Quarries

For centuries, people have had to maintain roads every spring and autumn to keep them passable for both pedestrians and vehicles. Soft and marshy spots were traditionally filled with trees and branches growing alongside the road. Over time, gravel became the main filling material for roads. Since transporting gravel with horse-drawn carts was time-consuming and labour-intensive, gravel pits had to be located as close to the roads as possible.

More systematic road construction and maintenance began in Estonia in the 1920s, during the years of independence. In the following decade, crushed stone, also known as artificial gravel, began to be produced out of necessity because natural gravel was not always available, and transportation was difficult due to the lack of cars. Producing artificial gravel involved adding a suitable amount of fine sand to crushed stone with a particle size of up to 25 mm. Initially, crushed stone was produced manually, often from fieldstones or granite stones, which was a very physically demanding task. Therefore, in the 1920s, stone crushers were ordered from domestic machine-building factories, which operated on internal combustion engines.

After the Second World War, mechanisation in road administrations was embarrassingly low, but the workload increased significantly. Traditional gravel pits were no longer sufficient. Therefore, mechanised quarries were established within road administrations. The number of excavators, dump trucks, and stone crushers in road administrations increased significantly in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today, sand and gravel that meet the requirements of modern road construction are not often found in nature. Thus, various methods are used in quarries to enrich the material. The simplest method involves screening and crushing coarser fractions. Washing the material is less common. Despite sand and gravel being non-renewable resources, there is no expectation of reserves depletion in Estonia. The challenge lies in opening new quarries, addressing their associated environmental impact, and the quality of reserves.