How Two Early Show Cave Promoters Pitched Potential Investors
Two of Schoharie County’s hardest-working cave entrepreneurs had bigger dreams than they were able to realize in the early days of the area’s show cave boom.
SHhhhhh, , , ,It’s a Secret! The Elves promoted Secret Caverns in the 1930s on billboards and in brochures. There were three caves open to the public until the 1950s, and compeition was tough.
Roger H. Mallery, Sr., the owner of Secret Caverns, and Delevan Clarke—”D.C.” or “Dellie” — Robinson, owner of Knox Cave, both boldly announced plans that, if brought to fruition, would have changed forever the business of touring caves in upstate New York.
Competition was tough. They faced Howe Caverns, famous for almost a century, and a bigger, more decorative cave, run by a well-heeled corporation with a big advertising budget.
The opening of Secret Caverns in August 1929 (late in the tourist season) wasn’t greeted with a lot of fanfare. About 100 people toured the cave, most likely family, and friends of the owner.
Mallery’s operating budget for Secret Caverns for the following season was probably as strained as any first-year business. Undaunted, he wrote “In spite of the fact that lack of capital has permitted little advertising, ground improvements, building construction, or conveniences for public comfort, Secret Caverns were visited during the season of 1930 by several thousands of people who were astonished to find that there existed in this section of the county such a truly merited natural wonder.”
That was the opening pitch in a sizeable ad that ran in January 1931 to announce the sale of $200,000 worth of stock in Secret Caverns. The ad ran several times in the Schoharie Republican and Cobleskill Index, the two local weekly newspapers.
In comparison, Howe Caverns, Inc. (in which Mallery owned about five percent of the stock) was capitalized at $225,000.
Mallery offered 5,000 shares of stock in Secret Caverns to raise funds for ambitious plans that included:
Creating a second entrance at the end of the cave, “so that several thousands of people can be handled orderly and efficiently each day”
Enlarging and completing the entrance lodge, including a “large new pavilion.” (An artist’s sketch of the “Cavern Cabin” is included in a 1930 brochure.)
Landscaping the grounds to “made as attractive as possible.”
“But by far the biggest undertaking,” Mallery continued, “will be an advertising campaign handled by experts that is certain to attract many tens of thousands of visitors annually.”
It is easy to admire some of the bravado of a show cave showman. Mallery adds: “It was the general opinion among those familiar with the more important caverns of the country, that Secret Caverns is without exception one of the finest and most interesting attractions of its kind in the north.
Then humbly, and without mentioning the competition by name, Mallery closes the pitch: “We have faith in and believe that the people of this community are broadminded and big enough to give their support to more than one of their caverns, providing they are satisfied that it is worthy.”
History doesn’t publicly record how well stock in Secret Caverns sold. The cave today is still a Mallery-family company, now it its third generation.
Mallery also tried to open Schoharie Caverns, off Shutters Corners Road between Schoharie and Gallupville. He announced the opening in September 1935, but a severe storm and flooding closed the cave almost immediately after and the project was abandoned. The story is told in my book, “Underground Empires: Two Centuries of Exploration, Adventure, and Enterprise in NY’s Cave Country.”
Gambler Wanted
“Wanted – A Gambler,” announced Dellie Robinson in late January 1947 in the Cobleskill Index.
Robinson had run Knox Cave nearby in Albany County for the dozen years prior and must have felt it was time to expand his empire. He too had his eyes on Schoharie Caverns.
/A young DELEVAN CLARKE ROBINSON, developer of Knox Cave, Albany County
Robinson started by convincing the owner to sell the cave, cave [surface] rights and 20 surrounding acres. The owners (likely the Cook Family at that time), agreed to the sale for $3,500 cash. That’s about $46,500 today.
“I have studied this cave and its floods for 17 years and believe that I can develop it.” Robinson’s ad read.
He described the deal: “I will give any person, or group, who will buy and own and permit me to develop and operate, a royalty of 10 cents each on the first 100,000 admissions,” adding a caveat: “if they will agree to deed the property to me when they receive the $10,000 [the total of royalties on 100,000 admissions] in full.”
In exchange, Robinson would develop the cave, and pay all operating and advertising costs. He didn’t provide an estimate of what those costs might be.
Royalties would be paid monthly, Robinson stipulated, and closed, “Your only gamble is in time it takes to draw 100,000 paid admissions to that cave.”
Robinson never found his gambler. About eight years later Attorney James Gage purchased the well-known wild cave, developed it, and may have opened it in July 1958. It closed almost immediately. That story is also told in “Underground Empires.”
Today the property is the Schoharie Caverns Nature Preserve of the National Speleological Society.”
In 1865, the A & S Brought Change —for Better or Worse
“It chanced that the writer, while in a half somnolent condition, induced by a long night’s ride in a railroad car, overheard snatches of conversation which ran somewhat thus:
‘Yes sir: three miles right into the bowels of the earth—nothing like it in the whole country, sir, aside from Mammoth Cave.’
‘Pooh! A mere dripping crevice in the rocks, I presume, or a dirty hole in the ground.’
‘No sir, wide and high, with waterfalls, galleries, and halls for three miles and the end not reached yet’.”
While the account above is imagined, taken from an old advertising pamphlet1, the conversation is probably not unlike other idle chit-chat that took place among passengers on the railroads of New York in the second half of the 19th century.
The Albany & Susquehanna Railroad, from the Hudson River at Albany to Binghamton.
The cave in the conversation is Howe’s Cave, long promoted in that era as a rival of Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. The train was certainly the Albany and Susquehanna, the Albany-to-Binghamton line that first reached the tiny community adjacent to the cave in 1865.
Things were never the same after that. The histories of the cave and the railroad are inextricably, and forever, linked.
The cave Lester Howe discovered in 1842 was a popular, well-known destination decades before the A&S arrived. The cave, one of the few opened to visitors at that time, attracted guests—mostly educated and well-to-do—who were thrilled by the novel, muddy, daylong underground adventure by torchlight. At the cave entrance, Howe built his “Cave House,” a rather plain three-story hotel of about 26 rooms. Guests were attended to by the Howe family: Lester and his wife, Lucinda; daughters Huldah and Harriet, and son Halsey, the youngest.
LESTER HOWE, 1810-1888
Construction of the A&S began on April 19, 1851, from what is today downtown Albany (near Pearl Street) to Schoharie Junction2. This initial effort, a 35-mile stretch along a mostly flat grade, took the train south, then west through communities that are today, Delmar, Slingerlands, and New Scotland before heading south-westerly along a gradual, miles-long easy bend towards the picturesque Schoharie Valley.
Surveyors spread out through the countryside west and southwest of Albany to plot a rail line that served communities, manufacturers, farms, and travel destinations along the route that, of necessity for the steam locomotives that pulled the train, had to be over relatively level ground.
Marking their route along the picturesque valley carved by the Cobleskill Creek, the surveying team likely stayed at the Howe family’s Cave House. They would have made note of the limestone hillside and documented the limestone outcroppings that would need to be removed from the proposed route of the train.
And at least one A&S surveyor made note of Lester Howe’s teenage daughter, Harriet.
Hiram Shipman Dewey won the heart of 18-year-old Harriet Elgiva Howe, described by an heir as “small and retiring with blue eyes and (an) abundance of light brown hair.” Hiram, then in his mid-20s, was described as a good-looking, fun-loving young man, six feet tall, with dark brown hair and blue eyes.
Hiram and Harriet were married in the Bridal Chamber of the Howe family’s cave on Sept. 11, 1854 (There were several weddings in the cave around that time; they made for great publicity). Later settling in Jefferson City, Mo., the couple had five children.
As money was raised, the rail line moved forward west from Albany. It took 12 years to complete the first phase of the A&S, the line reaching Schoharie Junction in 1863. Three years later, a separate 4.2-mile line, the Schoharie Valley Railroad, connected Schoharie village to the A&S at Schoharie Junction.
There was a change of management of the A&S in 1863 as well. Joseph H. Ramsey, a state senator from Lawyersville, Schoharie County, was named president of the railroad. He had been the railroad board’s vice president since 1856 and was instrumental in raising cash and selling railroad bonds.
Continuing west from Schoharie Junction, the lowest spot on the line was the crossing of Schoharie Creek at Central Bridge. As the line climbed out of the valley, the tracks followed the north bank of Cobleskill Creek up to a point around West Richmondville, and then started a down grade that continued to Oneonta and beyond.
An uphill grade and sharp curve are an unwanted combination in railroad construction, not always avoided. One railroad afficianado3 explained: “If you were going to stall a train on the A&S line, it would either happen at Howes Cave or behind (north) of what’s now the Cobleskill-Richmondville High School on Route 7 west of Warnerville. That’s where the combination of grade and curvature are the worst.” Accidents at both locations have proved the point.
On an 1854 map intended to show the relation of the A&S with other trains in New York at that time, Howes Cave is not marked. There were manufacturing concerns in Central Bridge and Cobleskill worthy of a depot for freight and passengers. While the cave and Cave House were well-known, there just wasn’t much else there.
But that would soon change. The railroad’s progress was closely watched by its stockholders, property owners along the line, and investors looking to profit from the train’s arrival. Speculators saw potential in the limestone that had been exposed around the cave; samples of it found their way to the office of the state geologist in Albany. After testing, it was found comparable to the limestone in Rosendale, Ulster County, that was then being used to profitably make natural cement.
It was not by coincidence that three members of the Albany & Susquehanna’s board of directors were the first to learn of the money-making opportunity from Howes Cave limestone. (This would have been before 1863, as plans were being made for the second half of the A&S, from Central Bridge/Schoharie Junction to Binghamton.)
Construction of a depot in Howes Cave began in 1864, it opened the following year. It would be needed to ship stone and cement—should such an enterprise be created nearby.
Richmondville Town Justice John Westover—later founder of the Band of Richmondville—and Jared Goodyear of Oneonta both sat on the A&S board. Along with two others from Otsego County, they were the first to profit from the natural resources around the rail line near the cave. They formed the Howes Cave Lime and Cement Company in 1867.
Two years later, on Dec. 31, 1868, the A&S line’s 142 miles to Binghamton were completed and a gala excursion train from Albany officially opened the new railroad on Jan. 12, 18694.
And later that year, A&S President Ramsey created the second company to exploit the limestone of Howes Cave. His plans for the Howes Cave Association included much more than just making cement.
Ramsey eventually took control of the famous cave itself, in a transaction that history records as being of dubious ethics. The date (it’s not definitive) may have been as early as April 1869 and the exact method is not clear, but Howe accepted $12,000 of stock in the Howes Cave Association after turning down a $10,000 cash offer. Ramsey had declared the Association’s stock to be worth $100,000 – a meaningless amount to everyone but Howe, who became a minority shareholder with little to say about company affairs.
Regardless, Ramsey added to the property, and expanded both the quarry and the caverns’ tour business. In 1872-73, he completed a new version of the Cave House, made of limestone from his quarry. To that, he added the huge, three-story Pavilion Hotel, completed in 1881, envisioned as a summer resort with amenities to rival those of the famous Catskills’ resorts of that era. The imaginary conversation that leads this article was taken from the Pavilion Hotel’s advertising material.
The Pavilion Hotel was destroyed by fire in February 1900.
Working together in 1866, the A&S and Delaware & Hudson extended the A&S rails south of Binghamton to the Pennsylvania rail lines freighting coal. Then, in February 1870. the D&H perpetually leased the A&S for $490,000 per year. Passengers and others continued using “Albany & Susquehanna” as the line’s name for many years.
While interest in the cave waned in the early 1900s, the quarry business boomed. Historical photos from the early-to mid-20th century show six or more railroad sidings going into the cement works, and old news articles document from 15 to 20 freight cars being loaded with barrels and bags of cement each day. With each car having a capacity of from 160 to 300 barrels, each weighing about 365 pounds, a fully loaded freight car would have been carrying 55 tons of Howes Cave cement.
In about 1910, new owners of the cement quarry accidentally blasted into Howe’s Cave, eventually destroying about three hundred feet of it. The cave was closed for nearly 20 years after that. New owners, Howe Caverns, Inc. opened in 1929.
Lester Howe died in 1888. Railroad President Joseph H. Ramsey died in 1894, and the train freight shipped to and from the Howes Cave quarry declined after the second half of the 20th Century and the quarry went to a smaller, bagged system, and shipped by tractor-trailer in the 1970s. Cement manufacturing in Howes Cave ended in 1976.
The A&S played an important role in the success of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad in the second half of the 19th Century. In a commemorative publication, “A Century of Progress, 1823-1923,” prepared by the D&H, the authors noted: “This progress in building the Albany and Susquehanna was by far the most important that affected the later history of the company during this period.
“[The A&S was] part of a larger general plan of affecting rail communication between Albany and the coal fields of northern Pennsylvania.”
The D&H ran independently from 1823 to 1991, when it was purchased by Canadian-Pacific Railway.
Riding the A&S Line to Old Howe’s Cave
The jostling, 39-mile train ride from downtown Albany to Howe’s Cave5 took a little more than two hours, including 10 stops along the way to pick up passengers or make water stops for the steam locomotive. (The water stops were strategically located about every 10 miles through what are now the suburbs of Albany. There were stations with water stops in Central Bridge and Cobleskill.)
According to a January 1868 schedule in Jim Shaughnessy’s 1967 book, Delaware & Hudson, an A&S train left the Albany station about every four hours.
From the other end of the line, Howe’s Cave was 81 miles east of Harpersville, near Binghamton, with 17 stops along the way. If you left on the first A&S train at 5 a.m., you’d arrive at the cave just before noon.
In either direction, it is unlikely the noisy steam locomotive ever reached its top speed of about 50 mph, or if it did, it wasn’t for long.
The ride from Albany—one way—likely cost between three and four cents per mile; affordable to the upper and middle class of that period, but a luxury reserved for special occasions for the tradesmen and other working class New Yorkers. From Albany, then, a round-trip ticket to Howe’s Cave on the A&S likely cost between $1.50 and $2.25. That’s around $30 today. “Parlor Cars” for those needing more luxurious amenities and/or privacy were available at an additional cost.
The Howes Cave depot was built following a common design used during that Civil War-era and was about 200 yards south of the hotel(s) that welcomed visitors to the famous cave. A small country station like Howes Cave would have a station agent living in the building itself, or at least close by. It was not uncommon for married couples to live and work together at a station serving a small population.
The station agent’s responsibilities were many. He served as a dispatcher for trains coming and going, taking, giving, and sharing traffic and freight guidance from the central station. The agent would also handle the paperwork for incoming and outgoing baggage, freight, and mail. Passenger trains often carried the “Railway Post Office,” or RPO designation. Such cars picked up and dropped mail enroute and sorted it inside the car while the train was moving.
The train arrived in Howes Cave before a Post Office did and the few residents there relied on the A&S Depot for their postal needs until the PO was established Nov. 18, 1867.
Passenger traffic on the line increased steadily and by the early 1890s, as many as three passenger trains ran daily to and from the Albany area from Cobleskill, according to the 1895 Grips’ Historical Souvenir of Cobleskill, NY.” Trains also left daily for New York City and Boston.
Also, by that time, between 800 and 1,000 freight cars were leaving each month from the busy cement plant in Howes Cave and the stone quarries in Cobleskill, which produced cut stone blocks for projects such as the Brooklyn Bridge and New York Barge Canal system.
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1 From “Nature’s Wonder: Howe’s Cave,” the second chapter of the Howes Cave Association’s 1885 promotional brochure, “A Summer Home: The Pavilion Hotel, Howe’s Cave, Schoharie County, N.Y.”
2 This is today the intersection of Route 7 and Junction Road, Central Bridge. A Historical Marker indicates the location.
3 Personal e-mail from Gardner Cross, July 20, 2022
4 “The Rail in the Trail” by Susan E. Leath, Bethlehem Town Historian, 2012. Railroad buffs will appreciate that the historian included this: “The line was built with 60-pound iron, and a six-foot gauge enabling it to connect freely with the Erie Railroad in Binghamton. One of the goals was to connect to the southern-tier trains serving Pennsylvania coal country.”
5 “A Summer Home: The Pavilion Hotel, Howe’s Cave, Schoharie County, N.Y.” ibid.
