Tours, A Mine, and Hours of Fun!

The Cave House & Pavilion Hotel, circa 1880

Learn
more about this unique private-industry initiative to revitalize an entire community! Including the historic Cave House, Howes Cave, a long-abandoned quarry, natural cement mine, and much more.



Greetings from Howes Cave, NY!



Watch here for progress reports!

Plans
by Cobleskill Stone Products to revitalize the abandoned Howes Cave limestone quarry include a unique mix of the natural resources industry, geology and its industrial applications, history, agriculture, and much more!

Creating a National Showcase

Plans
by Cobleskill Stone Products to revitalize a long-abandoned industrial community and popular mid-1800s travel destination are a model of rural economic revitalization.
Based
largely on plans published in 1993 for a master's degree in architecture thesis, the


Lester Howe
1810-1888

But at one time in the mid-1900s, the North American Cement Company there was the county's largest private employer; closing in 1976, it left about 150 out of work.

Cobleskill
Stone Products is purchasing nearly 350 acres of the quarry, its facilities, and some of the surrounding

former Howes Cave cement quarry and property in Schoharie County is being turned into a national showcase for what municipal planners term "adaptive re-use".
When
completed, the quarry project will combine the heavy, natural resources industry with elements of tourism, education, and agribusiness, according to developer Emil Galasso, president of Cobleskill Stone Products, Inc.
The
Howes Cave quarry and surrounding hamlet within the Town of Cobleskill, southwest of Albany, has been virtually abandoned for several decades. The manufacturing facilities in this dust-covered community have been left to rust, vandalized and boarded up. 		property. In addition to the mining rights, the property includes more than one half-mile of famous Howes Cave that has not been open to visitors for nearly a century.
(Nationally
renowned Howe Caverns is the back half of the mile-long cave, discovered in 1842. It was opened with a name change in 1929 after developers sank a shaft for an elevator entrance to bypass the bustling cement quarry.)

THE CAVE HOUSE MUSEUM

In
addition to utilizing the latest technology to again mine the surface quarry, Cobleskill Stone Products will dedicate a portion of the site as a non-profit museum

and educational center for mining and geology. A hotel built of cut limestone in 1865 to accommodate the early explorers of Howes Cave, will serve as a visitors center.

"This
is an exciting project that combines several industries to economically revive a distressed community, create jobs, and provide stewardship for an important geologic area", said Alicia Terry, director of the county's planning and development agency.

Cobleskill Stone Products Vice-President Michael Galasso and employee Gary Lull in the Howes Cave Quarry.

Cobleskill
Stone is purchasing the bulk of the acreage listed on the tax rolls as vacant mine property from the Schoharie County Industrial Development Agency and Callanan Industries of Albany. The IDA began acquiring bits and pieces of the site in lieu of back taxes in 1984.

The
quarry site is located within both the towns of Cobleskill and Schoharie; the total current assessment as vacant mining property is less than $200,000.

Hopeful
of stimulating the Howes Cave economy and returning the property to the tax rolls as an active business parcel, over the last dozen years the IDA has met with moderate success in placing small businesses in the abandoned quarry buildings. Additionally, they invested in some infrastructure renovations and rehabilitated the former stock house, machine shop, and crane storage building.

A NEW VISION

Now
in the hands of private industry, there is again hope for Howes Cave. Clemens McGiver, of Cobleskill, whose thesis for Renselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy is guiding much of the effort, worked in conjunction with the IDA over a 3 1/2 year period which began in 1985 to develop the revitalization possibilities.
"The
quarry site has inherent beauty in a state of arrested decay and in the unnatural landscape from its previous industrial abuse", said McGiver.
Realizing
the area's unique geology, McGiver consulted with Ben Guenther (the Cave House Museum Education Coordinator) of Decatur, who has since rediscovered the 150-year-old underground mine, and mapped much of the 11 acres that lies beneath the Howes Cave quarry.

Paul Rubin, a professor at Ulster County Community College leads an environmental geology class through the quarry.

"There
are mule tracks from a century ago that look as if they were made yesterday", Guenther said.
Unlike
a traditional industrial park, the project includes a variety of complimentary ventures which are closely associated with the stone industry. Specific components of the proposal include:

The Cave House today. Work has begun to restore this historic hotel

  • re-activating the abandoned limestone mining operation, providing crushed stone and other rough process stone products for regional sales;

  • creating a specialty saw shop for cut stone used in architectural and building trades;

  • renovating the historic Cave House as a combined museum of mining and geology;

  • offering walking tours of the two caves on the site, Howes and Barytes (a section of Howes Cave).

  • creating an geological education center in the Cave House with displays and classroom space for lectures by nationally-known experts in the fields of earth and natural sciences.

  • creating a mining museum at the Cave House, emphasizing the industry's historic and contemporary importance, and offer walking tours of a working (surface) mine to show various stages of modern quarrying, crushing, washing and distribution processes.

  • constructing a combined geothermal/solar greenhouse to provide a stable, year-round agricultural growing facility using 48-degree underground temperature from the mine as its geothermal heat sink. Dedicated to research and development, the greenhouse project will promote similar projects around the region and be a featured part of the walking quarry tour.

  • continuing to provide a rent-free facility for the local volunteer fire department association, and expand the center to include others' training in emergency response and rescue services for mining and underground rescues.

TIMETABLE AND COST

Developers
estimate Cobleskill Stone Products will begin operation of the mine in the summer of 2006. renovations to the Cave House are expected to be completed by 2009, and the entire scope of the Howes Cave Quarry Project to be completed within 5 to 7 years.
The
total project will cost an estimated $8 million.
The
project has been greeted with enthusiastic support from all component industries and their affiliates, from scientists, educators, and town and county officials, as well as the region's local environmental group, Citizens for a Clean Environment.
"The
quarry is a wonderful outdoor laboratory with outstanding exposures of the Silurian and lower Devonian Rocks of the Helderbergs, more than 400 million years old" said William Kelly, chief geologist for the New York State Museum. "In addition to the excellent stratigraphy (the study of successive rock layers), the mine contains well exposed examples of fault and karst (cave) development...it provides a great location to study geology in the field."