Located at the west end of Susanville is Quarry Street, so named for a stone quarry there that was discovered in 1860. The bluff at that part of town, better known as Inspiration Point, is fault block caused by volcanic upheaval. That upheaval created a deposit of rhyolite tuff.  It is an ideal building material, because it is light weight, and can easily be sculptured. In 1862, H.F. Thompson began the development of a quarry, Some of its first uses was for headstones, the largest being for the grave of Captain William Weatherlow who died in 1864. In 1863, Miller & Kingsley had the first stone building constructed from the quarry. The last major use of the quarry was in the 1930s to construct the Spalding home on Quarry Street.

Here is an interesting tidbit. On July 3, 1883, W.P. Hall sold for $700 to Lassen County rights to the quarry for the needs of the county. In 1887, the county built a small stone building adjacent to the courthouse for a Hall of Records. When the new courthouse was completed in 1917, the Hall of Records building was dismantled and the stone was used to build the Susanville City Jail. By the 1950s, the jail was no longer used and it was converted into a garage and subsequently torn down in 2000.

Tim