only search W.R.W.W.                                                          Cultured Stone vs. Mountain Stone               Why should you use a Cultured Stone type product instead of Mountain Stone? It’s an easy call. Cultured Stone only comes from manufactured rock. The rocks are taken off casts of real rocks, and then they are cast. Cultured Stone rocks are easier to work with, lighter, with less chance of smashing your fingers and it’s quicker to install, and is very hard to tell real rock from man-made rock. If it’s quicker, then it saves you money by saving costly installation labor.   Here is an example of the product's.  http://www.culturedstone.com/products/     Mountain stone is hard to prove that wasn’t harvested illegally from a creek bed or taken unethically from someone’s property. Most Tennesseans don’t own the mineral rights to their property. And yes a rock in Tennessee can be declared as a mineral. We have visited stone yards and it cannot be proven if the stone was harvested ethically or regulated for storm water runoff during its harvest. We would prefer that you buy quarried rock from a legal quarry and ethical stone yard. It provides local employment, and can be harvested in one spot while being monitored for storm water run-off. But at the present moment there is no way to verify if the stone was harvested legally or illegally. If you can verify the rock, then by all means please purchase their products. Local jobs mean everything in this economy. A nice natural alternative, is quarried Crab Orchard stone and it can be verified if it was quarried and regulated. Crab Orchard Stone is a Tennessee only product, which can be harvested for generations to come.     If you are thinking of building a new house, remodeling or thinking of a new landscape project please think twice where that rock comes from. It might just come from your favorite creek. We have lost Deep Creek on Walden’s Ridge to the harvesters. Most of the rock was shipped to Atlanta and Florida; <warning sarcastic insert> I for one love my Taco Bell to have that rustic look of mountain stone while I eat my Chimichanga …                                                                              The death of Deep Creek                                                          Picture courtesy of http://americanhiking.chattablogs.com/  Used with permission.     Deep Creek: http://www.waldensridgewhitewater.com/waldensridge/deepcreek.htm http://americanhiking.chattablogs.com/archives/064527.html       This article is NOT sponsored by Cultured Stone or any other company; we just wanted to show you a viable alternative for your next home improvement project. *If you see an ad here is Google providing it by keyword association*