Cave House
Restoration,
Museum
Planned

Dana Cudmore

Dana Cudmore, of Cobleskill, is a caver, author of The Remarkable Howe Caverns Story, and a member of the board of Cave House Museum of Mining and Geology.

Cobleskill Stone Products has purchased nearly 350 acres of the former Howes Cave quarry, and plans to resume quarrying, restore the abandoned Cave House hotel and establish a museum of geology and mining. The project will cost an estimated $7.4 million. Tours will also be offered of two caves on the site, Howe’s and Baryte’s, as well as of the underground mine.

The company expects to begin stone-crushing operations in the quarry in the Spring of 2004. Renovations to the Cave House are expected to be completed by 2005 and development of the site is expected to continue for five to seven more years.

Clemens McGiver of Cobleskill, a Schoharie County Historical Society trustee whose thesis for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy is guiding much of the effort, worked with the Schoharie County Industrial Development Agency for more than three years to develop revitalization possibilities.

Mr. McGiver consulted with Ben Guenther of Richmondville, a cave explorer who has since “rediscovered” and mapped much of the 150-year-old underground mine that underlies the quarry. “There are mules tracks from a century ago that look as if they were made yesterday,” said Mr. Guenther.

In 1865, Lester Howe built the Cave House, an impressive gothic-style hotel of cut limestone near the caverns’ entrance, to welcome travelers and accommodate early explorers of Howe’s Cave. When restored, the hotel will serve as a visitors’ center.

The stone building is the third Cave House. Two earlier versions, not of stone, burned. The Cave House was a boarding house for a few years in the early 1900s and by 1930 it became offices for the many cement companies that worked the quarry. It was abandoned nearly 30 years ago. Vandals broke all of the 46 windows, many of the seven doors, and knocked holes in many of the interior walls. A tornado tore the roof off in 1989, and the interior has suffered severe weather damage.

Among the things found during the winter clean-up were five gallons of bat carcasses and two fireplaces believed to be part of the original 1865 structure.

A not-for-profit museum corporation, the Cave House Museum of Mining and Geology, has been established and is soliciting memorabilia for exhibition. The museum will showcase natural resources; industry, past and present; the historic period of Howe’s Cave; and the Cave House hotel from about 1845 to 1930 as well as the limestone mine, quarry, and the miners there from about 1870 through 1960.

In the mid-1900s, the North American Cement Company operated the quarry and was the county’s largest private employer. The quarry has been largely abandoned since the cement plant closed in 1976.