Schoharie County’s Abandoned Quarries
May 7, 2023 at 2pm • Lasell Hall, Main Street, Schoharie
In a continuation of the Schoharie County Historical Society’s Spring lecture series, we will have author Dana Cudmore speaking on Schoharie County’s quarries in their heyday and what has happened to them since the downfall of their popularity.
In the decades before concrete, there was cut stone. And in the final years of the 19th Century, Schoharie County quarries supplied millions of tons of it to help build New York. The Brooklyn Bridge, New York’s expanding barge canal system, and other engineering marvels of the period created a huge demand for cut building stone from upstate (and elsewhere). The boom was short-lived. There were eight limestone quarries in the Town of Cobleskill alone, six in the village The largest, near Barnerville, employed nearly 450 men to fulfill a huge contract with the City of New York, worth about $65 million today.
These are not the quarries we see today. All have been abandoned. This presentation looks at some of the largest and catalogs the others, long forgotten. A Q&A will follow. Signed copies of Underground Empires will be available to those attending.
