Tag Archives: Howes Cave

FACT OR FICTION: LESTER HOWE’S ‘GARDEN OF EDEN’

Editor’s Note: I’m happy to share our first “guest blog,” written by an old friend and caving mentor, Bob Addis. He shares his thoughts on one of caving’s greatest folk tales, that of the Howe “Garden of Eden.” (Incidentally, both Bob and I have put in time searching for the lost cave. We’ll keep it a secret. Photo by Art Palmer.)

By BOB ADDIS

The best and most often told tale-yarn-legend in northeastern caving circles is that of Lester Howe’s long-sought “Garden of Eden Cave” and the “Finger of Geology” that points to its location.

Learning the tale is a prerequisite for every new adventurer who takes an interest in NY’s Cave Country. The Garden of Eden legend has encouraged more cave hunting activity—ridge walking, digging, and hard pushing in the most dismal low, wet and muddy crawls and impossibly tight crevices—than anyone could imagine. It’s also been good for the advancement of NE cave science and “building the character” of the cavers who move on to states with more, and larger, caves.

How it All Began

The story begins like this: On his death bed in July 1888, Lester Howe is rumored to have sat up and said, “I have discovered a cave larger and more beautiful than Howe’s Cave, but I will reveal its location to no man.” He flopped back and died. Good one, heh?

A lesser repeated subset rumor, but without an exact quote, is that two men learned of the location from Howe at this time. The pact they made was that after one of them died, another new man would be entrusted with the secret. In that way, at least two men would always know the cave’s location.

Of course, both men died without passing along the secret of the Garden of Eden.

**YOUNG BOB AFTER HIS FIRST TRIP TO HOWE CAVERNS**

Lester was a rascal, self-promoter, and well known for blowing smoke.

For example, Lester guided many of the early tours through Howe’s Cave and numerous newspaper accounts varied on the details given them by Howe. He may have simply “made it up as he went along!” (I won’t attempt to prove this point here since both Thom Engel’s book and two by Dana Cudmore do an excellent job on the subject.)

From about 1928-31, Arthur Van Voris, a Cobleskill merchant, led a group of young men around the cave country and recorded their underground adventures in a series called The Lesser Caves of Schoharie County. Separate editions were held in five loose-leaf, three-ring notebooks. Some articles also appeared in the local papers.

The five notebooks were continuously updated and expanded by Van Voris and given to what he considered reference facilities. As a result of his updating habit, the notebooks didn’t all have the same content and by 1980 they all had been lost or stolen. Fortunately, the regional Mohawk-Hudson Grotto of the National Speleological Society borrowed one notebook in 1970, retyped it, and put out a limited edition of the publication, thus saving its important contents.

Van Voris’s brother-in-law, Edward Rew, was one of those early cavers and most likely no stranger to smoke blowing. One or more of the notebooks had Rew’s account of a solo trip he took one night during a dry season when water levels were extremely low. He explored Veen Fliet’s Cave on the Schoharie Creek near the village of the same name, and he claimed he went on and on a great distance only to turn back when he realized he was alone with only one flashlight, or some such. He never could get back to the cave and delayed telling the story for years. (More about this later.)

Was Lester’s deathbed description of finding a “larger and more beautiful” cave his own? Interestingly, Howe’s last utterance only first appears in Van Voris’s newspaper articles in the 1930s and hadn’t been found previously. But remember, Lester was a rascal and could have said it only to perplex future generations!

And now, the Finger of Geology

The northeast has raised many speleologists who have gone on to national and international acclaim. Geologists are quick to note the lineal nature of the fractures and fissures in the area’s bedrock limestones, and how cave passages were often created from them. That they “lined up” hints the passages might continue beyond any obstacle that blocked them along these major and minor joint patterns. Could new cave passages—maybe even the Garden of Eden—be found by following the joint patterns?

The most obvious case was roughly a mile of large trunk passage in McFail’s Cave, collectively the NW and SE passages, lining up closely with about a mile of similar passage in Howe Caverns, i.e., Lester Howe’s Cave.

**LARGE PASSAGE IN McFAIL’S CAVE.** *Cave photos for this article by Art Palmer, Oneonta.*

On a bearing of N47W, these two large passages are truncated by a valley cut by glaciers 100,000 years ago.

Extend that bearing to S47E and it points at a geological feature called Terrace Mountain. This a plateau of mostly limestone left after twoseparate streams cut around it. The south is bound by the Schoharie Creek and the geologically younger east side is bound by the Cobleskill Creek.

Terrace Mountain has another important link to our story. It was home to Lester Howe’s Garden of Eden farm, where he settled sometime around 1870 after selling his beloved (first?) cave, and the site became an epicenter of Lester weirdness and other tall tales and rumors we won’t get into here.

Extending that compass bearing from McFail’s through the trunk of Howe’s Cave through Terrace Mountain, with some imagination and a slightly flexible straightedge, it leads to Rew’s findings in Veen Fliet’s Cave. And it comes close to some smaller caves and pits on Terrace Mountain as well.

So naturally, one could assume this is the Finger of Geology pointing out where cavers should go to look for the fabled cave! Rew, also known for some good-natured prevarication, hinted that it was.

By the 1950s, a group of enthusiastic cavers in the Tri-County Grotto from Oneonta in neighboring Otsego County, worked the Schoharie County caves hard and produced amazing and strange discoveries. A young Cliff Foreman was making a name for himself as part of that group. Again, I refer to Cudmore’s books documenting this.

Forward to the “Golden Caving Age” of the 1960s in the northeast and the presence of three brilliant pranksters: Dave Beiter, Steve Egemeirer and again, Cliff Foreman. To the urban, sophisticated new cavers coming out of New York City and New Jersey, these rural “Super Cavers” appeared to be easy sources of information on the caves and geology of Schoharie County. The newcomers assumed they could simply flatter their rural experts and pump them with questions to find their way around the cave country.

The game wasn’t going to be that easy.

Dave would pull out his topographic maps and Steve, a professional geologist with the USGS, would run his finger from McFail’s to Howe and on to Terrace Mountain and Veen Fliet’s, all the time chattering on about “the Finger of Geology” and tapping along the line on the map. (I witnessed this procedure several times and apparently none of the newer cavers ever got the joke or the information. I was 22 at the time.)

And the fun part of this “game” was for Dave, Steve, and Cliff to take on different roles in the farce. Any one of them was capable of spinning the yarn or asking leading questions to hint at the fabled cave’s possible location. Dave went so far one year as to indicate a fabricated location for the Garden of Eden on a map, and then leave the rolled-up map where the other group might find it. Sure enough, next year a dig was underway at the very spot.

Dave, Steve and Cliff have passed, but the rumor they helped spread persists 135 years after Howe’s death. True or not, it certainly has been a driving force in caving the northeast. I think Cudmore in his book, Underground Empires, expressed the dream and drive best. “There, in a vast room miles into the hillside, set among abundant crystal-like formations, the explorers may find chiseled in the limestone wall or written in soot from an oil-burning lamp: “Garden of Eden Cave. Discovered 1855 by L. Howe.

Bob Addis, a retired engineer living is Scotia, New York, is a long-time northeastern caver, former Howe Caverns tour guide, and past member of the board of governors of the National Speleological Society. His MBA thesis on the management of Knox Cave in Albany County led to the creation of the Northeastern Cave Conservancy in 1978. One of the conservancy’s three founding members, he served as president of that organization for 38 years.

He has managed several caves open to the public, and explored wild caves across the US, and in Germany, Mexico, and South Africa.

FIVE DAYS & A CAVE TOUR – UNDER $17!

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This website’s blog post, “Howe’s Cave & The Railroad,” (Sept. 2023 archive) offers readers a brief history of the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad, its impact on the cave, and a few insights on traveling the rail-line in the second half of the 19^th Century to arrive at Howe’s Cave. (The steamboat image was likely typical of those that served NY’s Hudson River.)

**A flier for the A&S, circa 1875, showing stops and fares, at 3 cents per mile.**

Getting to Howe’s Cave was an adventure in and of itself, one that few travelers of today might be willing to undertake.

Here are two newspaper accounts from that period describing the journey by Hudson River steamboat and then rail.

“The New Yorker reaches it by traversing a lovely route if he takes the steamer Albany or C. Vibbard, enjoys the scenery of the peerless Hudson by daylight, a night’s rest in our capital city, and a morning ride to the cave over the line of the Albany and Susquehanna railroad.

“There are few railroads in our country that possess for so many miles such interest and variety as this, extending to Binghamton,142 miles from Albany, and following the valleys of three streams —the Schoharie, the Cobleskill, and the Susquehanna.

“During the first thirty-one miles we pass through the pleasing Villages of Adamsville¹, Slingerlands, New Scotland, Knowersville², Duanesburgh, Quaker Street (formerly a Quaker settlement) and Esperance, the site of which village was purchased in 1800 by Gen. William North and named by him from a French word signifying hope. It was incorporated April 1832.

“At Central Bridge, five miles farther on, is the junction with the branch road for Schoharie Court House and Middleburgh. and a quarter of an hour later the “Howe’s Cave!” of the brakeman causes a scramble for baggage and a hasty exit from the car to the little station near the mouth of the Wonderous Caverns.”

—The Albany Argus August 29, 1881

**One of Albany’s finest hotels of the late 1800s, *The Delevan* sat across from the busy train depot and Hudson River port in the state’s capitol.**

And an Oneida County newspaper describes what it’s like at the journey’s end.

“Directly in the front of the station, on a rising ground with an easy grade, stands the beautiful Pavilion Hotel, with an open lawn in front and lovely flowers and shady groves to the right, improved by walks, seats, swings and recreation ground inviting to pleasure. The house is first-class in every particular, provided with all the modern improvements, and nothing is left undone that would render guests comfortable and happy.

“The manager, C. H. Ramsey, is a gentleman of rare ability, sociable, easy in his manners and well calculated to please his patrons. Still added to all these attractions there is a natural curiosity—the wonderful Howe’ s Cave.” —The Clinton Courier, June 15, 1887

Five Days for Under $17

As the first writer suggests, the steamboat ride from New York City to Albany took enough of the day to require an overnight stay in the Capitol. The steamer ticket was likely between $2 and $2.50, which would also be about to the cost of an overnight stay in one of Albany’s finer hotels near the train station.

The next morning, a jostling, 39-mile ride on the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad—with water stops about every 10 miles—took travelers to the Howes Cave depot. From Albany, the price of a one-way trip was $1.17; from the other end of the line, Harpersfield in Broome County, an 81-mile trip cost $2.67.

If a traveler was lucky, he or she could catch an early-morning cave tour and be back above ground in time for a late evening train back to Albany. That was uncommon, and most visitors would have opted for a stay at the Pavilion Hotel at $2.50 per night, leaving early the next day to catch the NYC-bound steamer at the Port of Albany.

For a New York City resident of the late 1800s, a visit to Howe’s Cave was at least a four-day affair, more likely five or six. The estimated cost, not including meals or taxes, would be for the Steamboat, round-trip from NYC, $4.50; Rail fare, round-trip, Albany to Howes Cave, $2.40; Overnight hotel stay in Albany, $2.50; Cave tour, $1.00; Two nights at the Pavilion Hotel in Howes Cave, $5.00, for a total of $16.40.

¹A small community in the northeastern section of what is today Lansingburgh.

²Altamont

A CENTURY LATER, PROF. COOK’S ‘MYSTERY CAVER’ IS REVEALED

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Author Clay Perry, a light bulb moment, and a quick Google search solved cavers’ decades-old mystery, “Who is Professor Cook’s mystery man in several of his 1905 photos?”

19 LIMESTONE CAVES IN EASTERN NY STUDIED

Professor John C. Cook produced “Limestone Caverns of Eastern New York” for the 60th annual report of the New York State Museum. published in 1906. His report documents the karst development of the Onondaga, Becraft and the Manlius limestones in Schoharie and Albany counties. He produced nine maps with surveyor James. F. Loughran, and 40 photos on 4×5” glass-plate negatives¹, with his brother, Harry C. Cook.

In all, Prof. Cook mentions 19 caves, most of them familiar to cavers of the northeast.

“The work was prosecuted with vigor though it was arduous and venturesome, involving risks to persons which few would care to take,” wrote Museum Director John M. Clarke. He was evidently pleased with the work of the Cook team: “The results have been entirely satisfactory. . .”

Cook’s work in old Howe’s Cave is particularly noteworthy. His map of the cave’s portions that were lost to quarrying is all historians have to help recreate the famous cave in its entirely. With the report are several photos of the cave’s outstanding features prior to its 1929 development and reopening as Howe Caverns, Inc.

Perhaps the most well-known photo from Cook’s report is of a solitary young man in muddy duck-bibbed coveralls and beaten pork-pie hat, his eyes closed, resting next to a huge and beautiful stalagmite. Twenty-plus years later, Howe Caverns’ developers placed this formation—nearly 12 feet high—upright on a solid base and named it “The Chinese Pagoda.”

The photo has been well used. I’ve used it in both my books on the cave, and it was turned into an historic souvenir postcard sold in the caverns’ gift shop.

The mystery caver has always been described as “unidentified.” His image shows up in several of the younger Cook’s photos in the report (some with his eyes open). At various times, it’s been suggested this mystery man was a hired laborer mentioned in a 1906 newspaper account or a knowledgeable local caver acting as a guide, or maybe even a young D.C. Robinson of Knox Cave fame. But who is he?

AHA!

Surveyor James. F. Loughran rests against the ‘Chinese Pagoda’ in Howe Caverns during a surveying trip in 1905. The name of this caver who accompanied Prof. John C. Cook for the State Museum was lost to history, until recently.

I was reading again through Clay Perry’s 1948 Underground Empire², chapter 10, page 98, and he credits (and names) Prof. Cook, his surveyor Loughran, and photographer Harry Cook.

THE LIGHTBULB MOMENT: The lightbulb went on over my head: The photographer is not taking pictures of himself! My palm hit my face.

And so, a five-minute Google search found James F. Loughran (1884-1954) on the history page of the New York Bridge Authority, here: https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=164465

Loughran’s bio notes he was chairman of the state Bridge Authority from 1949 until his death. He was a civil engineering graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a master’s degree in highway engineering from Columbia University.

His bio confirms: “after a brief stint surveying caves for the New York Geologist’s office,” he was appointed Ulster County superintendent of Highways. Loughran held the job for 44 years and became “widely known as an expert on rural roads.”

Our “mystery caver” would have been 21 years old at time of Cook’s survey. There’s a photo of the older Loughran on the website, and although hard to reproduce, it is clearly one and the same man.

# # #

¹Specials thanks to Chuck Porter of Troy for his work with the Cook photos and invaluable help with this article. Porter and the late Jack Middleton saved the photos from Cook’s work from relative obscurity in the bowels of the NYS Museum and painstakingly reproduced them for the 21st Century. In the mid-1990s, Jack was working with the museum’s Geological Survey and had access to the original 4 x 5-inch glass plate negatives.

Writes Chuck: “Jack and I placed these glass plates on a light table at the museum and took close-up photos with 35mm SLR cameras held on tripods. Attempts to print from these closeups with film techniques at that time were very disappointing, but years later, digitally scanning the filmstrips—and then adjusting with Photoshop—made a huge difference. I processed 40 plates in all.”

²Not to be confused with my book, titled in homage, Underground Empires: (plural) Two Centuries of Exploration, Adventure & Enterprise in NY’s Cave Country.

HOWE FAMILY COLLECTION GIVEN TO MUSEUM

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Fossil Collection, Gift to Museum, Goes on Display

SCHOHARIE, June 19, 1936—An outstanding fossil display including the first formations ever to have been taken from Howe Caverns, have come to Schoharie for display at the Old Stone Fort Museum on North Main Street for inspection by the thousands from every state of the Union who annually visit this historic shrine.

The collection is the gift to the museum by Mrs. M. J. Miller of Baltimore, Md., a great granddaughter of Lester Howe, who discovered the caverns in May 1842.

The formations were taken from the caverns in several successive years, during which they were exploited and conditioned by Howe, who made a private collection, which has remained in the Howe family until this time.

Mrs. Miller is one of the last survivors of the Howe clan.

Among the outstanding specimens of the collection, placed in charge of Chauncy Rickard, curator of the museum, are the fossil remains of a Trilobite, the creature in which the first eye was said to have been developed and which existed in the ancient Silurian sea.

Included also are beautiful specimens of calcite crystal formed of countless transparent pyramids and regarded as being 150 million years old.

—From the June 20, 1936, Schenectady Gazette, likely submitted by Chauncy Rickard, curator of the Stone Fort Museum.

WHAT’S ON DISPLAY AT THE FORT

The display case containing the Howe exhibit is in the northeastern corner of the second floor of the Stone Fort Museum. It contains the calcium carbonate “brain” coral shown here, a few cave formations and invitations to two events at the cave.

**Brain Coral from Lester Howe’s collection at the Old Stone Fort Museum**

The first, headlined “Schoharie Cave Party,” invites a gentleman and lady guest to a New Year’s Day, 1845 “Cotilion Party” at Lester Howe’s Assembly Room, starting at 2 p.m. Cotilions are typically a southern affair meant to introduce young ladies to both society and eligible young men. Howe’s daughters, Huldah and Harriet, were pre-teens in 1845, so perhaps the word was used differently in that era.

The invitation begins with an odd quote: “Live while we live the managers say and sport the pleasures of the present day.” Fourteen “managers”—all of them local men—are listed.

In the 19^th Century, most entertaining was done at home. An “Assembly Room” in a home was the gathering place for members of the higher social classes, and open to both men and women.

The second invitation is to a “House Warming (sic),” to be held Thursday, Sept. 5, 1849, at the Cave House. Other than noting “Good music will be furnished,” there are few other details. History records Howe as a violinist; his daughters played the piano.

This may have been to show to visitors the second Cave House. The first was destroyed by fire in 1847.

THE PROVENANCE: Following Lester Howe’s death in 1888, the collection was first held by the Howes’ son, Dr. Halsey John Howe, a dentist practicing in Dunkirk in western New York. It was displayed in a local library for several years, according to the Stone Fort’s records. Halsey and his wife were childless, and the collection then went to one of the Howes’ grandchildren.

The description in the display case does not match what was written for the newspaper by Curator Rickard. The exhibit notes Frances Miller of Chevy Chase, Md., donated the collection given her by Dr. Howe to the fort in 1936. Miller was the daughter of Harriet Elgiva Howe Shipman.

SCHOOL RECESS? LET’S GO CAVING!

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**Artwork from a 1920s brochure on the caves of Schoharie County depicts a big-city artist’s bias. The young explorers are barefoot and their sleeves are rolled up in the 50-degree cave!**

Field trips to Howe Caverns for students of all ages, and from around the region, are common in the last few weeks before summer vacation. There were no such luxuries for children attending any of the one-room schoolhouses more than a century ago – unless you lived in the Cave Country.

In my book, “Underground Empires: Two Centuries of Exploration, Adventure & Enterprise in NY’s Cave County,” I suggested the rural, sparsely populated Sagendorf Corners hamlet was the nexus of NY’s Cave Country.

Near the hamlet’s old one-room schoolhouse, “there are quite a large number of rock holes¹,” reported the Greene County Windham Journal on Sept. 18, 1876. “. . in which the children often play at noon and recess.”

The article headlined, “Schoharie County: Its Cavernous Character,” was picked up from The Albany Argus and gave a good description of the known caves of that period.

While it didn’t identify which caves Sagendorf Corners school children spent their recess or lunch breaks in, there are several they could have chosen from, including one that later became Secret Caverns. Others nearby were later found to connect to Howe’s Cave, nearly an underground mile away.

¹The author likely means “sinkhole.” A “rock hole,” as any farmer in the cave country can tell you, is a sinkhole where rocks unearthed during plowing are thrown.

MEMORIES OF A CAVE COUNTRY BOYHOOD

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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.

THE FINAL YEARS OF LESTER & LUCINDA HOWE

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Until the late Spring of 1888, an aging Lester Howe and wife Lucinda lived on his beloved “Garden of Eden” property across the valley of the Cobleskill Creek from the cave he made famous. Their children, all of whom had been married in the family’s cave, had moved on.

Huldah Ann, the oldest, became Mrs. Henry Northrup, and Harriet Elgiva married a surveyor for the railroad, Hiram Dewey. Both daughters moved to Jefferson City in central Missouri and raised families there. The Howes’ son, Halsey John, married Julia Redfield, and moved to Dunkirk in western New York, where he practiced dentistry.

The date Howe sold his interest in the cave is uncertain; it may have been as early as April 1869.

Howe would have been 59 at the time—a suitable age for retirement in that era—and he and Lucinda settled into the lush Garden of Eden property¹ to spend their final years together. Now retired, he assumed the role of a “gentleman farmer,” raising a few Jersey cows and experimenting with the types of fruits (some exotic to the area) that he could raise on the hillside.

**Another view of the Howe Family plot in the Cobleskill Rural Cemetery. The marker front right, is Lester’s, next is Lucinda’s.**

It may have been an idyllic lifestyle for several years, but maintaining a farm, even a gentleman’s farm, is a challenge for men and women in their 60s and 70s. In early 1888, the Howes sold property after about 15 years there and moved to Florence Street in the Village of Cobleskill in mid-May 1888. Lester was 78; his wife was two years older. (Their Florence Street home is today the southwestern-most parcel on the block.)

Lester Howe died there on Wednesday July 18, 1888. According to his obituary in the July 19 Cobleskill Index, he suffered “five weeks of paralysis,” apparently the result of a stroke.

Howe’s obituary was succinct. After all, it was nearly a half-century since his famous discovery and his years of some celebrity and news-making were long past.

The Cobleskill paper’s obituary, in part, reads: “Lester Howe is widely known as the person who discovered Howe’s Cave. A strong current of air was known to issue from the mountainside where in 1840, Lester Howe moved to the vicinity of the cave.

**Lester Howe**
Jan. 10, 1810 – July 18, 1888

“Alone, he made investigations and with patient toil—prompted by courage—he affected an entrance into the bowels of the earth and penetrated a great distance or until he reached the lake.

“The [now] deceased erected a hotel at the mouth of the cave and opened the underground cavern to the world. . .

“The discovery of the cave which bears his name fixes Mr. Howe’s name indelibly in our local history,” the writer predicted, accurately.

The funeral service was “solemnized” at the Florence Street home, two days after Howe’s death, on Friday July 20, with a Rev. Buckelew officiating.

Lester Howe’s moment in the spotlight had passed, but his death still made the news. Small notices appeared in many newspapers across the country, including even those on the West Coast. His obituary has been found in papers in both Sacramento, Calif., and in Oregon.

About two months after Lester’s death, his widow Lucinda transferred three pieces of property from her husband’s estate to their son, Halsey. Legally, she may have had to transfer them first through an attorney; a “property transfers” section in the Aug. 8, 1888, Cobleskill Index, gives some details.

For “a nominal consideration,” Mrs. Howe transferred to John H. Shultes 45 acres in the Town of Cobleskill, likely the East Cobleskill/Garden of Eden property; one acre in Cobleskill, possibly the Florence Street home; and two acres in Howes Cave. Shultes then transferred the property to Halsey John Howe.

Lucinda Howe died a little more than a year later at a daughter’s home in Jefferson City, on Dec 18, 1889. She was 81.

The Fredonia Censor, a Chautauqua County newspaper in western New York, carried a small notice, probably placed by her son.

The Christmas Day, 1889 paper carried this: “Mrs. Lucinda Howe, mother of Dr. H. J. Howe of Dunkirk, who recently died in Jefferson [City], Mo²., was the wife of the discoverer of the wonderful Howe’s cave in Schoharie County, and her daughters were married in a part of the cave called the chapel. Her remains will be taken to Cobleskill for interment.”

Lester and Lucinda were married for 60 years. She was born April 28, 1808, in Albany, to Elijah Rowley, 32, and Sally Morgan Rowley, 33. She and Lester were married on Nov. 10, 1828, in Cherry Valley, Otsego County.

Lester and Lucinda, along with Halsey John Howe and his wife, Julia, are buried in the Cobleskill Rural Cemetery. Huldah Howe Northrup is buried in Pittsfield, IL; Harriet Howe Dewey is buried in Jefferson City.

PHOTO of the Howe monument in the Cobleskill Rural Cemetery by Bob Holt

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¹The address would have been considered East Cobleskill.

² Halsey John Howe also moved to Jefferson City after retiring. He apparently suffered from Alzheimer’s—unrecognized at that time—and in late June 1913, Halsey walked away from his nephew’s house where he’d been staying. He was found drowned a few days later in the Missouri River there.

Posted: Oct. 10, 2023

HOWE’S CAVE & THE RAILROAD

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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 19^th 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.

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-20^th 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 20^th 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 19^th 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 Cave⁵took 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.