Coming in December with Bob Cudmore on The Historians (10 years, 500 conversations)

Friday, December 8, 2023-Episode 502-Jack Kelly is author of God Save Benedict Arnold.  Arnold committed treason.  Yet he was more than a turncoat—Kelly argues Arnold’s achievements during the early years of the Revolutionary War defined him as the most successful soldier of the era. 

Saturday, November 18, 2023-From the Archives-Episode 369-Jack Kelly is author of “Valcour: The 1776 Campaign (on Lake Champlain) That Saved the Cause of Liberty.”

This weekend in The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

The story of the dancing Glorias as told by the late David Fiske.

https://www.dailygazette.com/

Tomorrow on Bob Cudmore dot.com 

   David Fiske, who died late last month at age 69 after a battle with cancer, was very generous with fellow history writers.

A retired New York State librarian, avid outdoorsman and native of Bangor, Maine, Fiske was known for his work on Solomon Northup...

Superhighway once proposed between Amsterdam and Maine

By Bob Cudmore

   For a time, serious thought was given to the idea of making Amsterdam the western end of a 419-mile, four-lane road informally called Interstate 92 or the east-west highway.  Two successive Amsterdam mayors traveled to New England in support of the project, which was never built.

   The highway was meant to open up northern sections of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine to economic development.  The road’s eastern end would have been at Calais, Maine, on the Canadian border.

   According to I-92 booster W. Bartlett Cram, an industrial consultant from Bangor, Maine, access to the New York State Thruway in Amsterdam would have given northern New Englanders a way to increase trade not only with New York City to the south but also with the Midwest.

   Amsterdam also was picked on the basis of topography.  Cram said to move the road a few miles east or west from the city would add significantly to the cost because of steeper grades

   In 1967 Amsterdam Mayor Marcus Breier was said to be enthusiastic attending a campaign kickoff for the highway in Portland, Maine.  In 1968, the year Amsterdam’s Mohawk Carpets stopped producing rugs in the city, Cram pitched the highway before a crowd of 125 business and community leaders at the local Tepee restaurant.  

    Cram said the road would have a seventy mile per hour speed limit.  Realistically, he said, the federal government would not be able to contribute its proposed ninety percent share of the cost until the Vietnam War ended.

   Later that year there was opposition.  Governor Philip H. Hoff of Vermont said he was "totally against" the Amsterdam to Calais plan.  He favored a more northern route.  There were environmental concerns.  Some favored a western end of the highway in Glens Falls, not Amsterdam.

   On Sunday June 8, 1969 Amsterdam Mayor John Gomulka led a four-car caravan carrying city officials on a trip along the proposed route.  There were welcoming groups in Saratoga Springs, South Glens Falls, Hudson Falls, Fort Edward, Fort Ann and Whitehall.  Vermont State Police escorted the Amsterdamians to Rutland for a coffee break with the Chamber of Commerce.

   In New Hampshire there was another state police escort as the group stopped at Meredith, Laconia and other villages.  State police in Maine escorted Mayor Gomulka and his party to dinner in Augusta.  The next day it was lunch with highway advocate Cram in Bangor.  The Mayor of Bangor, Ed Porter, gave Gomulka the key to his city.  The group continued on for dinner in Calais.

   Despite the warm welcome in New England, Gomulka told the Recorder he was not pleased with Amsterdam’s indifference to the highway proposal.

   "The one deplorable fact,” the mayor said, "was the lack of interest in the project locally.”  When he asked local movers and shakers to join his caravan to Calais, no one wanted to go.

  There was an effort to get Governor Nelson Rockefeller to assume leadership of the highway plan in 1970.  In January 1971 Time Magazine did a story on the east-west Highway called “Road to Riches.”

  Retired Marine general Hamilton South, in 1971 an Albany banker and highway supporter, told reporters, "There will be a road there one day, but if we don't do it now, it won't be done properly.  Instead a lot of crummy small highways will be built. That would be a tragedy."

   The Federal Highway Administration rejected the Amsterdam to Calais plan.  Efforts were made to save the idea with the western end being Albany, Glens Falls or Schroon Lake.  No east-west superhighway was ever built linking northern New York and northern New England.

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Saturday, November 18, 2023

45 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:21AM 

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