Rosendale Cement: Built Into America's Monuments
New York
The hills around Rosendale hide a legacy that quite literally holds some of America's most famous structures together. In eighteen twenty-five, workers digging the canal bed near the Snyder family farm struck an unusual limestone layer. When burned and mixed with water, it produced a slow-setting natural cement far stronger than anything then available.
Within decades, the Rosendale district was producing nearly half the cement in the entire country, peaking at almost eight and a half million barrels per year in eighteen ninety-nine. The Brooklyn Bridge, the base of the Statue of Liberty, the wings of the United States Capitol, and the Washington Monument all contain Rosendale cement. The industry declined when faster-drying Portland cement arrived, and the last Rosendale mine closed in nineteen seventy.
The Snyder Estate is a National Register historic district, and the canal bed within it is a National Historic Landmark.
