Time to Kil-n

From Dave Brigham:

Recently I had some time to kill, so I checked out an old lime kiln and quarry in Bolton, Mass.

After dropping my son to meet friends to pick apples nearby, my dog, Trudy, and I made our way to the Lime Kiln Conservation Area (part of the much larger Rattlesnake Hill set of hiking trails) on Route 117.

The trails are well marked with numbered signs that correspond with, uh, I'm not sure, as I didn't grab a trail map. But this area was once home to a limestone-mining operation, so there were once quarries and a kiln and a small mill and, I'm guessing, other buildings. I took the photo above while standing on a small bridge near where a pump log mill once stood. There are also signs throughout the woods indicating certain species of plants and trees.

There are also stone walls, as one might expect.

Trudy and I explored a few of the old quarries, which is where miners dug out limestone, which was processed in the kiln and used, according to this blog, to plaster local homes. Below is one of the larger quarries, which I know is hard to see in this photo.

A guy and his young daughter were at the top, throwing rocks into the water in the quarry. The operation dates to the 1740s, I believe, and was started by a guy named John Whitcomb. Flooding caused by the rupture of an underground water source forced the mine to close, sometime before 1800, I think.

Once the limestone was mined, it needed to be converted to quicklime to be used in local homes. Hence, the kiln.

The partially rebuilt kiln.

Close-up of the rebuilt kiln.

I took a similar hike (although with less incline) in Dover, Mass., back in 2012, checking out the rebuilt Dover Union Iron Mill (see April 9, 2012, "Beyond the Mill").