$1820 by December 31, 2023

28 Days and counting

Thanks to Dave Northrup, Scott Lorenz and Katie Balevic for the latest and very generous donations to our fund raising campaign for The Historians Podcast.  Please make a contribution today to honor our 501 Episodes.  Make donations online for The Historians Podcast at our Go Fund Me page https://gofund.me/777777e9  or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302.  We need to raise an additional $1820 by December 31(we looked it up on Google, that is the last day of the year) to reach our $7000 goal for 2023.  

The superhighway that wasn’t built

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History 

   Amsterdam was once proposed as the western end of a 419-mile, four-lane road called the east-west highway or Interstate 92.

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

   Two successive Amsterdam mayors traveled to New England in support of the project.

   In 1967 Amsterdam Republican Mayor Marcus Breier was enthusiastic after attending a campaign kickoff for the highway in Portland, Maine. 

   I-92 booster W. Bartlett Cram, an industrial consultant from Bangor, Maine, argued that access to the New York State Thruway in Amsterdam would give 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 the lay of the land.  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

   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 from Vermont.  Governor Philip H. Hoff said he was "totally against" the Amsterdam to Calais plan.  He wanted a highway but favored a more northern route. 

   Others wanted a western end of the highway in Glens Falls, not Amsterdam.  There also were environmental concerns. 

   In 1969 Amsterdam’s Democratic Mayor John Gomulka led a four-car caravan carrying city officials on a trip along the proposed highway’s route. 

   There were welcoming parties in Saratoga Springs, South Glens Falls, Hudson Falls, Fort Edward, Fort Ann and Whitehall.  Vermont State Police escorted the Amsterdamians to Rutland for coffee with the Chamber of Commerce.

   In New Hampshire there was another state police escort.  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 New England welcome, Mayor 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 had 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.”

  In 1971 retired Marine general Hamilton South, an Albany banker, 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."

   The Federal Highway Administration rejected the Amsterdam to Calais plan.  Efforts continued to save the idea with the western end being Albany, Glens Falls or Schroon Lake, to no avail. 

   No east-west superhighway was ever built linking northern New York and northern New England.

TURN BACK TIME

   Thanks to reader Edward Clifford for pointing out an error in last week’s column.  The Battle of Saratoga took place in 1777, not 1977.

Monday, December 4 , 2023-Story behind the story-the story of the Amsterdam highway that wasn’t built.

Tuesday, December 5, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Amsterdam rugs go down in history

Wednesday, December 6, 2023-From the Archives- Episode 139, November 25, 2016-T Martin Bennett, author of “Wounded Tiger”: The story of the Japanese pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Thursday, December 7 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Amsterdam and Pearl Harbor

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. 

Mohawk Valley Weekend Weather, Sunday, December 3, 2023

40 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:00AM