Fascinating history and compelling stories of the area's famed pink granite will be featured this Saturday, May 5 during a tour of the Stony Creek Quarry.

The May 5 tour of the Quarry Road site (off Route 146) is hosted by two of the area's best-known quarry history buffs, Branford First Selectman Anthony "Unk" DaRos and former Guilford first selectman Carl Balestracci.

The two will offer a tour and talk during an event arranged by the Guilford Keeping Society (GKS) at the Stony Creek Quarry at 11 a.m. Both DaRos and Balestracci come from families of quarrymen-DaRos also worked in the quarry for a time-and enjoy sharing their knowledge of the quarry's history and lore.

"They have great stories to tell. It should be quite an event," said GKS board member Sue Gillie.

DaRos's great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were all connected to the Stony Creek Quarry. His grandfather was an operating engineer who also owned a quarry workers' boarding house.

"It had 47 rooms and people of all nationalities," said DaRos, who also co-hosted a quarry tour with Balestracci about two years ago.

During the tour, DaRos said, "I recall the stories of the people that lived it, like my grandfather and a lot of the old timers in Stony Creek, family and friends. I had the opportunity of working with a lot them."

The old DaRos homestead is located next to the original quarry, now at ground level and seen on the approach to the current active quarry operation. DaRos recalls a quarry once filled with steam engines and locomotives, cutting sheds, and blacksmith sheds.

"There were very small crews drilling and bringing out dimensional stone fabricated for jobs all over the world," said DaRos.

A walk-out in the early 1930s left the quarry looking like the men "left for lunch" and the site remained that way, and inactive, for about 20 years, he said. It was reactivated by a new owner in the 1950s. Today, the town-owned land is leased by another active quarry company, Stony Creek Quarry Corporation.

Balestracci said DaRos's recollections are a valuable contribution to the tour.

"He probably knows more about the Stony Creek operation than anybody," said Balestracci.

The tour will first park and stand and talk at the site of the original Stony Creek Quarry, then move on to the big rock face, where the modern operation road goes around the top of the ledge and back. Standing over the modern pit, where stone is cut for shipping all over the world, sculptor Darryl Petit will join the tour to talk about the places where modern works go.

One of the most remarkable jobs accomplished by the quarry took place many years ago, however, in the old quarry, noted Balestracci: the cutting of the West Point Battle Monument. At the time, in the 1880s, it was the longest cylinder of one piece of stone in the world.

"It took two railroad cars to transport it. The loaded railroad cars couldn't go more than 13 miles an hour, or immense weight would flatten the rails," said Balestracci.

"We have pictures that are incredible. One shows the men standing along the rectangular slab before it was even taken out of the ledge. Unk will explain this is the site where they actually took the stone from," Balestracci said. "We have pictures of the rectangular piece as it came out of earth. They had to build a shed with a huge lathe to cut it by hand. As it was turned by steam on this lathe, it was then polished and then engraved."

For his part, Balestracci plans to start off his discussion with "a little bit of the geology of area," he said.

"The pink granite exists from Guilford Point to Branford Harbor in a large triangular area. The north point is just above I-95, Exit 58; if you travel from there over to Branford's Exit 56 you'll actually go through four or five ledges of pink granite they had to blast through when they made the highway."

Pink granite exists in just three places in the world; in the Guilford-Branford triangle, on the west coast of South America, and in the mountains of Morocco. The international trade name for the stone is Stony Creek Pink.

"It all came from magma of a volcano that existed millions of years ago on the west coast of South America," said Balestracci. "As the continents developed over millions of years, the magma of this volcano never erupted but stayed below the earth's crust and cooled-that's what gave it its pinkish color. It never erupted and turned black."

Balestracci's forte is the history of Beatty's former Guilford quarries in the Leetes Island area. Recent evidence points to one of the sites as being the one which yielded the granite for the base of the Statue of Liberty. For years, it was known the base was crafted from the area's pink granite, but the location of the mined stone wasn't certain.

"Beatty's quarries were all in Guilford and in the last few years we found a letter in the archives of Guilford library; the woman said her father said all the stone for Statue of Liberty came from a quarry site north of the railroad tracks. I went down and found the site," said Balestracci.

The quarry ledge drops immediately north of tracks off North Quarry Road, "unspoiled and the same as when the quarry site shut down in 1918," said Balestracci.

A Yale professor known for his research of the quarries and its stone now has samples of the site stone and is comparing it to the base stone.

"He's going to look at it like it was it a forensic effort, so we're really excited about it," said Balestracci.

Balestracci said Beatty's operation, in its 1880s heyday, had between 700 and 800 workers, a fleet of seven ships to transport stone, and four quarries on 130 acres, making it one of the largest, most successful operations in the country.

"There's a lot of interest in the quarries-and the fact that we still have a working quarry, working the same pink granite that's so world-renowned, it's kind of neat. It's a big piece of history, but also a part of our future," said Balestracci.

The Guilford Keeping Society (GKS) invites the public to join quarry historians and local legends Carl Balestracci and Unk DaRos for a Stony Creek Quarry Tour on Saturday, May 5 at

11 a.m. Tickets are $15 for adults; $5 for children 12 and under. Proceeds benefit programs of non-profit GKS. Call 203-453-3176 for reservations or more information.