Huckle or Hooker Bush?

HUCKLE OR HOOKER BUSH?

Barbara Thompson

(Reprinted, with permission, from the Barrytown Explorer. Vol. 12, #1 & 2, June- July 1969).

There seem to be two schools of thought as to whether the train was called the "Hucklebush" because it travelled so slowly you could pick the huckleberries as you rode down from Cokertown, or "Hooker Bush" because you could grab the branches as you went along. At any rate, the old train is gone now, along with its tracks and trestles, but the traces are still there and so are the memories no matter which school you prefer.

The line was chartered in 1870 to be known as the Rhinebeck Conn. Railroad with a capital of $1,000,000. In 1874, 28 miles of track were opened and another 7 miles added in 1875. The entire length of the main line was 41.6 miles from Rhinecliff to the State Line C. W. R. R. Junction. The track from Boston Corners to State Line was held under lease. The train ran from Rhinecliff, Rhinebeck, on up to Red Hook, where the former station is now the Red Hook Farmers' Cooperative. Then it crossed 199 near the location of the laundromat, coming round back of Fraleigh's farm where there was a freight switch. From there it went up to Spring Lake Road for the Cokertown Station. The train scheduled two runs a day. Down past Cokertown at seven in the morning, back by nine; down again at one in the afternoon and back by four. This was the high schooler's commuter run. Only then it might be a horse and buggy ride from home to the station with a ten to twelve minute ride into Red Hook.

The next stop was at Jackson's Corners where there are more evident traces of the old track bed. Mr. Fred Long kindly showed me the house which was built around the original two-room station. Going east to west behind the neat frame house, one can still see the old road bed as a grassy flat lane between walls of trees. There are still the piers of concrete and laid up stone that supported the wooden trestle over Fishwoods Creek and Academy Hill Road. The trestle had a platform which held a barrel of water with a bucket in case of fire emergency. Up at Mr. Long's "Whistle Stop," there is what I called a concrete bridge in the middle of the woods, about thirty feet high having grass and wild flowers on top spanning a very small stream. I was informed that this was a culvert and was so built, high and wide, in order to accommodate not only the stream but a wagon and team of horses for the farmers to get to their fields.

Perfect Brain Service Offered

The railroad was acquired by the Philadelphia Reading and New England Railroad. This company published a rather extensive brochure extolling the values of spending a vacation in the Catskill and Berkshire Mountains

or in the valleys of the Hudson, Walkill or Conn. Rivers, all of which is "now possible to reach by the means of a perfect train service". This booklet, loaned through the courtesy of Helen Hermans, is a delight to read. One may take a "ride" from Hartford, Conn. to Campbell Hall N. Y. taking that summer vacation of somewhere around the early nineteen hundreds.

You could stay at Maple Glen Farm owned by L. W. Schultz near Rock City. For an adult at $5.00 a week (children half price) there would be free transportation from the Red Hook Station, a stay at an "old fashioned farm house with plenty of shade, wide meadows, high hills, magnificent views, and no malaria." It is said that Mrs. Schultz took in so many summer boarders from Brooklyn that the lane finally took the name of Brooklyn Heights Road, but I don't know if that's the gospel truth.

Henry Pink, now Silver Lake Camp, offered the same as Mrs. Schultz with the added bonus of a "large hall with piano used for dancing. Guests taken out riding free of charge."

Henry, Peter and Harvey Near had a monopoly on the accommodations listed for Jackson's Corners with adults being charged $4.00 a week and "transients $1.00 a day" at all three places. The Red Hook area is described as "a land of plenty this, where health and good living reign . . . the air is light, clear, and invigorating."

So whether you took the train to school, to go visiting, to get to your summer home or vacation, or if you were wont to call it the "Hucklebush" or "Hookerbush," it still remains a part of the town in fact and memory.

Barbara Thompson

Sept. 1, 1745: Doctor Cornelus Rasbun agreed with for 20 shills per jear for to doctor my lamely. Due him—£1-0-0. From Francis Filkin's account book.