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We'll dig deep to find a quarry This may be outside the area of your expertise, but I'd really like to know the nature of the excavation on the hillside north of Interstate 5 at about milepost 44 near Gold Hill. It is not quite in the location of the old Portland cement quarry. -- Ted B., Medford You'll have to go farther than Gold Hill to get beyond our expertise here at Since You Asked, Ted. The excavation you're talking about is an old quarry reopened by Grants Pass attorney Mike Bird in the mid-'90s. The pit originally supplied crushed rock for Gold Hill's long-vanished cement plant. Bird learned that the site contained veins of marble. He reopened the quarry to excavate slabs of marble to sell as building stone. Bird said recently he expects to sell building stone soon. He's ordered a rock splitter to fracture the marble into sheets. The $90,000 machine may be delivered by late spring or early summer. In the meantime, Bird has been selling crushed rock from the pit for road fill and building sites. A geologist who surveyed the pit before Bird reopened it identified as much as 50,000 cubic yards of rock that had been fractured by previous blasting. That rock alone would make 5,000 loads for a 10-yard dump truck -- a typical rock-hauling rig. Bird said there are "millions of tons" of rock that could be removed from the hillside, so that excavation could grow over time. (Send your questions to "Since You Asked," Mail Tribune Newsroom, P.O. Box 1108, Medford, OR 97501; or by fax to (541) 776-4376; or by e-mail to: [email protected] Please include your name, address and phone number for verification.) Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA