Excellence Marble is a company promoted by professionals associated with the
stone industry for the last thirty years. Our operations include mining,
transportation and processing.
Cobblestones are stones used in the pavement of early streets. Smooth
stones were usually taken from riverbeds and cobbled (roughly
assembled). They are typically either set in sand or similar material,
or are bound together with mortar. Paving with cobblestones allows a
road to be heavily used all year long. It prevents the buildup of ruts
often found in dirt roads. It has the additional beneficial advantage
of not getting muddy in wet weather and dusty in dry weather. A
disadvantage is that when compared with modern surfaces, cobblestone
paving is quite loud with carriage wheels, horse hooves and modern
automobiles.
Cobblestones set in sand have the environmental advantage of being
permeable paving.
Cobble stoned streets gradually gave way to macadam roads, and later
to tarmac, and finally to asphalt at the beginning of the 20th
century. However, cobblestones are often retained in historic areas,
even for streets with vehicular traffic. Many older villages and
cities in Europe still are paved with cobblestones.
In some places such as Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, as late as the
1990s some busy intersections still showed cobblestones through worn
down sections of pavement.