It is rumored that no less than nine cars are buried in the pit floor. Because these uses are not exactly appropriate in a National Park and because one of the ultimate goals of the park is to create larger habitat patches by restoring disturbed zones, the park was eager to restore the site. At the time of restoration, the materials exposed at the surface in the pit were those materials that had been buried to a depth of several feet. Hence, the material was poorly weathered and lacked a well-developed soil layer, resulting in low soil moisture holding capacity and low nutrient levels. Post-mining vegetation establishment was generally sparse with only early successional stage plants.
Pit is southwesterly to westerly, compounding the adverse soil-moisture conditions.
The chips were later used for mulch and fill material. Twenty logs were removed whole to be used for stabilization of historic structures elsewhere in the park. 1500 cy of material from the ridge area was moved using scrapers to the main pit area. Across the length of the slope, gentle swales and variable gradients were created to diminish the linear character of the backfilling. Topsoil salvaged from old soil stockpiles was distributed over all disturbed areas.