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historians and eyewitness accounts. This
history of the development of Marengo
Warehouse covers a time period of 113 years
from 1886 to 1999.
In a book titled “History of Crawford
County,” H.H. Pleasant, devoted the following
three paragraphs to the beginning of the Stone
Quarry at Marengo, Indiana. They are quoted
as follows:
“On June 10, 1886, men became interested
in the rock at Marengo. The railroad was a means
of getting the stone away. Joseph Garrow was the
first man to undertake to open the quarry. He
has a good chance to sell to Wash DePauw of the
New Albany Glass Works. The first load or two
he let his men mix clinker with the rock. When
DePauw saw this he would not buy any more
crushed rock from Garrow.
“Garrow sawed out the rock, which he
sold wherever he could get market. One day in
November 1886 he was injured and died. Then
his two sons, Joseph and Milton Garrow, took
up the work. They did so much work that their
business was soon running fairly well.
“Other men took shares in the rock quarry
and business went rapidly on with various degrees
of success. Today one can get some idea of the great
amount of rock shipped away by the hole in the
hill.”
The identity of the group of investors
taking over the mining operation from the
Garrow brothers, and the company name under
which they first operated in 1887, cannot be
immediately determined, as Crawford County
records of land title transfers does not date
back past 1891, a few years after the untimely
mine blast killed Milton Garrow, in late 1886
or early 1887. The fate of the surviving son,
Joeseph Jr, could not be verified. However,
court records reveal that on April 15, 1915,
by court decree. Title to the land of the Joseph
Garrow heirs, passed to the only surviving
Garrow, in Crawford County, a woman by
the name of Isabel Garrow, believed to be the
mother of Joseph Garrow, Sr. In 1916, the
court ordered Isabel, to surrender the title to all
Garrow property to two men, named Arthur
B. Harris and David M. Seyton. These men
Lost River Field Trip
appear to be two of the original investors that
financed continued mining operations at the
Garrow Rock Quarry after the death of Milton
Garrow.
Beginning in 1909, a series of land
acquisitions led to unifying adjacent land
parcels into a 205-arce tract which today
makes up the present day Marengo Warehouse
property. The quarry operated as the “Marengo
Lime Stone Company” or variations of that
name under many owners. From 1886 until
1936, the quarry was operated as an open pit
mine, resulting in a 350-foot-long limestone
quarry highwall. In 1936, Rudy Messinger
bought the quarry, and changed its name to
High-Rock Mining Company, and began to
mine underground using the room and pillar
mining method. High-Rock Mining operated
the Quarry until it sold to the Bowen Family in
1947. Prior to 1947, only minor underground
quarrying apparently occurred. But beginning
in 1947 though the mid-1980s the Quarry
opened up 36 miles of tunnels and roads under
nearly 100 acres of cavernous open spaces called
“rooms” left inside the quarry by the Bowen,
and the later Marengo, LLC operations.
From 1947 until they sold the High-Rock
Quarry to Marengo LLC in the fall of 1984,
the Bowen Family aggressively pursued the
room and pillar mining method to remove and
sell rock at the Quarry. After buying the Quarry
from the Bowens in 1984, Marengo LLC
completely renovated the mining operation
inside and out by updating and modernizing
mining methods and equipment to meet
higher production demand by his customers for
crushed rock. Marengo LLC also aggressively
mined, squaring up the roof support pillars
and the huge rooms that had been left standing
vacant in the underground area. Always looking
with an entrepreneurial eye toward a second
benefit, Marengo LLC envisioned what could
be reaped from their investment in Marengo
Quarry. Others saw it as just “a hole under the
hill,” Marengo LLC saw what could be valuable
storage space in the “raw” waiting for someone
to “modernize” and market it.
In 1986, Marengo LLC took advantage of an
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