foot, triple-deck Dillon screen. The oversize from the 2-inch scalping screens goes to a Traylor 15-inch gyratory crusher. A 6-inch Allis-Chalmers Superior McCully gyratory crusher is used for recrushing. Sizes made are 2-inch, 1-inch, 3/4-inch, 5/8-inch, and 3/8-inch stone, screenings, and 2-inch and 3/4-inch crusher run. The products from the various screens go to steel bins below the screens and are stockpiled by truck. A blending belt conveyor runs under feeders from the various bins to allow blending to customers' specifications. Plant capacity is about 350-400 tons per hour. Transportation is entirely by truck.

I am willing to say that what was described above in Hewitt’s paper is related to the concrete ruins close to the site, possibly the location of many of these machines, or of possibly only one like the rock crusher.