Built originally around 1755 by Stephen Sloat, Harmony Hall functioned simultaneously as a family home and a roadside inn along the New York-to-Albany stage route. Because of its strategic location in the narrow Ramapo Pass, the tavern transformed into a vital military station during the American Revolution. [Read more…] about The Seven Taverns Which Saved the Ramapo Pass
Stagecoaches
The American Coach & Carriage Industry in 1878
In the days of our great grandfathers the occasional ancient coach and the heavy lumber wagon in which the freight transportation of the country was carried on were almost the only vehicles that rolled along the roads. The people did not own private carriages themselves.
When they traveled they took to the coach or rode on horseback, the latter being the more customary plan. [Read more…] about The American Coach & Carriage Industry in 1878
Hudson River Steamboats & Stagecoaches, 1809-1810
The following short news items about Hudson River steamboats were originally published in newspapers in 1809 and 1810.
The first commercially successful steamboat to travel to Albany was Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat (often colloquially called the Clermont), which made its maiden voyage in August 1807. It departed the city of New York on August 17 and arrived in Albany roughly 32 hours later, proving the viability of steam-powered commercial vessels. [Read more…] about Hudson River Steamboats & Stagecoaches, 1809-1810
When PT Barnum’s Stagecoach Plunged into an Old Fort’s Moat
The railroad did not come to the village of Lake George, formerly known as Caldwell, until 1882. So for decades travel to the lakeside village was mainly by stagecoach along the plank road from Glens Falls built in 1848 (now Route 9). [Read more…] about When PT Barnum’s Stagecoach Plunged into an Old Fort’s Moat
The Creation of the Postal Service & American Political Culture
The founders established the post office before they had even signed the Declaration of Independence, and for a very long time, it was the U.S. government’s largest and most important endeavor — indeed, it was the government for most citizens.
This was no conventional mail network but the central nervous system of the new body politic, designed to bind thirteen quarrelsome colonies into the United States by delivering news about public affairs to every citizen — a radical idea that appalled Europe’s great powers. [Read more…] about The Creation of the Postal Service & American Political Culture
The Lake George Trip That Inspired ‘Last of the Mohicans’
James Fenimore Cooper’s knowledge of the French and Indian War may have been sketchy, but he was interested enough in its history to contemplate a visit to Lake George, which he finally did with a party of Englishmen in August, 1824.
Lord Edward Stanley (1799-1869), who would later become the 14th Earl of Derby and thrice Great Britain’s Prime Minister during the reign of Queen Victoria, was the leader of that party. His account of the visit to Lake George was committed to his journals, portions of which were published in 1930 in a limited edition of fifty copies commissioned by his grandson. [Read more…] about The Lake George Trip That Inspired ‘Last of the Mohicans’
The Cherry Valley & Great Western Turnpike: A Short History
In the early 1700s the Mohawk Turnpike and the Seneca Turnpike were improved from the rougher Indigenous trails whose routes they utilized into regular, if rough, wagon roads. But it wasn’t until the 1790s that New York State’s turnpike era took off.
This was good news to migrants and local travelers alike, as deep ruts along the former “Indian trails” made transportation impractical and slow. It took days just to go a few miles and the limited number of ferries, bridges and fords often caused wagons to go miles out of their way to get around a lake, river, or creek. [Read more…] about The Cherry Valley & Great Western Turnpike: A Short History
The Great Cayuga Lake Long Bridge: Beams & Trestles
Into the waning decade of the 1700s, only fords, ferries, or makeshift timber bridges, all highly vulnerable to frequent destruction by ice and flood, were used to cross streams. As Americans in greater numbers began moving west to more remote parts of New York and Pennsylvania, carpenters and entrepreneurial inventors began envisioning new designs but still using posts, beams, and trestle bents for crossing narrow and slow-moving streams in order to expedite the movement of people and goods as well as to make a profit. None of these earliest timber bridges were covered with a roof and siding.
These early timber bridges were precursor structures to the arches and trusses that soon followed, making it possible to span broader streams with stronger structures, many of which heralded the arrival of the covered timber bridge era. [Read more…] about The Great Cayuga Lake Long Bridge: Beams & Trestles
Devil’s Kitchen: Warren County’s Nightmare for Drivers
The colorful name Devil’s Kitchen has been used in numerous book titles, restaurant names, and for hiking destinations in at least seven states.
In Upstate New York we have a version in the Catskills, described here as “quite possibly the most hellacious [bicycle] climb in New York State.” That area, with cliffs, numerous waterfalls, and slippery slopes, has seen many hiker deaths as well. [Read more…] about Devil’s Kitchen: Warren County’s Nightmare for Drivers
Some History of the US Postal Service
You might say that the history of our postal system began when Benjamin Franklin, age 31, was appointed Postmaster of Philadelphia by the colonial British authorities in 1737.
Not that there hadn’t been earlier embryonic attempts at mail service in the colonies, but Franklin was already the very successful proprietor of a print business and publisher of a newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette. His experience had taught him to be a meticulous record-keeper and a master of organization. So it’s hardly surprising that he shaped the Philadelphia mails into a swift and responsive enterprise. [Read more…] about Some History of the US Postal Service
Asher Durand’s Painted Puzzle of Progress
What Thomas Carlyle in 1829 called the Age of Machinery – later renamed the Industrial Revolution – radically altered conventional modes of being and marked a turning point in man’s relationship with his environment. New production systems delivered an abundance of goods for consumption, but in the process natural resources were depleted, water and soil polluted, whilst fumes contaminated the air. [Read more…] about Asher Durand’s Painted Puzzle of Progress
Teddy Roosevelt’s Wild Ride to the Presidency
On September 9th through 11th Newcomb, in Essex County at the heart of the Adirondacks, once again celebrates 26th President Theodore Roosevelt, who was vacationing at the Tahawus Club there in 1901 when the wheels leading to his presidency were set in motion.
Roosevelt had come to the Tahawus Club, a hunting and fishing retreat created in the 1870s on the site of early mining efforts on the uppermost reaches of the Hudson River, as a guest of one of its members. His arrival had been delayed by the assassination attempt on William McKinley, but after a trip to Buffalo where the stricken President was recovering, Roosevelt felt assured that he could join his family at Tahawus. [Read more…] about Teddy Roosevelt’s Wild Ride to the Presidency
Through The Fulton Chain of Lakes in 1877
The adventure began with an exchange of letters in the spring of 1877 between a sportsman in Syracuse, NY, and Byron P. Graves of Boonville, a town on the western border of the Adirondacks. The purpose of this correspondence was to hire a guide and transportation for a two-week hunting and fishing trip into the Fulton Chain of Lakes for the man and his 11-year-old son Ned.
The sportsman was Ansel Judd Northrup, a 43-year-old attorney who would later write the book, Camps and Tramps in the Adirondacks (1882), where this story was first told. The final communication from Northrup, in the form of a telegraph, simply read, “Engage Brinckerhoff, will reach Boonville, morning train, July 5th.” [Read more…] about Through The Fulton Chain of Lakes in 1877
Route 50 Changed It All: Old Burnt Hills And New
In the late 1950s, Veeder and Yelverton Pharmacy moved their thriving pharmacy business from Schenectady, NY to Route 50 in Burnt Hills, Saratoga County.
At the time, the Burnt Hills area was just beginning to grow and the area to which they moved was not a major commercial center in the Burnt Hills area. But that move seems to have been one of the signals that a “new” commercial center of was starting to grow.
Driving along Route 50, most people today do not even know that an “old” commercial center ever existed. [Read more…] about Route 50 Changed It All: Old Burnt Hills And New
Myth and Migration: The Old West As Urban Invention
The idea of utopia as a place of peace and plenty away from the hardships of ordinary life, is a recurring theme in literature. The term entered popular usage after publication of Thomas More’s Utopia in 1516. His Eden is an idyllic island society wholly removed from the corruption of sixteenth century England. [Read more…] about Myth and Migration: The Old West As Urban Invention
The First (Short Lived) Suspension Bridge Across The Hudson River
Robert Codgell Gilchrist was born into an extremely wealthy well-connected Charleston family in 1829. The oligarchic families of South Carolina had made their wealth on tobacco, rice, indigo, and shipping and Charleston harbor was one of the centers of the southern slave trade. Robert Gilchist’s father had received a federal Judgeship from President Martin Van Buren and he owned an opulent home.
Each summer the wealthy Gilchrist family journeyed north to avoid the hot humid subtropical summers of Charleston. They stayed with maternal family members in the Great Northern Wilderness of New York. (The term Adirondacks is said to have been first used by geologist and surveyor Ebenezer Emmons in 1838 and took some time to come into general use). [Read more…] about The First (Short Lived) Suspension Bridge Across The Hudson River
Once Common Horse Blocks Weren’t Just for Horses and Carriages
The most popular genre by far on nighttime television through the 1960s? Westerns. While children were allowed to watch some of them, several shows specifically geared towards the younger set were shown on Saturday morning. Watching heroes — Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, and Zorro, three of the best — escape tense situations and catch bad guys was unforgettable.
Among the skills of any cowboy star (or stuntman stand-in) worth his salt were the hurried mounting and high-speed dismounting of horses (usually their own faithful steed, of course). It’s an impressive feat when you consider that horses are pretty high off the ground — which brings us to our main subject: how to get down off a horse. [Read more…] about Once Common Horse Blocks Weren’t Just for Horses and Carriages
The 1826 Travel Journal of Alexander Stewart Scott
Paul G. Schneider Jr’s new book Everything Worthy of Observation: The 1826 New York State Travel Journal of Alexander Stewart Scott (SUNY Press, 2019) offers a firsthand account into early-nineteenth-century New York State and Lower Canada during a time of enormous growth and change.
In the pre-dawn of August 2, 1826, Alexander Stewart Scott stepped aboard the steamboat Chambly in Quebec City, Canada. He was beginning a journey that not only took him across New York State but also ultimately changed his view of America and her people. [Read more…] about The 1826 Travel Journal of Alexander Stewart Scott