A disused sandstone quarry from 1910 in the Little Beskids, now a recreation area and geosite.
Kozy Quarry is a disused quarry on the slope of Chrobacza Łąka in the Little Beskids. Sandstone was extracted here, and today the site belongs to the municipality of Kozy and is used for recreation, while the rocks are entered in the register of geosites.
The first industrial quarry in Kozy was established around 1880 above Małe Kozy. The present quarry on the slope of Chrobacza Łąka was opened in 1910 on the initiative of Marian Czecz, with Andrzej Rozmiarek as manager.
Between 1910 and 1912 a cable line 2,510 metres long was built, with 18 spans on wooden supports and 50 carriages. In 1928 the supports were replaced with iron ones and the carriages with larger ones.
Around 1921 the works were sold to the Biała County Roads Board. At its peak it employed 280 people and daily output reached 200 tonnes. After the war a state enterprise operated here, and from 1954 the quarry was part of the Wisła Road Quarries.
In 1961 a fire destroyed the loading bay and the silos, and in the 1970s and 1980s the cable line stopped working and the stone was carried by lorry. The company declared bankruptcy in February 1992, and extraction ended on 1 September 1992. The causes cited include an economic crisis, reaching the limits of the site and a decline in the quality of the stone.
The walls expose sandstones and shales of the Lgota Beds, that is Carpathian flysch of the Silesian Nappe, about 100 million years old. The rocks were formed by underwater landslides and turbidity currents.
The site covers about 20 hectares at an altitude of 470 to 670 metres above sea level. There are two spoil heaps, eastern and western, and a natural pond with an area of 0.84 ha and a depth of up to 2 metres. The quarry lies in the Little Beskids Landscape Park and in a Natura 2000 area.
Landslides and rockfalls occur at the foot of the slopes, so it is better to view the walls from a distance.
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