At the mill it was scaled down from its original weight to fifty-five tons. Old photographs show the huge unfinished piece loaded on a railroad flatcar for removal. At the quarry, slightly more than a year of work was required to remove it from the mountain. Final processing and polishing were done by the Vermont Marble Company at their New England plant before sending it to Washington. Although the demise of Marble is directly attributable to a combination of high shipping costs coupled with increased use of marble substitutes and veneers, the decline was certainly hastened by the snowslide of 1912 and the catastrophic mud avalanche that nearly buried the town in August of 1941.
Some people blame the whole thing on overgrazing by sheep on the alpine slopes above the town.
One resident of the valley showed me a photograph of the lush mountaintop rangeland in the early days. Next, he displayed a second picture showing an ugly, barren view of the same region, now nearly devoid of any vegetation, after sheep had grazed there. In any case there was a cloudburst near the head of Carbon Creek that was not absorbed in the normal manner. As the rushing water coursed down the valley of Carbon Creek, it picked up tons of the rain-soaked coal shale. By the time it reached Marble, it had assumed the form of a mass of heavy gray mud.