The Indiana Limestone Belt has an abundance of this type of rock. The limestone industry figured prominently in the movie Breaking Away, in which affluent residents of Bloomington, Indiana, referred derisively to quarry workers and their families as cutters, as in stonecutters. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Limestone Belt”
We were talking at the top of the show about belts, geographical areas defined by a certain characteristic, and we left out the Indiana Stone Belt.
We heard from Mark Kimmel, who lives in southern Indiana, and he was talking about the fact that there’s this narrow line of limestone that Indiana is famous for.
And it’s either called the Limestone Belt or the Indiana Stone Belt.
He’s very proud of their stone there. It’s used all over the world.
That’s cool. I didn’t know that.
Oh, yeah. Now I do.
Yeah, in Grand Central Station, for example, a lot of the stone there is Indiana limestone.
And you may remember the 1979 film Breaking Away, which is about the bicycle competitions.
And there were these guys who rode bikes, and there’s a big race scene at the end.
But they were called cutters. They weren’t the students there in central Indiana.
They were the cutters, and that has to do with limestone cutting.
Oh, I love it when it all kind of clicks, right?
Click, click, click.
You’ve got a film. You’ve got bicycle racing. You’ve got a school.
You’ve got the Indiana Stone Belt that Mark Kimmel is very, very proud of.
He’s in the stone business.
Thanks, Mark. I feel educated now.
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