Indeed, since we first started climbing in the Granite City in the early 2000s, the graffiti has proliferated. And the improved access benefited more than just climbers. In the early 2000s, the Quarries were filled in with dirt from Boston’s “Big Dig,” as part of an effort to stop local teens from jumping into the water-filled abysses.

A few years later, he sent one of the area’s first 5.12s (Temple of Doom, 5.12+) in 1988. John Strand, another prolific climber in New England, published an updated area-focused guide book in 1985, Blasted Rock Quarry Climbs. For a while, the Quarries were Henry Barber’s home crag. The Quarries’ heyday continued well into the 1970s and 1980s. The possibility of a fall into the murky depths below upped the pucker factor. As a result, climbers accessing classic Quarries test pieces like Outside Corner, Pins, and Power of Positive Thinking did so by boat or by being lowered in from the top. But while Quincy’s main quarry-the Granite Railway Quarry-was much deeper then (over 200 feet), between natural springs and rain, it began to fill with water.

During the same period, Kevin Bein had first ascents of several other routes, including Ladderline, a fantastic (albeit sandbagged) 5.10. Pete Cleveland put up Ripple (5.10) in 1967, a slab climb that’s still tricky even by modern standards. Rock climbing at “the Qs” (as many locals call it) really took off in the 1960s when active quarrying operations ended. Crowther, in particular, used the Quarries as a training ground for his first ascents of classic Northeast routes like Sliding Board on New Hampshire’s Whitehorse Ledge and Arrow in the Gunks (the second pitch of which feels distinctly Quarries-like). In it are many climbs that remain challenging under modern standards, including one of our favorites, Big Biner-a short, techy “5.8” that’s pretty stiff. In the 1950s, Willie Crowther and Ray D’arcy wrote the area’s first guidebook, A Climber’s Guide to the Quincy Quarries. At its peak in the post-WWII era, there were twenty-something operating quarries in the vicinity, earning Quincy the moniker “The Granite City.”

Over the next 140 years, Quincy Quarries supplied granite across the country, including, most notably, to Boston’s Bunker Hill Monument, Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and for the base of the Statue of Liberty. Route development at the Quarries remained limited in the early years, mainly because the area had been a working quarry since at least the 1820s, when the Granite Railway, the first commercial railroad in the country, was built to transport the stone to a harbor a few miles away.

Quincy quarries