by Peter Hildebrandt
  Sometimes small things can have a great impact on history. In the area around Saint Augustine, FL, a mixture of tiny seashells (mostly from a little clam called Donax varialibis), sand and calcite formed thousands of years ago into a unique substance called coquina.
  Because of its shock absorbing quality, coquina proved to be a great choice of building material for the Spanish when they constructed the large “star fort” called the Castillo de San Marcos. Cannon balls from British attacks were absorbed into the coquina fort walls, which have held strong for more than 300 years. America’s “oldest city” has survived due — at least partly — to the existence of plenty of coquina in this vicinity.
  These days there are no longer any dramatic naval skirmishes between the British and Spanish over possession of a North American empire. But the ball is still falling, as John Arrigoni, owner of Arrow Materials, Flagler Beach, FL still quarries the dwindling quantity of this fascinating rock material — while it lasts.
  Better Than a Cannon Ball
 The quarry Arrow Materials works is located a few miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean at Flagler Beach, about 35 miles south of St. Augustine. As we step from Arrigoni’s pickup, I begin to feel noticeable thumps and shakings of the ground beneath my feet.
  Arrigoni explains that early on he had to find a feasible technique to break the coquina, which absorbs shock well. Though this fact proved a benefit to the Spanish as they defended their territory in northern Florida from British invasion over the centuries, it also made working with the material problematic.
  Arrow Materials doesn’t cut blocks of coquina. They tear it out of the ground with an excavator after breaking it with a specialized ball, something like a demolition ball filled with lead. The ball is formed into just the perfect shape to be able to break the rock into pieces. It is then sized from small pieces 2-feet and under, medium blocks 2-feet to 4-feet in length and large ones, anything over 4-feet.
  “When we tried to mine coquina, at first we tried to blast it and that didn’t work, dozers with ripping attachments didn’t make much sense either,” says Arrigoni. “What we came up with was to design a ‘ball’ made up of a series of inch and a quarter steel plates, in a diamond shape.”
  The structure is hollow and filled with lead. The steel is 450 pounds per cubic foot and the lead 710 ppcf. A 3-foot by 3-foot wrecking ball weighs about 12,000 pounds. The excavator’s bucket scoops up the ball, lifts it skyward and then dumps it out directly onto the coquina, which it breaks apart below our eye level on the other side of the ledge. But at least now I understand the source of the mini-earthquakes in the sandy limestone soil below.
  “It took me half of a morning to try to calculate and design the dimensions of the ball,” says Arrigoni, ‘”but then my high school age son came home and figured it all out in a half hour.” That same son, M.J., now in his 30s, works with Arrigoni.
  Where It All Goes
  The coquina is used for everything from erosion control (both on the ocean side of the beach and along inland waterways bays and estuaries) to buildings as well as for landscaping and decorative uses.
  “In the shell layers just below the coquina rock, we’ve found mammoth and mastodon teeth, remnants of the last Ice Age,” says Arrigoni. He points out something of a cat ledge of coquina, running from basically nothing in some areas all the way up to 15-feet thick in others. “Though there are other products throughout the world called coquina, I don’t believe there are any like this. Though Mexico has material they call coquina, I feel, to the best of my knowledge ours is a lot harder; theirs is more of a clay rock than this.” Arrow Materials is now virtually the only coquina supplier in this area. “Even though things with the economy have slowed down, as long as this product is needed, we’re the ones they come to get it from,” says Arrigoni.
  Arrow Materials has sent their coquina as far away as Canada, with some now located at Camp David and Alabama. The coquina is only used a little for building because they don’t cut it.
  Coquina shell is used by construction companies for stabilizing material. The rock was used on the face of the city hall building in Bunnell, FL, for golf course landscaping, revetments, signage, facing on homes and even decorative sculptures.
  Primarily the coquina is used for erosion control along the rivers, canals, lakes and along the ocean. “Granite has replaced coquina for erosion control along the ocean; it’s thought to work better because it is more massive,” says Renee Matteau, longtime office manager at Arrow Materials. “But the fact is our coquina has been out there and lasted through every hurricane since the 1980s. The granite ends up washing out into the ocean. The granite does not ‘lock’ back onto itself as coquina does. Coquina is a little bit softer; the edges break off but the material holds together, as opposed to the granite rock which simply dislodges over time.”
  “For erosion control uses, coquina will interlock much better,” says Arrigoni. “It’s soft enough to unite like puzzle pieces in an erosion setting - whereas hard rock such as granite will roll around and erode. One analogy might be that of something square not rolling around as much as round objects like marbles continuing to rotate and smooth out even further.”
  Construction Company Partnership
  Sam Cline, president of S.E. Cline Construction, Palm Coast, FL is part owner of the pit, called Iroquois, LLC. Iroquois is owned by Arrigoni, S.E. Cline Construction and four other people.
  Cline is involved in such dredging operations as maintenance, channel and shoreline restoration, docks, seawalls and bridges. The company handles specialty services such as demolition, disposal, derelict vessel removal, salvage operations and dead head logging.
  The total Iroquois piece of property is 117 acres. Although Arrigoni is only digging on 20 acres of the land, he will eventually need to receive more permitting to work in the other area. Permits are obtained from St. Johns Water Management, Flagler County and the Environmental Protection Agency.
  “For any land developments going in along the coquina veins and ridges in the area, we are the ones who go out and break up the material for installation of roads and infrastructure, pipes and water lines for sewage beneath the roadways,” says Arrigoni. “Most construction companies don’t like to deal with it, but we love it.”
  Two permits have enabled Iroquois, LLC to be involved in mining. Scientists have identified the wetlands and they have laid out a future potential lot layout for a possible residential community. With Cline Construction being a land development contractor they also purchase products from the quarry. They are an enduser as well as a part owner in the quarry.
  The original pit was started by ITT-Rainier, according to Cline. ITT built the community of Palm Coast, principally due to their large timber holdings in the area. That company also developed the coquina pit back in the 1970s before the property was sold. ITT gave the county a lease to mine this area.
  The plan for the property is to offer 17 of the frontage acres for commercial applications and the remainder of the property for 81-101 single acre lots. Long term, it was anticipated that this pit would be a boutique mine ending up as a residential development, according to Cline. “But here we are in a down market, just waiting for things to change a bit,” he says. “It’s currently simply a working pit. All the pieces are in place and once the market is back in place, it will be quarried and then turned over to be used for residential.
  “The water clarity is excellent in the ponds in the pit areas as the limestone coquina filters the water,” Cline continues. “This differs from what you find in sand mining operations where water is often cloudy. An important plus is that the property has elevation, whereas much of the rest of Flagler County is quite flat. The existing lake is also fairly deep and with very high water quality. The property has many pluses. We’re trying to make the lake attractive and functional and are doing this by mining the property wisely.”
  Good Dealer Relationships
  Arrow Materials has five excavators, all John Deere equipment, three loaders, two of which are John Deere and the other a Komatsu. These various machines range in their model years from 1995 to 2007; a mixture of old and new equipment. They also have a Titan 1800 power screen, some three years old.
  Industrial Tractor Co., Jacksonville, FL sold Arrigoni his John Deere equipment. Ronnie Coleman, area sales rep, has dealt with Arrow Materials for many years now.
  “John has bought new equipment from us over the years, but they manage to keep the equipment running forever as well,” says Coleman. “He has some I’ve sold him back some 25 years ago. John’s been a John Deere purchaser for years and years. Our excavators have had no problems handling John’s homemade wrecking ball. Its 10,000 pound weight is not a problem as that machinery typically can lift three times that amount.”
  Coleman has been selling in this area for 36 years; Industrial Tractor Co. has been in business 45 years. The company sells both John Deere and Hitachi excavators. But John Deere is the predominant brand they sell. “Actually John Deere and Hitachi in their excavator lines are similar and the two work together on the equipment,” adds Coleman. “But John is loyal to the John Deere brand. I’ve known John Arrigoni some 30 years and he’s bought a lot of equipment from me in both good and bad economic times. For ourselves, equipment sales have been somewhat slack with this economy. Hopefully a bit later in the year things will get back on the right footing. Things will turn around; we just have to be patient.”
  Corey Hartley, a sales rep for Linder Industrial Machinery Co. at their Jacksonville, FL location, has recently taken over the long term relationship that another sales rep had with Arrow Materials. Komatsu is the main line of equipment Linder sells. The company sold Arrigoni the Komatsu FUA 420 wheel loader that he uses at his coquina quarry.
  Linder carries bulldozers, articulated wheel loaders, articulated dump trucks, excavators, large dump trucks and other equipment all the way up to the pieces used in mining operations, such as large power shovels. They also make a full line of utility machines such as mini-excavators, skid steers and backhoe loaders. “We’ve been in business since 1963,” says Hartley. “We go back quite a ways in this area of the country. John has been satisfied with his Komatsu wheel loader. John’s been great to work with and, as far as I know, has been quite pleased with the equipment we’ve supplied him for his quarry operations.”
  Coquina’s Interesting Questions
  It used to be thought that a hurricane caused this material to build up and form the coquina rock. Now some believe it may have been a tsunami. In any case, it was a force washing vast quantities of fairly large shell material up onto the dunes when they were closer to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
  Rain dissolved calcium carbonate from the shells, cementing everything together. Where the water table was located at time, the bottom of the ledge is perfectly flat due because that material did not cement together.
  Then there’s the question of the holes. There are many sections containing holes, which some think may be from when the shell was washed up on the dunes and went around trees. It then formed around trees, the trees died and the holes were left.
  “Many people think these holes are solution holes from the coquina dissolving,” says Matteau. “But if you look at them, they are very regular. John can even tell you which holes were produced by a palm tree, a hardwood tree or any of the others. A lot of times that holey coquina is used for specialized functions during landscaping. The naturally formed holes make it distinctive for those using it for landscaping and decorative uses.”
  At one point Arrigoni even asks me to inspect a typical hole, asking what I see. I describe the rings lining the interior of the hole. “Now look at the trunk of that palmetto tree,” he instructs me. I oblige and sure enough, the rings up and down the palmetto’s trunk match those inside the hole. Clearly the tree came first; trees would have a tough time growing up through what amounts to an entire layer of shelly limestone or coquina.
“As far as we know, this coquina material only runs from St. Augustine to Melbourne, with the strip being not much more than 250-feet wide at the widest,” says Matteau. She has worked with this material since the 1980s.  
  Since other sources for coquina in the areas where it is located have largely played out, Arrow Materials is now one of the few places to obtain it. “Though it’s getting sparse, I still feel we could quarry this coquina for another 20-50 years if we wanted to,” adds Arrigoni. “We have our novel ball ready to drop and supply some more coquina to anyone looking for it.”