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A look at the outside of a piece of marble polishing equipment.
A slab of marble in the rough, before it is polished.
A control panel in front of a piece of equipment.
This large piece of equipment uses blades and water to cut giant blocks of marble into slabs.
The inside of a piece of machinery, where marble is being cut into slabs.
All of the equipment at Colorado Stone Quarries, Inc., in Delta, is automated. A worker oversees a piece of equipment that is using diamond blades to cut marble.
The various sizes of marble tiles that Colorado Stone Quarries produces are shown here.
A large portion of the manufacturing plant in Delta is unoccupied as Colorado Stone Quarries gets the plant up to full manufacturing capacity in the coming years.
A look at the outside of a piece of marble polishing equipment.
A slab of marble in the rough, before it is polished.
A control panel in front of a piece of equipment.
This large piece of equipment uses blades and water to cut giant blocks of marble into slabs.
The inside of a piece of machinery, where marble is being cut into slabs.
All of the equipment at Colorado Stone Quarries, Inc., in Delta, is automated. A worker oversees a piece of equipment that is using diamond blades to cut marble.
The various sizes of marble tiles that Colorado Stone Quarries produces are shown here.
A large portion of the manufacturing plant in Delta is unoccupied as Colorado Stone Quarries gets the plant up to full manufacturing capacity in the coming years.
A Colorado marble quarry, in Marble, Colorado, has been mined for its stone starting in the late 1800s. But it was closed from the early 1900s until 1999, when it was reopened by Colorado owners.
It's still being utilized to this day, and since December 2020, the finished manufacturing plant that turns large marble blocks into slabs and tiles for distribution all over the world, has been located right in our backyard in Delta.
Jean St. Onge, a management consultant for Colorado Stone Quarries, Inc., whose parent group is based in Italy, showed us the inside of the plant and the operations taking place there today.
"We take our blocks and we turn them into marble tiles... marble slabs that we primarily sell to distributors and fabricators," he said.
They also manufacture panels for large projects, like walls for inside and outside buildings and homes.
Although the plant is not at its full operating capacity, it is still the largest marble manufacturing plant in the United States, St. Onge said. The marble type is classified as Yule marble, and it all comes from the one stone quarry in Marble.
People don't always know, however, that they're getting Colorado marble. Much of it is exported to Italy and other countries around the world before it makes it back to the United States for sale to distributors and retailers.
"We're working very hard to market the Colorado brand right now," St. Onge said. "A big part of building this plant was keeping the product local, reducing our carbon footprint and marketing to the U.S. market."
The capacity of the plant, when its operating fully, will be about a million square feet per year, St. Onge said.
In Delta, at the plant, there are currently 25 employees, and that could increase to 40 or 50 when the plant is at full capacity.
Justin Tubbs is the Montrose Daily Press managing editor.
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