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Crushed limestone quarry near Bellefonte, Pennsylvania

A quarry is a type of open-pit mine from which rock or minerals are extracted. Quarries are generally used for extracting building materials, such as dimension stone. Quarries are usually shallower than other types of open-pit mines.

A quarry is often mistaken for other types of open-pit or open-cast mines such as borrow or gravel pits.

Types of rock extracted from quarries include:

• Cinder
• China Clay
• Coquina
• Construction aggregate
• Granite
• Gritstone
• Gypsum a mineral
• Limestone
• Marble
• Sandstone
• Slate

Quarries in level areas often have special engineering problems for drainage. The Coquina Quarry is excavated to more than sixty feet (18 meters) below sea level. To reduce surface leakage a moat, lined with clay, was constructed around the entire quarry. Ground water that seeps into the pit is pumped up into the moat.

Many quarries fill with water to become ponds or small lakes after abandonment for mining purposes. Others have become landfills.

Construction aggregate quarry near Adelaide, South Australia	Coquina Quarry sixty feet below sea level, Conway, South Carolina	A dimension stone quarry.	A small cinder quarry.
An abandoned limestone quarry.	Former quarry in Kraków, Poland	Portland Stone quarry on the Isle of Portland, England.	Basalt quarry on the Holyoke Range of Massachusetts.

See also

• Clay pit
• Collecting fossils
• Gravel pit
• Kouloura
• List of minerals
• List of rock types
• List of stones
• Mountaintop removal mining

External links

• See How Rock Is Quarried

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Quarries

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In the Middle Ages the Arena di Verona was used as a quarry for other buildings.