Copp’s Quarry – Stop 19
To visit Copp’s Quarry walk about an eighth mile north on the paved footpath near the east end of Greenbrae Road.
The quarry is dormant now on the east bank of Secret Ravine, but in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was one of Rocklin’s most productive granite quarries. In the mid twentieth century it was a favored swimming hole but the water is murky now and a fence prevents access.
Massachusetts native Ruben Copp opened the quarry in 1884 to provide granite for buildings in Stockton and San Francisco. After he ran successfully for a seat on the Placer County Board of Supervisors in 1898 he exited the granite business and sold his quarry to the Pacific Granite Company.
Pacific Granite probably closed Copp’s Quarry in 1915. A quarry workers’ strike that year closed about half of Rocklin’s quarries permanently.
Copp’s Quarry and the banks of Secret Ravine make up one of Rocklin’s most scenic areas. Notice the dense vegetation and the extensive granite outcroppings. Salmon still spawn here.
But Secret Ravine area was the heart of Rocklin’s gold mining operations in the 1850s. It was a major population center until many of the area’s Argonauts abandoned their sluice boxes and took jobs in Rocklin’s granite quarries, and with the Central Pacific Railroad as the transcontinental tracks reached Rocklin from Sacramento in 1864.
