The Pits

One of the conspicuous features of Phoenix landscapes is the acreage of blonde crushed rock that is spread in lieu of lawns. I've always wondered where all this gravel comes from, and found one source today at the Madison Granite gravel pit in north Phoenix. The site manager was proud to let me know that two truckloads of sand from this site had been purchased for filming of the Spiderman 3 movie. You can see the evil Sandman emerge from a pile of Madison granite at 37-40 seconds in this trailer. 

Although I was denied permission to photograph the quarry from the ground, Madison Granite is easy to spot on Mapquest, just east of I-17, and conveniently located near one of the City of Phoenix waste transfer stations. The future of the pit could go a couple of ways. It could function as a landfill, or like many other quarries around the nation, be transformed into a lake, such as this one below, which is just a few miles west of here in Peoria, AZ. I sort of like the idea that the rocks in my front yard are contributing to the formation of a future wetland, where migratory waterfowl can stopover or spend the winter.