RICHARDS SPUR – Virtually everything at Dolese’s rock quarry here is B-I-G!
The tires on one front-end loader used to scoop up stones of various sizes are approximately 7 feet in diameter. A reservoir at the quarry encompasses several acres and is more than a hundred feet deep. A specialized machine imported from Ireland makes riprap (a sustaining wall of stones thrown together without order) of up to 3 feet in diameter.
The quarry encompasses more than a square mile, yet after 113 years of production about half of the site remains unexcavated. But even a company as large and successful as Dolese started out small. Four brothers founded Dolese Bros. Co. in 1902. They established a quarry at Richards Spur in 1907, prior to Oklahoma statehood later that year. The operation is approximately five miles north of Lawton, just off U.S. 62. The quarry mines limestone created when the region was covered by a saltwater sea 350-500 million years ago, said Operations Manager Clint Harris. Dolese (pronounced Dō-lee-see) manufactures construction aggregate that’s used in concrete and in asphalt. In fact, “There’s more rock in asphalt than in concrete,” Harris said. The stone aggregate makes the asphalt stronger and more durable, he explained.
Rock mining was conducted in ancient history, during Greek and Roman times. That’s how the Greek Parthenon and the Roman Coliseum were built. “It’s an age-old business that’s still an integral part of our society,” said Harris, who’s been with Dolese for 22 years. Material from the Richards Spur quarry “is in everything that we live in, work in and travel on,” Harris noted. “It’s the lifeblood for construction.” Limestone is “good for adhesion and bonding.”
HUNDREDS OF TRUCKS VISIT QUARRY DAILY
An average of 300 to 500 customer trucks drive through the quarry each day to load up with stones of various sizes, said Kermit Frank, Dolese’s director of communications and community relations. The vehicles include primarily semi-tractor/ trailer rigs and dump trucks, But even pickups make an appearance. The volume of traffic “depends on the season and the demand,” he said. Besides the trucks, a train engine owned by Dolese pushes railroad cars loaded with stones and aggregate to a staging point near the quarry entrance. Each rail car contains about 100 tons of stone, Frank estimated. The Union Pacific Railroad serves Richards Spur.
The quarry is in operation six days a week, 24 hours a day. They have two production shifts and a maintenance shift. When they’re not blasting and crushing rocks, Dolese crews are performing maintenance on heavy equipment used at the site. Dolese has several large stone crushers at Richards Spur, plus a specialized machine imported from Ireland that produces stone riprap in sizes ranging from 12 to 36 inches. “It takes big rocks and makes smaller rocks,” Frank quipped. Riprap is used extensively by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, by the state Transportation Department and Turnpike Authority, and by counties, for stabilization of lake and river embankments, around bridge abutments, and in locations of severe rainwater runoff erosion.
PLENTY OF LIFE LEFT IN DOLESE QUARRY
Over the years, blasting and digging for stone at the quarry has created enormous mined pits 100 to 200 feet deep in some places and hundreds of feet in diameter. One of those pits contains a reservoir that Operations Superintendent C.J. Hays estimated to be nine to eleven acres in size, and Harris said the lake is 130 feet deep. Water from the pit is used primarily for suppression of dust from the vehicular traffic. Water trucks drive throughout the quarry continuously, spraying the driving routes just enough to keep the dust down.
Water from the reservoirs is used for stone processing, both crushing and at numerous conveyor transfer points, Frank said. “We have to rinse our rock in order to meet certain specifications,” he said. A network of aboveground hoses conveys the runoff water back into the quarry lake and a smaller reservoir nearby. “Our system recycles the majority of the water we use at the site,” Harris said. Not surprisingly, both reservoirs register on the alkaline-high side of the pH scale in the range of 8 to 8.5, Harris said. Although it’s been in operation for more than a century, the Richards Spur quarry has plenty of stone remaining to be excavated. Even after a century of operations, “Its horizon is way beyond what we have done,” Frank said of the quarry’s potential lifespan.
At Richards Spur, Dolese consumes a lot of electricity generated by Public Service Co. of Oklahoma. Power is required to operate the crushers and the thousands of feet of conveyor belts. “We can put a dent in the grid,” Harris said. Consequently, much of the work at the site is performed in the evenings and at night because of the quarry’s enormous appetite for electricity. Work at the quarry initially was done using horses and mules rather than trucks. So, the quarry still has the remnants of a blacksmith shop “and sometimes we’ll find an old horseshoe or mule shoe,” Harris said.
COMPANY STRESSES SAFETY, HOSTS ‘QUARRY CHALLENGE’
Dolese has approximately 90 employees at Richards Spur, with an annual payroll of $5.4 million, Frank said. The company stresses safety with employees being required to participate in ongoing safety training. One of Dolese’s sites in Oklahoma recently observed 4,609 calendar days (121⁄2 years) without an injury, said Frank, who has been with the company for 36 years. Keeping workers’ compensation premiums at a minimum is “a residual effect,” he said. “Mostly, we want our employees to go home the same way they came to work – in one piece.” Dolese also has hosted the “30th ADA Quarry Challenge” for the past three years for the benefit of Fort Sill Army personnel. The event, which is open to the public, has included a “fun run,” a 5K route, an 8K route, and a 10-mile route through the quarry. “We work hard to be a good corporate citizen,” Frank said.