MYSTERIOUS AMERICA

Morton’s BMW Motorcycles presents Dr. Seymour O’Life’s MYSTERIOUS AMERICA

the WidoW Jane mine

CenTuRY house hisToRiCAL disTRiCT 668 nY-213, RosendALe, nY • 41.8416, -74.0988 845-658-9900 • www.centuryhouse.org What do an incredible sculpture in France, the condition called The Bends, and a link between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes have in common?

On paper they all seem completely different in every way. Indeed – every way but one.

This is the story of the Widow Jane Mine.

In 1825 while construction was going on to build the Delaware and Hudson Canal, natural cement limestone was discovered in Rosendale, New York. This discovery put Rosendale on the map and soon Rosendale Cement was one of the most transported products to travel on the very canal it helped create.

According to local resident and former Army historian Gilberto Villahermosa, whose book “Rosendale” is a must-read if you wish to dive deeper into the history of this neat little Hudson Valley town, ‘by the mid1800s, Rosendale was honeycombed with cement mines. The Widow Jane Mine – now open to the public – once plunged 2.5 miles into the rock.’ The growth of the industry was explosive. A solitary cement plant producing 500 barrels a day

in 1836 became 16 cement works producing 600,000 barrels a day in the 1840s, according to the book.

But the industry built around Rosendale Cement began to decline at the turn of the 20th century, as natural cement was replaced by Portland Cement.

Natural cement, of which Rosendale Natural Cement is the most famous example, is simple to create, requiring only one base material. However, the proper limestone is hard to come by, and the finished product is slow to dry, taking days or sometimes weeks.

Portland Cement is made from several base materials extractable from all over the U.S. and is much quicker to dry, though to this day remains weaker and quicker to weather than natural cement. The Rosendale Cement industry became a busy place once again during WWII as the resilient material was used in Allied military bases. The

cement was so good at building defenses, Europeans called it “ballistic cement.”

After the war was over, the era of Rosendale Cement came to a close.

Herman Knaust first bought one of the abandoned mines to grow mushrooms, then snatched up other mines on the cheap as his business profited, according to Villahermosa. The operation eventually became the largest in the U.S. “If you ate Campbell’s Mushroom Soup between 1930 and 1960, you’ve eaten a Rosendale mushroom.”

However, as the arms race between Russia and the U.S. accelerated in the 1950s, Knaust found a function even better suited to the caves: bomb shelters. Who doesn’t want a bomb shelter of their own, right?

Some of NYC’s elite bought caves so they could ride out a nuclear disaster underground, and businesses followed. In 1966, IBM started constructing an ultra-secure storehouse in a 32-acre area of the caves near Binnewater Road – a space the size of about 25 football fields.

Iron Mountain, the international ultra-secure storage company, now owns much of the caves, though some of the facilities from the atomic age remain. Villahermosa says the company’s caves contained a five-story building, a parking garage, and a 65-room hotel.

Today, Widow Jane Mine is open to the public, and a popular small-batch whiskey is produced from the waters of Rosendale’s Turkle Mine.

So, back to my original question…well it’s simple:

Natural Cement was used in the original construction of some of the most enduring landmarks of the nation: The Brooklyn Bridge, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, the wings of the U.S. Capitol, the lower 152’ of the Washington Monument, the Croton Aqueduct and dams, the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels, the New York State Thruway, and thousands of other public works projects.

Today, on the grounds of the Century House on the Snyder Estate you will find an excellent museum dedicated to the town’s natural cement history, and just a short walk through the woods you will discover the Widow Jane Mine itself.

It’s amazing!

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