Velká Amerika, Limestone quarry in Mořina, Czech Republic.
Velká Amerika is a large limestone quarry measuring 800 meters long, 200 meters wide, and reaching depths of 100 meters. Two lakes sit at the bottom of this excavation.
In the first half of the 20th century, this was an active limestone extraction site where political prisoners performed forced labor. The mining operation shaped the site over several decades.
Czech filmmakers have used the quarry repeatedly, including in Lemonade Joe and Accumulator 1. The eastern, dry section is called the "Gallery" because visitors arrange stones into images and inscriptions there.
Entry into the quarry and to its unsecured edges is permanently forbidden, and swimming in the lake is banned; serious injuries and deaths have occurred. A yellow-marked hiking trail no. 6161 runs along the northern rim with several lookout platforms, and a car park sits at the eastern end. Bus line 311 stops at "Mořina, odb. lom".
An underground tunnel network connects this quarry to neighboring excavation sites called Malá Amerika, Mexiko, and Kanada. These linked sites form a kind of geological maze.
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