Opus 40 in Saugerties: one man's 6.5-acre earthwork, built over 37 years from an old bluestone quarry with dry-stone technique learned in Honduras.
Harvey Fite was restoring Mayan ruins at Copan, Honduras, for the Carnegie Institute in 1938 when he got hooked on dry-stone construction: stacking cut bluestone with no mortar, wedging and keying each piece into the next. He came home to Saugerties, bought an abandoned quarry, and spent the next 37 years turning it into Opus 40: ramps, staircases, curved terraces, and rain-fed pools built entirely from hand-laid bluestone, named for how long he guessed it would take to finish. He was still working when he fell to his death in the quarry on May 9, 1976, at 72. His widow, Barbara, opened the site to the public and founded the nonprofit that runs it today in 1978.
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