Rex Trulove
We turned around and headed back down the mountain and passed this slate quarry. A huge amount of slate is shipped out of Montana, destined to become everything from table and countertops to the siding on houses. Slate is a sedimentary rock, formed at the bottom of oceans, so even though this is at about the 4,300-foot level, it shows that the Rocky Mountains were once under the ocean.
The appeal of slate is that if fractures along even plate lines, so the rock is flat and it can be shaped by sawing or chiseling. This is why these pallets seem to be square. They have been pre-shaped, so they are indeed square and ready to be loaded on trucks. The scree that can be seen behind the slate is what it looks like before they select the better rocks and move and shape them. There are 4-5 slate companies in and around our town.
