Husband and wife build trail around home property to North Jay White Granite Park.
JAY – Mary Howes and her husband, Tim DeMillo, walked along a dirt trail Monday that led from a small quarry on their property in North Jay.
The hum of the crickets and grasshoppers accompanied them along with the sound of the engine of a small plane in the distance.
The couple have created a one-mile walking trail that winds through their apple orchard off Woodman Hill Road in Jay. Off that trail, is a circular walking path that passes by a small, white granite quarry on their property. A bench made of granite makes a resting place.
Not far from that is an area, with picnic tables and a small, colorful windmill that turns in the breeze, that looks out at distant mountains in Fayette, Jay, Livermore Falls, Canton and beyond.
Howes and DeMillo have formed a nonprofit organization and call the area North Jay White Granite Park. They’re waiting for the Internal Revenue Service to determine if it qualifies for tax-exempt status, Howe said. That way they could get grants to help build a museum to preserve the history of the North Jay quarry.
The two plan to open the walking trail to the public at no charge for the first time on Sunday, Sept. 11.
They are also seeking permission from a Massachusetts company that bought the granite quarry behind their property a decade ago to extend a trail about 100 feet from their property. The landing overlooking the quarry offers breathtaking views of the quarry’s layers of granite and pond below and mountains in western Maine.
That quarry was once owned by the Maine and New Hampshire Granite Co. In 1912, the company made one million paving blocks a year from this particular quarry, Howes said.
The company employed 318 men at a weekly payroll of $9,000 during that time, according to a brochure the couple developed. That figure included artisans from around the world.
“Mother Nature has determined the layers,” DeMillo said as he looked out at the quarry.
“This granite has gone all over the country,” Howes said, by the way of statues, paving blocks, foundation granite and more.
She believes the last time granite left the 130-acre quarry in big pieces was in the 1940s. There is a man who is buying smaller pieces of granite from the company now as well as paying granite stumpage to the Howes and DeMillo.
He’s taking what the granite company would have considered waste, she said.
They are waiting to see if the Massachusetts company will give permission to extend the trail past their property. They’re checking liability now, Howes said.
“I just want people to see this view,” she said.
Even if the company refuses, she said, they have views from their trails.
Howes and DeMillo said they wanted to make a safe place for people to walk since there is really no walking space along the winding Woodman Hill Road.
They expect a certain amount of aggravation, DeMillo said, but they’re hoping peer pressure will steer people toward putting trash in the barrels they plan to set out.
“We really don’t know how its going to take,” Howes said.
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