Steinbruch Werbach, Stone quarry and geotope in Werbach, Germany

Steinbruch Werbach is a limestone quarry with an attached gravel plant at Steckenleite 1, on the right slope of the Steckenleite above the Steckenleitegraben near Werbach. The quarry face exposes nearly the full Lower Muschelkalk sequence, about 100 metres thick here. In the plant, wheel loaders and dump trucks load large rock blocks into a hopper feeding a crusher, and the crushed stone is stored in a silo or loaded through a funnel onto lorries.

A map of 1886 still shows vineyards on the site of today's quarry; a Werbach survey plan of 1921 recorded a small quarry on the Höhberg. After the Second World War Emil Dengel founded a gravel plant there, later run by his son Günther Dengel. On 1 July 1991 Hohenloher Schotterwerke GmbH & Co. KG bought the works, and on 1 January 1992 Schotterwerke Hohenlohe-Bauland GmbH & Co. KG took them over.

The quarry is a working limestone operation, not a visitor site; its gravel plant was founded after World War II by Emil Dengel and later run by his son Günther Dengel. Since 1992 it has belonged to the Schotterwerke Hohenlohe-Bauland. It is the last limestone quarry in the Main-Tauber district where limestone gravel for road and civil engineering can be extracted for the long term.

The quarry and gravel plant sit at Steckenleite 1 on the right slope of the Steckenleite above the Steckenleitegraben; the site is a working operation, so access is not open to visitors. The exposure is listed as a geotope in the Baden-Württemberg register under the name Steinbruch am Höhberg E von Werbach. The quarry area was extended eastwards by 6.8 hectares after the 21 December 2012 permit.

The quarry is the only nearly complete exposure of the Lower Muschelkalk in Baden-Württemberg, according to the state geology office (LGRB). Here the Lower Muschelkalk reaches its greatest thickness in the Tauberland limestone facies, about 100 metres, thinning to 35 to 40 metres further southwest.