Rosendale: The Cement That Built America's Monuments

Rosendale is a small Ulster County town along Rondout Creek, and it once supplied the binding material for some of the most important structures in the United States. In eighteen twenty-five, workers digging the Delaware and Hudson Canal discovered that local dolomite rock, when burned and ground, produced an exceptionally strong natural cement that set even underwater. Word spread fast.

Rosendale natural cement went into the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, the foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge, Federal Hall in Manhattan, and a wing of the United States Capitol. The industry peaked near the end of the nineteenth century before Portland cement displaced it. The mines were abandoned, then repurposed for mushroom farming and document storage.

In two thousand four, limited cement production quietly resumed, and Rosendale's natural cement is once again being made for historic preservation projects.