A physician named Dr. Edward Gantt first discovered Alabama White marble while traveling through present-day Sylacauga, AL, with General Andrew Jackson during the war of 1812. The marble belt, or deposit, runs for a stretch of approximately 35 miles through central Alabama — varying in width from several hundred yards to nearly a mile and a half. Twenty years later, Dr. Gantt began to commercialize and mine the material, and in 1838 the first slabs were sold from the marble belt, but the business wasn’t immediately successful. For the remainder of the 19th century, the strength and beauty of Alabama White marble — coupled with the revival of neo-classical architecture in the U.S. — spawned dozens of mining ventures along the marble belt. In the summer of 2013, Roy V., John B. and Jacob Swindal of Masonry Arts, Inc. teamed up with Claire L. Burgess and Chinese businessman and investor Tan Changyan to form TBGS Quarry, LLC, now doing business as Sylacauga Marble Quarry. Operations of the Alabama White marble quarry started in December 2014, and the team looks to continue development of the quarry for the next couple of years while also producing marketable block in varying color and quality ranges.

“The Swindal family and its background with Masonry Arts, Inc. is intimately familiar with the dimension stone business, and specifically Alabama White marble,” said Roy V. Swindal, CEO of Sylacauga Marble Quarry. “Masonry Arts, Inc. is a specialty contractor with an impressive resume of stone installation projects ranging from the limestone at the Pentagon following 9/11 to the unitized cladding of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to countless federal buildings and courthouses throughout the Southeastern U.S. and Washington, DC.”