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Excerpt: Steel and Grit

Steel and Grit: A History of the Lower Hudson Valley and the Bear Mountain Bridge explores the story behind the bridge’s construction as well as the fundraising and community-led efforts that radically reshaped the region. In this excerpt, Barbara Cali takes readers behind the scenes of the opening day celebration. The parade of cars carrying the many guests invited to the opening-day festivities for the Bear Mountain Bridge reached the eastern-approach roadway of the newly completed span just as the fifty-piece West Point Band broke into “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The automobiles pulled to a stop, and the occupants began to…

Finding fun while working the Erie Canal

For canallers, life and work while working on the Erie Canal could be a monotonous, occasionally deeply dull affair, especially when stuck in a port, living cheaply, and usually far away from home. In Low Bridge! Folklore and the Erie Canal by Lionel D. Wyld, old accounts of canallers’ many, often less than savory, methods of passing the time are described. Wyld’s book includes many passages directly from journals, letters, and newspapers at the time, and the typographical errors are reproduced here as originally printed. The average canaller seems to have been a combination of perennial adolescence and hearty, frontier-type…