The Tenino Stone Company Quarry, at City Park in

Tenino, Washington Tenino () is a city in Thurston County, Washington, United States. The population was 1,870 at the 2020 census. Incorporated in 1906, the city sits upon land first established as a food-source prairie for Native Americans living in the area. Th ...

, was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1983. It is also known as the Memorial Swimming Pool. It is the site of a

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envi ...

from which stone was removed in a box shape, about long, wide, and deep. It is used as a swimming and diving pool. With The basin is split into two sections, a shallow area and a deeper pool, large enough to be considered an inland lake.

History

Quarry operations ended in the 1920s when the formation filled with

spring water A spring is a point of exit at which groundwater from an aquifer flows out on top of Earth's crust (pedosphere) and becomes surface water. It is a component of the hydrosphere. Springs have long been important for humans as a source of fresh w ...

. There are two proposed causes to the cavities filling with water - that workers in the quarry opened up a natural spring or that personnel turned the pumps off as they left the job in a labor protest. The area was officially opened as a pool by the city in 1950 and would remain without any significant upgrades until a renovation project that began in 2018 due in part from a grant of $200,000 by Thurston County. The remodeling was completed in 2023 with the addition of a splash park and a combined retaining wall and walkway, and betterments were completed to the decks, docks, and filtration systems.

References

External links

* Swimming venues in the United States Quarries in the United States National Register of Historic Places in Thurston County, Washington {{Washington-NRHP-stub