Throughout the generations our family have quarried the sacred red stone called Catlinite. We have records of our ancestors being here quarrying in 1862 when the Minnesota Conflict started. They were travelling back to the Upper Sioux agency where they resided at the time.

Our great, great grandmother was a child at the time and she passed the information on to her daughter and it stayed as an oral history, but then we found a written report of it dated 1902. It seems that her family quarried for the band, and made the pipes for them. So we can date our families involvement with quarrying back at least 5 generations on our mothers side and almost as long as that on our fathers side. Here we will show some photographs of the quarriers, both past and present.

Moses Crow moved to Pipestone in 1927, with his wife, Estella, and raised his family here. Since then his children, their children, and their children have continued to live and work in the town. And now yet another generation is starting the long process of becoming Pipestone quarriers, they are children right now but will continue to learn the process.....