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 19th 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.
A ‘Farming with Dynamite’ Account of the Rogers Quarry
New research is proving the Rogers Quarry in Cobleskill to have been one of the largest among many during the 1890-1905 “stone boom.” It was also one of the shortest lived.
During New York’s building stone boom, Schoharie County ranked 12th in the state, supplying millions of tons of both precision-cut building stone, crushed stone (aggregate), and cement for the prominent engineering marvels of that period. The history of the more than 30 quarries operating during that period is documented in Farming With Dynamite: The Forgotten Stone Boom in Schoharie County, published by the author in October 2023.
There were eight quarries in the Town of Cobleskill alone, six within village limits. The largest was the Klondike Quarry, which employed nearly 500, and was located about three miles east of Cobleskill, just north of the Delaware and Hudson rail line. Then came the Reilly-Weiting Quarry, which employed about 200. It operated at what is today Cobleskill Stone Products just east of the village limits; the company still operates today.
Then came the Rogers Quarry.
New York City contractor John C. Rogers’s quarry company, said the Albany Evening Times on May 20, 1902, “is the leading industry of Cobleskill.”
According to the paper, the quarry had a workforce of 150 men, and the “payroll for the month is $5,000. . . employes are paid every two weeks.” Col. William McRae was the quarry superintendent; John Murray quarry boss; William Keating led stonecutters; and Edward Karker the laborers.
Like other quarries in the area, recent Italian and Polish immigrants made up at least one-half of the workforce.
The Albany paper placed the quarry’s location “just east of the village and about half a mile north of, and is connected by, a track with the Delaware and Hudson railroad.”
The geology of the location allowed Rogers to quarry a lower-level sandstone beneath the more extensive layer of limestone. Most quarries were of limestone.
More than a century later, the location is hard to place, and any remnants of the operation harder still to find. At the beginning of the 1900s, North Street was the eastern edge of Cobleskill village.
A smaller quarry nearby, was referred to in a 1950s newspaper article as being “just off the present Legion Drive development.” The Rogers Quarry is believed, then, to be east and north of that, between Campus Drive and Burgin Drive. The elevated Granite Drive and the former Best Western Inn may be “benches,” created by quarry cuts taken into the hillside there.
Mother Nature has appeared to have reclaimed the Rogers Quarry property. The area includes Iorio Park, the Cobleskill Villag swimming pool, and dozens of middle-class and upper-income homes. There’s no remaining evidence of the short-line rail that once moved stone to the cutting yard across Main Street, either.
The Albany paper noted in its 1902 account that the Rogers Quarry had “been in existence hardly a year but already quarried some 10.000 yards of the finest building stone.” In fact, one of Rogers’s large contracts in New York City was secured after “specimens of stone were placed in competition and Cobleskill stone won.” At the time, the Rogers quarry had also furnished the Delaware and Hudson railroad with “a large quantity of stone.”
We share two news items from the 1901 files of Cobleskill Index to document the quarry’s growth in its first year of business.
The first news item describes the challenges of buying a steam locomotive for quarry use. From July 18, 1901: “The Rogers Company engaged [employee] Elmer Lawyer to go to Long Island and bring to Cobleskill a locomotive which they purchased of the Long Island Railroad, and which is to be used about the quarry and between the cutting yard and quarry.” (The cutting yard was adjacent to the D&H railroad, which runs east/west through the Village of Cobleskill. – ed.)
Getting the locomotive from Long Island to Cobleskill posed some problems.
The paper continues: “All went well until Central Bridge was reached when a wreck occurred, and the locomotive was hauled a half mile with one track derailed to the consternation and danger of Mr. Lawyer who occupied the cab.
“When the locomotive comes from the D&H shop at Oneonta, where it is being repaired, it will be used for work between the quarry and the cutting yard, Mr. Lawyer in charge.”
The month before Lawyer’s near catastrophic adventure, the quarry was getting ready for the train’s arrival. From the May 23, 1901,edition: “Eight Swedes arrived from New York and are erecting tressels [trestles] for the Rogers Quarry Company. Home workmen could not be secured to do the work.”
The Otsego Farmer of August 23, 1901, found a bit of quarry work of interest to their readers:
“Two spruce trees were felled at Summit last week and taken to Cobleskill to the Rogers quarry. One of the trees, stripped of branches and loaded, measured 50 feet in length, the other 62 feet. They are to be used as center poles for big derricks.”
ACCIDENTS MADE THE NEWS
Quarry work can be dangerous. We cite the Albany Evening Journal, June 18, 1902:
“Warren Karker met with what can be considered a very fortunate accident at the Rogers quarry last week. He runs a hoist engine and about 15 feet from where he was working several holes had been drilled, and ‘when the blasts were ready, he was notified and went to a safe distance.
“The first blast fired threw a stone weighing over 200 pounds, which struck and released the clutch of the hoist engine. letting the boom run down. Mr. Karker, thinking the blast was over, ran to his engine to stop the boom from falling; and as he did so a blast in the stone which was beneath his feet went off. He was only slightly injured, which under the circumstances was miraculous.”
The following month saw this happen, according to the Cobleskill Index of July 31,1902
“Al Maretto. an Italian, had a leg broken at Rogers quarry about noon today. He operates a steam drill and was moving it when he fell off a rock and the drill fell on him, breaking both bones of his leg.” (The rock drills could weigh anywhere from about 180 to 600 pounds. – ed.)
Elmer Lawyer, whose locomotive misadventure described a few paragraphs previously, was seriously injured in August of that same year, the Cobleskill paper reported:
“Mr. Lawyer was engaged in firing an engine and near where he was working a gang of Italian laborers were unloading a car of coal. Mr. Lawyer was bending over in the act of picking up a large piece of coal to place in the engine, when he was hit on the back by coal thrown from the car being unloaded. The injury seems to have affected the spine, causing partial paralysis.”
WHERE THE STONE WENT
It is likely the Rogers Quarry was only a small part of the NYC-based John C. Rogers companies. At about the time he was opening the Cobleskill quarry, he was credited in one account as starting construction on the 145th Street—”Harlem River”—bridge. The bridge was one of several built across NYC’s East River during the first decades of the 1900s.
Stone and cement from Schoharie County quarries were used in the Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883; in the Manhattan Bridge, finished in 1909; the Williamsburg Bridge, 1895; and the Queensboro Bridge, completed in 1909. The stone and cement were used in a variety of ways; as anchorages, abutments, piers, and rip-rap.
Both the Rogers Quarry and Klondike quarries had contract for what at the time the paper referred to as the NYC “tunnels.” The tunnels were going to be the city’s subway system, started in February 1900. Rogers provided stone for “section 9.” The subway system spread north from New York’s City hall, near the southern tip of Manhattan. The streets Section 9 covered are not known.
And an item from an Albany paper, under “Cobleskill News,” captures the moment the industry began to shift away from building stone to aggregate products.
“The stone crusher, which for some time has been in process of erection at the Rogers quarry, is now completed and was in operation for the first time on Tuesday [June 16]. From the Albany Evening Journal, June 18, 1903.
Sixth months later, the Stamford Recorder (Delaware County) on Dec. 26, 1903, reported the stone crusher had resulted in a sizeable contract worth about $8.5 million today.
“John C. Rogers of the Rogers Quarry Company of Cobleskill has secured a large contract. $1,651,717. in New York City, for the extension of the roadway along the Hudson.”
Two photos of the Rogers Quarry appear in Building with Stones and Clays: A Handbook for Architects and Engineers, published in 1917 for the Syracuse University bookstores. A photo of beautifully carved sandstone blocks describes it as “designed for constructional work in New York City.”
The second photo is captioned: “Rogers Quarry, Cobleskill, N.Y., showing the sandstone beds and the thickness of the glacial till.”
It’s uncertain when the Rogers Quarry ceased operations, but like the Schoharie County quarries that provided cut stone for construction, it did not survive the advent of concrete. It is likely it closed sometime before 1906, when concrete had become the more commonly-used material.
A brief item in the Feb. 4, 1904, Cobleskill Index hinted at things to come.
“Owing to lack of orders requiring limestone, the Rogers quarry will open with only a small force, of perhaps 20 men. sometimes March. It is hoped that the receipt of orders, later, will increase this materially.
“Pierce Meade, who has been in charge of the office here, has been transferred to Deer Island Maine, the site of a large granite quarry where he will be in charge of the office. Many friends wish Mr. Meade success in his new field of labor.”
Like other quarries in the area, it took time to remove the evidence of a large, once-prosperous operation. While Mother Nature reclaimed the vacant site rather quickly, and owners could sell or move heavy equipment, it wasn’t an easy job. It is likely that steel and other heavy metal equipment no longer in use was melted down and salvaged to meet the need created by WWI.
It appears that work in 1937 removed all evidence of the Rogers Quarry in Cobleskill. It was not without mishap, reported the Cobleskill Index on April 29, 1937: “Ernest Resue of Ryder Avenue smashed the toes of his foot while working in the Roger Quarry here last Saturday, where a contractor is clearing up the old metal junk in the abandoned quarry.”
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 NYSTUDIED
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.”
JAMES LOUGHRAN, about 1950
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.
# # #
1 Specials 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.
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.
1 The 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.
Two employees of the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad died in the Jan. 18, 1872, fire that destroyed the Cave House hotel at Howe’s Cave. A newspaper the following week suggested it may have been caused by an “incendiary”– the imprecise term meaning something—or someone—ignited combustible materials in the basement of the hotel.
At the time, the Cave House was one of the few remnants of the Howe family’s underground empire built around their patriarch’s 1842 discovery.
This Cave House was the second hotel that the Howes—Lester, Lucinda and their children Huldah, Harriet, and Halsey—opened to welcome visitors to the cave Lester made famous. The first hotel, built as early as 1843, was also destroyed by fire in 1847.
The second Cave House was a plain, three-story wooden building with about 40 rooms, unadorned with porches, columns, or other fashionable Victorian-era home décor. Built over the entrance to the cave, guests readied in the basement for their day-long underground adventure. There, they donned well-worn clothes, hats, and boots, and were provided with oil lanterns. From there, they entered the cave.
A photo, taken some time between 1865-1872, entitled “Scenes from The Albany and Susquehanna Railroad,” shows the hotel in desperate need of painting. In fact, it looks as if half of the building’s paint had been scraped to prepare it for a new coat.
At the time of the fire, the Cave House was owned by the Howes Cave Association. The Howes sold the property as early as 1869 to the association, created by Joseph H. Ramsey, the president of the Albany & Susquehanna. History records Ramsey’s purchase of the property as being of dubious ethics; Howe accepted stock in the new association valued (by Ramsey) at $12,000 after rejecting a $10,000 cash offer.
The blaze must have been a frightening affair. According to the Jan. 27, 1872, Cobleskill Index, the proprietor, a Mr. Eldredge, was awakened in his room around 1 a.m. by smoke so dense he was “obligated to escape through a window.”
There were 10 employees of the railroad staying at the hotel while they constructed a water tank at the Howes Cave Depot, just a short distance from the cave and hotel. All were in their rooms at the time the fire broke out.
After Eldredge sounded the alarm, all but two of the men made their escape through their windows, the Cobleskill Index noting “leaving behind most if not all of their clothing.”
Construction of the third Cave House, above, began after the fire and used limestone from the Howes Cave Association’s quarry. It still stands.
Killed in the fire were Edward Kelly, a mason from Albany and D. W. Hare, a carpenter from Richmondville. The charred remains of the two men were found the next morning in the ruins.
According to the Index, the fire “is supposed to have originated in the oil room at the entrance to the cave, in the basement of the building, and is supposed to have been the work of an incendiary.” No other details were provided.
The Cave House was valued at $5,000, the paper reported, or about $118,000 today. There was insurance on the building for about one-half of that. Eldrege lost about $7,000 in personal property but was fully insured.
Finally, said the Index, “We learn that a new building is to be erected immediately.”
The third Cave House, built of limestone from the expanding Howes Cave Association’s adjacent quarry, still stands, despite going through numerous renovations and owners. Today, it is a museum-in-the-making, The Cave House Museum of Mining and Geology.
Special thanks to Kevin Berner, a vice-president of the museum, for finding and sharing this gem from the old news reports. Have something to contribute? Contact me here.
By CHARLES J. HANOR, National Speleological Society
Without a doubt, one of the prettiest and wilder caves of Schoharie County is Clark’s Cave or Veen Fliet’s Cavern. It is owned by Richard Veen Fliet and has been in his hands since he and friends started exploration and opening during the early 1930s.
During this time, Mr. Veen Fliet found the tooth of a tapir and several newspaper accounts were published. It was one of the most amazing finds of the century. Mr. Veen Fliet has the tooth and several other interesting pieces of formation from the cave at his home. The newspaper articles are also in his hands. His home is the old Gebhard estate on the west side of Schoharie bridge.
An interesting by-line, not pertaining to caves, is the most unusual and fine collection of fossils rock and mineral specimens, and Indian relics, all from the vicinity of Schoharie county, that I have ever been permitted to see. This collection is by far, better than any in New York state museum that deals with the geological and paleontological eras of the county. Mr. Veen Fliet goes out of his way to explain and tell the visitor the history of each and every specimen. This collection should be labeled and on file so that in the future it is not broken up or separated but kept in the fine state that it now is.
Our attention was directed to Veen Fliet’s cavern by John Wilbur, now residing in Chatham. We arrived at the home of Mr. Veen Fliet and upon asking about the existence of a cavern were welcomed and personally conducted to the entrance. Mr. Veen Fliet has not been into the far extent of the cavern for a number of years.
The entrance to the cavern is in a small, wooded gully that empties into the Schoharie river. Through years of work and efforts by Mr. Veen Fliet and his group a walking entrance has been blasted out of solid limestone. Armed with equipment and mapping facilities we started our journey into another underground paradise. The first 151 [feet] follows the natural stream bed that flows from the entrance. This passage is of typical New York state cave variety. Here the water has found the most soluble rock and for past ages has worn a walkable passage into a mountain of solid limestone.
At the far end of the walkable passage a real obstacle is encountered. The height of the passage lowers to about 2.5 feet and water covers the floor for as far as the eye can see. This is the lake. At this point the explorer must lie on his stomach and crawl along with his head and shoulders above water for a distance of 30 feet. Suddenly the passage opens cup again where the explorer can walk upright with plenty of room.
The first sign of formation is now to the right of the explorer. Here a small alcove of pin stalactites, 3 to 10 inches in length, white as alabaster, coral shaped and lacy are found and directly opposite this alcove is a beautiful bank of blue-grey flowstone. The base of this bank flows out into the floor of the main passage like a huge river of molten lava. At the top of this mass is a small column, stretching upward until it joins the ceiling. Continuing on the explorer can hear the sound of splashing water. Two bends are made in the passage and two rooms are penetrated when at last one finds himself standing in a large size room.
The walls of this room are coated with flowstone of all hues. Beehives and frozen cascades of every description, and the most amazing sight of all, a waterfall pouring out of a passage at a level 10 ft. higher than that on which the explorer is standing. Directly in the center of this waterfall and hanging from the upper level is one of the most amazing formations I have ever seen. It is a huge heart, complete with both sections. As the beamsfrom our light shone on this formation the colors shone with all their grandeur. We immediately named this formation “The Bleeding Heart” because the water from the falls splashed onto this formation and then gracefully dropped to the floor of the cavern.
It was not an easy matter to scale this waterfall in order to negotiate the upper level. After 15 minutes of boosting and standing on the shoulders of our companions we were all setting in the passage directly over the falls. The water from the falls did not dampen our spirits as they had already taken a solid dunking when we crawled through the lake. I will say that we were very cold and our speech was rather shaky when we conversed with each other.
The passage went on and after a short distance a branch passage came into the main from the left. Two of our party entered this and shortly word came back that a huge stalactite came down to almost five inches of the floor blocking their entrance. The smaller of the group squeezed under this obstacle and entered another small room. Here nature really went to work. Stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone and the very rare formation called “Tripe” was seen. This cave tripe has been found in only one other cave in New York state, Howe Caverns. Probably most of the readers will be familiar with this formation. Further exploration of this passage is impossible as it is what cavers called a passage killed by formations.
Continuing on in the main passage the explorers found themselves in a long slender fault. Over their heads, under their feet, and on both sides of them was formation upon formation. After 200 feet of walking and crawling through narrow passage way the remainder of the path was water. Philip Johnson, one of the slimmest of our party entered this water passage. Soon he disappeared from sight and I shouted to him what lay ahead.
His response came back that he was in a passage about the same width as when he started but that he was standing about knee deep in cave mud beneath the water. There was a huge formation that had dropped from the ceiling or that someone had tried to remove. This was a flow-stone block resembling an organ. He said it was very beautiful. After climbing over this obstacle the passage widened somewhat and made a right angle run. Going on Johnson made three more right angle turns. I again called frantically to him. My words came back in echoes. Three times I shouted and finally a voice was heard coming back to me from far away. After about 15 minutes of shouting we were able to understand each other. As Johnson had no companion with him I advised him to return to where I had remained. I knew he had gotten into something very interesting as I could hear him cussing me off for making him come back.
When I finally saw his light through the darkness, I breathed normal again as cave exploring alone has very dangerous possibilities. When he joined me he told that he had gotten through the toughest part of the passage and that when I called he had started into a larger part of the passage for parts unknown. It continued on for as far as his beam would carry with a stream running towards him. He reported the same beautiful formation lined passage all the way.
As we were thoroughly soaked we started our return trip to the entrance knowing we had to crawl through the lake again. We started out but to our amazement when we reached the lake we couldn’t get through. There was only three inches of air space. Our thought went back to Floyd Collins and we wondered where our companions were and how they had gotten out.
Neither of us was alarmed and we started checking the floor and walls of the passage. Soon it became evident that we had never been in this part of the cave before.
We had found a new lake. Retracing our steps we suddenly came to a right hand passage of considerable width and height. We took this and then sighted the first formations that I described earlier. Next came the lake leading to the entrance. After getting out we told our companions our mistake and found that they also had fate play the same trick to them.
Mr. Veen Fliet has a beautiful cavern and the farthest extent has as yet been unseen and undiscovered. We hope to make a complete study of this cavern. It is our belief that this cavern will eventually be penetrated until it joins the famed Sitzer’s cavern at Central Bridge. It has been reported in the county that Tim Murphy and some of Morgan’s riflemen used an extensive cavern on Terrace mountain to baffle the Schoharie Indians during the Revolution. They were called the ghost men as Indians following their trail would come to the mouth of a cavern, where they were afraid to follow, and after a short length of time the same Indians would be surprised to find themselves in an ambush by Murphy and his scouts. They just appeared from nowhere.
If Veen Fliets cavern can be connected with Lasell hell-hole, Strontium Mine cave, and Sitzer’s cavern approximately seven miles of underground passageway will be discovered. At present writing neither of these caverns has been explored to the farthest extent. It is hard work and the nerves of a cave explorer must have their rest also. This particular area will again be very active the latter part of ’49 and the early part of 1950.
This article was originally published in Albany County Post 9 Sept. 1949
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.
