Explore Jennie Lagouls Reservation's "Devil's Den" quarries with rock and mineral expert Peter Cristofono, former President of the Boston Mineral Club, author of Rockhounding New England. (Updated edition just released!)
Colonists mined the rock deposits at this Newbury site for limestone and serpentine, beginning in the 1700s. Before the colonists arrived, the places that are now called Devil’s Den and Devil’s Basin were already quarry sites of the Pawtucket of Agawam and other Algonquians. At Devil’s Den, Indigenous people likely sought ores and minerals including galena, pyrite, chalcopyrite, epidote, and quartz, to name a few.
The quarries now exist only as a few shallow caves and depressions in the landscape, but we can still explore the traces of human activity over the course of centuries here.