Editor’s Note: Jim Muller spent his formative years in the heart of NY’s Cave Country. Born in 1953, he grew up on his family’s dairy farm adjacent to the Howe Caverns estate and its well-manicured quarter-mile drive up the hill to its picturesque lodge overlooking the valley to the west.
Like other kids in the Howes Cave area, the cave’s history and tales of the lost Garden of Eden cave became part of their school-age play. Jim knew there were plenty of other caves in the area as well and explored several while attending Schoharie Central High School.
Jim lived adjacent to Howe Caverns during its heyday as a tourist attraction, when more than 2,000 visitors (often more) came daily during the summer months. Then open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. a steady stream of vehicles wound along the two-lane road from the main highway, past the Muller farm and up the hill to the cave entrance. (Jim wasn’t allowed to learn to ride a bike until into his late teens; his mother fearful of the out-of-town traffic.)
Dave Reynolds and Jim Muller riding “Nip” and “Tuck” in this slightly blurry photo from 1961. The photo at the top of the page is 13-year-old Jim atop “Duke,” at right. At left is an unidentified college friend of Jim’s older sister, seated on “Tuck” – during her first visit to a farm and to ride a horse.
Fortunately for the reader, Underground Empires: Two Centuries of Exploration, Adventure, and Enterprise in NY’s Cave Country brought back many fond memories for Jim, and he shared them with the author.
By JIM MULLER (From jimmuller.com, Oct. 29, 2021)
I just finished reading Underground Empires about Howe Caverns and I have enjoyed it immensely. I don’t know if the feeling of nostalgia is due to my recent 50th year Schoharie Central High School reunion or that I could relate to so many of the people and places described in the book.
It has been a splendid read and I wrote a letter to the author. Dana Cudmore, who was a year behind me at Schoharie Central and worked as a guide at Howe Caverns with my brother Robert. I wrote a letter to Dana about all my memories which Dana labelled as a “Cave Country Boyhood.”
From the early 1950s until the mid-1960s my family owned a dairy farm which abutted Howe Caverns’ property. Surrounding our farm was land owned by the Nethaway, VanNatten and Sagendorf families. As a pre-teen I drove a team of horses for the Nethaways; I learned to ice skate on Jimmy VanNatten’s pond, My sister Barbara was (and still is) best friends with Hope Sagendorf, and my other sister Jeanne, attended school prom with John Sagendorf.
My dad used to cut hay from Howe Caverns’ land. Each Spring, when my father would till new fields, we would pick rock and joke that moving the really big ones would lead us to the lost Garden of Eden cave. In 1958, the Caverns made a promotional film which used some of our family farm and four cows. [I have an old picture that] shows an actor and cameraman setting up along a stone fence line for some “farmer wisdom” describing the 1842 discovery of Howe’s Cave.
Locally, us kids had a horse posse that included Bobby Beavers, Joyce Nethaway, Hope Sagendorf and occasionally Carolyn Rehberg. When my ponies escaped, we would frequently find them at the Caverns. mooching treats and affection from the tourists. One of the reasons I didn’t learn to ride a bike until I was 18 was due to proximity to Howe Caverns. With no shoulders along the country roads, my parents were certain if I was riding a bike I would get hit by a tourist. So, from age 5 on they entrusted my fate to “Nip,” my pony. I guess they figured his sense of self-preservation would extend to me as well.
My parents played cards with ‘Bud’ Tillison, owner of the Luncheonette and Grocery Store in the Howes Cave hamlet. I recall it only having three small tables. I remember Bud giving me ice cream while he and my dad visited and as a youngster, I felt it couldn’t get any better. Carolyn (Rehberg) Schlegel says she could recall that Bud designated a spot to tie a horse while the kids went into the store to buy a treat.
I see Carolyn often, playing senior’s volleyball and was telling her of Dana’s Underground Empires. The Rehberg family was active in Yo-Sco-Haro Riding Club and served as 4-H leaders, The Rehberg farm was located at (or near) the site of Lester Howe’s farm and the suspected Garden of Eden. Carolyn relayed a story told by her father Albert (Al), that when blasting was done for I-88, one of the blasts sounded a different ‘thump’ associated with settling earth. [Could it have been collapsing into a large cave? – ed.]
When I was 13 my family sold the farm to Lester Hay and built a house across the Schoharie Creek from Terrace Mountain. Bill Dodge, the Schoharie biology teacher, sponsored our informal outing club, –the Schoharie Pit-Plunging and Cliff-Climbing Club. We undertook activities on Terrace Mountain and Partridge Run and canoed Schoharie Creek and raced canoes on the Susquehanna.
Lester Hay later married my sister, Jeanne and fathered Mark and Matthew Hay who worked as tour guides at the caverns. In fact, many of us worked at the cavern. My sisters, Barbara and Jeanne worked at the snack bar. My cousin Karen Muller worked there as well. It was during my sophomore year in high school that I joined the largest guides’ class ever assembled at the caverns and was trained by Don Reynolds.
As a junior and senior (SCS Class of 1971) I went caving with Bill Dodge and other friends, exploring Ball’s, Knox, Veen Fliet’s, Spider, Benson, and Przysiecki caves.
Somewhere in the late 1970s my brother Robert, father Clifford and brother-in-law Lester Hay salvaged an engine and winch which was used to clear the sinkhole known as the “Sinks by the Sugarbush.” Fifty-gallon drums, punctured to allow water to drain, were lowered for men and gear as well as to pull out the collapsed rock as they tried to clean it out. We were always told they found some of Lester Howe’s items in a grotto near or at the sink. We believe the engine and winch that were there dated back to late 20s or early ’30s as the engine was a ’20s vintage. It was a six horsepower “Novo” with a capstan for rope and drum for cable.
Underground Empires has been a real joy to read. I feel blessed that I was able to grow up in the prosperous heydays of Howe Caverns and the book enabled many pleasant memories for me.
Jim Muller retired in 2021 after careers in GIS management and in information technology systems and management. He holds a bachelor’s degree in geography from SUNY Oneonta and a master’s degree in planning from the University of Washington in Seattle.
He and his wife, Kathryn, raised three children and reside in Holland Patent, New York, just outside the boundaries of the Adirondack Park. They have three grandchildren.
Jim has several lifelong interests and now shares them with his family. They include “back country” canoeing, winter camping, and raising Quarter horses. He also enjoys basketball, volleyball, and pickleball.
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.
# # #
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.
