Suburban Underground Vadders

Longhorn Quarry - Revisited

*Click on the thumbnails to view the full pictures* 

The Longhorn Quarry was used to mine limestone rock and the factory was used to make cement from it.

I never felt like I had gotten the pictures that I wanted when I first added the Longhorn Quarry to this website. I just didn’t think that the pictures I had did the place justice and I never really had a chance to go back during the day until recently. Part of the problem was that a new city owned facility was built right next to it and because of that they started patrolling the grounds with security and it is just a bit harder to get to.

This picture was taken from the other side of Wurzbach Parkway, a busy bypass for Interstate 35. The first few times I came to the Longhorn Quarry this road was unfinished and I was able to ride my bike on it most of the way to the Quarry. This time I parked probably a quarter of a mile from here and walked to get to it. I had never approached it from this side so I was happy to get pictures from a different angle.

Looking to the left of the above picture is the actual limestone quarry. Much of it has trees growing in it now but you can still see part of the rock wall at the far end.

Rather than cross the bridge I climbed down to the bottom. This is a view looking back towards the cement plant. It looks like now the security trucks still drive through here to get from one side of the road to the other.

I was also able to finally get a good shot showing the 3 smokestacks, my favorite feature.

This tower is the same one in the “to the top” story from a previous update. It still doesn’t look that impressive until you realize that the building behind it is more than 3 stories tall. When we got to the top we realized that there was still that little extra tower on top that we climbed to the top of. Quite an exhilarating experience. The spiral staircase is unfortunately on the other side of the building and I wasn’t able to get a good shot on this trip.

Here’s a closer view of the 3 smokestacks. The grass at the bottom of the picture was put there presumably to keep people that are driving on the Wurzbach parkway from just driving onto the property. Previously it would have been easy to do this.

Another closer view of the building. I was never able to get to the upper floors of this because any way to get up had been demolished. I never got a chance to use any rope ascending methods to get up either.

Here is a shot of the crappy city owned “Northeast Service Center” They have weird statues out front shaped like huge hammers, screwdrivers and wrenches. I wasn’t too worried about being in this area because I wasn’t actually trespassing at this point and the office looked closed for the weekend. While I was walking along the road in front of it a cop even drove by and didn’t seem too concerned about me being there.

This is a view from the other side of Wurzbach, closer to the Service Center. Before the parkway was finished you would have been almost completely out of view of anyone where I was. Now at least several cars pass every minute and usually more.

The rest of these pictures are from the other side of the property taken on a previous trip. Now you can see better how large this building is with the spiral staircase building behind it. The yellow gate on this building is about chest high to a normal sized person. The inside of this building was at one time covered in grey dirt and dust but soon after the first few times I had been there it filled up with a few inches of water. The dust turned the water a dark black color making it look nasty and made it hard to tell how deep it was.

The asphalt here crossing the tracks was new when they were building the Service Center. This was about as far as I got when a security truck drove up. There was a female security guard who politely asked us to leave. I explained that I was just taking pictures for a class but she said that we would still have to leave. I asked who we would have to talk to for permission to be here and she didn’t seem to know. All in all it wasn’t an unpleasant encounter except for the fact that we could not stay. This also in a way marked the end of being able to easily explore here.

On the way out I got a pic of the train track splitting. One direction goes to the left side of the building in the picture above where the train would pick up the finished concrete. The other direction leads to the building below.

This is where the train would go to drop off coal to be used to heat the kilns (3 smokestacks) used in creating the concrete. The coal would drop through the bottom of the train car, through the grate and then brought back out via conveyor belt where it would then be loaded into dumptrucks.

Looking back towards the plant near sunset. This place still holds a very special place in my heart and I miss exploring it even though I have seen just about all there is to see there. 

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