100 stories from the hiking route

1974 – Aidu quarry commenced work

Information

Topic

Village life and society work

Coordinates

Long-Lat WGS 84

Latitude: 59.3349453

Longitude: 27.1214736

L-EST 97

x: 6581559.9
y: 677598.1

Location

Kauksi-Aegviidu Hiking route

In 1960, the ESSR People’s Economy Council determined the location of a new quarry.
For some time, people continued to live in the villages that were appointed to be removed. Life went on more or less the same for almost ten years until the quarry started working in 1974 and the roads were closed, water was cut off, and the detonations made life unsafe. With the establishment of the quarry the villages of Aidu-Liiva, Aidu-Nõmme and Aidu were destroyed. A third of the residents of the Maidla village council were forced to leave their homes behind and after ten years, nothing but names remained of the villages.
The long time village school teacher Kustas Kraus was one of the last to leave his home. On the basis of his journals Vaida Pungas writes:

"When the iron giant was already rattling on the sister villages and devaouring households. When the school house was fell in the hands of vandals and was torn into pieces. When the powerful detonations tore abart the backbones of the last houses and the stone shingles thrown apart by the explosions poked holes in the roofs. When the situation became so dangeours that it was impossible to stay on in Aidu, only then did the old school teacher who was spending his summers as a free man in his family home take from the wall niche a noteboard and scribbled an addition to other important events of the 20th century – the date of the ultimate ruin of Aidu village anno 1977" 

Oil shale was mined from the quarry for almost 40 years. The mining stopped in 2012.