The stone quarry in Bluffton opened in 1925, owned by Erie Stone Company. Peter Irving purchased the business in 1993 changing the name to Irving Materials. The Irving family have been in the ready mix and concrete business since 1946 growing to supply product to six states through regional operational centers mining stone, sand, and gravel throughout Indiana.
Andrew Fowerbaugh, Area Manager, explained that the land Irving Materials is on was a coral reef under the ocean, thus creating limestone from the sediments. “We are so blessed to have this here in our area and not every facility has limestone that is hard and abrasive. This type of stone holds better on the road for longevity. Everything we produce here can go in a bridge project, highway, building construction, and much more.”
The state of Indiana has a lot of limestone underneath the surface and depending on the amount of dirt on top of the limestone depends on the process of retrieving the stone. “Twenty to twenty-eight feet of dirt is removed from the surface that sets on top of the limestone,” stated Fowerbaugh. “We start drilling and blasting the stone off the face of the wall. The loose stone is then taken to various size crushers to make various size stone for concrete, asphalt, or anything you walk or drive on.”
The uniqueness of the Bluffton facility is that most of the operations are kept in a very tight square and contained. “People typically drive by and really don’t realize that we are here or the magnitude of what we do,” said Fowerbaugh.
