In 1984, a 14-year-old boy from the Heber Valley picked up a hod tender job for a local Park City mason contractor. What started as a weekend job hauling mud, stone and materials turned into a career and passion for the art of stonemasonry.
Now owner of Mountain Valley Stone, Robert Hicken still holds strong to his fascination that began decades ago of how rock can be shaped into something that lasts for generations.
“(I) absolutely love using my hands, taking a piece of stone and shaping it into something that’s useful and helpful,” He said.
Mountain Valley Stone, a nationally recognized quarry that continues to supply the stone that built much of Park City’s historic Main Street, specializes in quartzitic sandstone sourced from Brown’s Canyon, known for its strength, rich color palette and versatility in both residential and commercial projects.
The Miner’s Museum on Main Street, Stein Eriksen Lodge, Montage Deer Valley and Park City Hospital are a few examples of how the local stone is part of the area’s DNA.
The same stone is also featured throughout the state in places like the “This Is the Place” monument, Provo City Center Temple and beyond Utah, from a Charles Schwab project in Hawaii to the Fort Bliss Medical Center in Texas — an eight-year masonry job — and current shipments bound for Alaska, the work done here carries stone all over the globe.
Unlike aggregate quarries that scoop from the surface and crush all sizes of rock into gravel, Mountain Valley operates as a building-stone quarry. Crews focus on extracting the largest pieces possible, quarry manager Cole Sweat said. Those stones are then crafted into building veneers, hand-split flagstone and landscape boulders.
Blasting is a last resort. Instead, crews rely on trench mining techniques, carving into the rock layer by layer. In the pit, massive claws lift stone from the earth and, through the precision of experienced operators, place it into organized piles. From there, the stone is loaded into haul trucks and transported to be chiseled, sawed or chopped into its final form.
On a busy day, haul trucks move about 300 tons an hour, said Sweat. Each load carries roughly 45 tons at a time. To stay ahead of demand, Sweat said they aim to have a year’s worth of inventory on hand at all times.
Beyond large commercial and luxury projects, the quarry also serves residential needs, especially with its flagstone. Mountain Valley Stone can be found at major retailers such as Costco and Home Depot.
The quarry also has two sister companies — RJ Masonry, which installs brick, block stone and pavers, and Delta Stone Products in Heber, a fabrication shop capable of carving blocks into architectural elements — creating an ecosystem and process centered on end use.
Sweat said the company takes a 360-degree approach to its work, always keeping the end user in mind. He explained that the “end user” can look different depending on the situation. Sometimes it’s the homeowner, other times it’s the mason installing it. Through working with its sister companies, Mountain Valley is able to adapt and collaborate with both, he said.
“If we do a better job here on the quarry side, it makes the install easier and better,” Hickens said. “That’s something we always strive for.”
Mountain Valley currently operates across roughly 160–175 acres under oversight from 27 regulatory agencies.
“They make sure that we’re always within our bounds, make sure that we’re always staying compliant with environmental quality, water quality and follow safety regulations, everything like that,” said Sweat.
He emphasized that what sets them apart from other quarries is their dedication to sustainability.
“From managing the company, my whole goal is sustainability across the board. We want to be sustainable for our employees so that we can continue to grow and make their lives better. We also want to be sustainable as a quarry so that we’re doing right by the environment and our community,” he said.
Mountain Valley holds a national platinum-level sustainability certification, the highest tier available, and says it is one of only two quarries in the U.S. with that recognition. The designation requires measurable, year-over-year sustainability improvements, which Sweat admits can be challenging.
“At some point you’re thinking you’re going to find the ceiling,” He said. “Naturally, you just keep finding little things (that can be improved.)”
They’ve made those improvements in areas like water, fuel, habitat, and community impact, and they keep a close watch on improvement opportunities. Sweat recalled a rain storm the day before that added lots of water across the site. Rather than let it wash downstream, his team checked pools and runoff areas to ensure no sediment escaped into the environment. By the next morning, they had committed to adding two new runoff channels and were considering ways to recycle that water back into quarry operations.
Another big improvement in the last year was the addition of solar. With no grid power at the quarry, the team added some solar panels to the mix last year and has now replaced diesel generators for the office, lunchroom and well, cutting down on fuel use and emissions.
“There’s these big buzz words, you know, ‘LEED certified,’ green build, ‘Net Zero.’ Those are all good things to strive for, but I hope as a company we’ve always been striving to be beyond that,” Hicken said. “Let’s do this because it’s the right thing to do; there’s a ton of common sense behind it but let’s not do this for high-energy credits. Let’s not do this for part of our marketing. We want to do this because it’s the right thing to do.”
A more noticeable aspect of stewardship for mining is the reclamation, which at Mountain Valley, is built into the mining plan every step of the way. Before extraction, crews strip and stockpile topsoil that will be returned to the spot once mining is complete. After mining a tract, they backfill and regrade it to blend with surrounding slopes and then re-spread 8-10 inches of topsoil, then seed native mixes that follow the state’s annually updated species charts.
They are required to restore the land to at least 75% of historic plant density, and then only after 1-2 years have passed meeting those requirements will the state begin to release the performance bond, which ensures the site will be restored even if the company were to shut down unexpectedly. That guarantee, Hicken said, is overseen by Park City and the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining.
“We’ve had a bond that hasn’t been released for 25 years,” he said, “which is okay. It’s the responsible thing to do.”
Areas already reclaimed are indistinguishable from the original hillside, the company says. And areas of the quarry currently ongoing reclamation show the extensive process of filling a 250-feet-plus pit.
“We have great people around us,” said Hicken, crediting the success of the quarry to the dedicated workforce they have, including 30 miners on site.
Much of the finishing is done by hand — chiseling, splitting, sorting — and, despite the labor intensive nature of the role, turnover is low, Sweat said. An inventory manager has 25 years at the quarry, the production manager, 21 years and many hand-splitters, more than a decade, said Sweat.
“None of this happens without the people,” Hicken said. “Our miners are our No. 1 priority.”