Quarry

QUARRY, TEXAS . Quarry is on Wolf Creek 1½ miles from Lake Somerville and fourteen miles from Brenham in extreme northern Washington County. It derived its name from its stone quarries, the economic base of its prosperity in the 1890s. By 1884 Quarry was a station on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway. In 1891 its post office opened with Ananias M. Conover as postmaster. By 1896 Quarry had grown into a small distribution center with a justice of the peace, a sheriff, a lawyer, two doctors, a hotel, and a Baptist church. Quarry commerce flourished briefly with cotton processing, the development of quarries, and an influx of railroad employees. Commercial competition from larger Gay Hill, in Washington County, and the decline of stone quarrying in the area resulted in the rapid elimination of the commercial and processing sectors in Quarry. The community's post office was closed in 1905. Later in the twentieth century Quarry had several railroad tie manufacturing factories. In the 1980s ranching was the economic base of this community, in which the population was by then predominantly black. The name was still listed as a community in 1990.