Travel

Travel

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  WADE'S BUS (1940's)- Brought workers to the city. Traveled from Middleburg to Schenectady. (Winter of 1945).

From the Knox Sesquicentennial booklet:

Before the plank roads and railroad times, farmers were obliged to carry in lumber wagons all their marketable produce to Albany about half way through in deep sands.

In a letter to the editor in 1884, the writer known only by the initials E. S. states that previous to the building of the plank road about 1850, he witnessed "long processions of wagons passing along the 'old Schoharie Road'. Many times not returning until two days afterward besides the time previously consumed and yet to be consumed." In 1887 this notice appeared in the Enterprise:

"On or after October 1st until further notice the Berne Stage will leave West Berne at 6 a.m., passing through Berne, Knox, and West Township arriving at Knowersville (Altamont) connecting with train going east at 9:14 a.m. Returning – leave Knowersville for above named places on the arrival of train from Albany at 9:34 a.m., arriving at West Berne at 1:30 p.m. No stage in the afternoon."

In 1898, an issue of the Enterprise in a reminiscing letter from Emmet Willard to the editor, this picture of the stage is related.

"The Mail Coach toiled up and was whirled down the 'Old Stage Road' each day. A bumping, rumbling old coach on leather springs with a huge hoot behind full of trunks and drawn by four flying horses. "Delivered letters on foolscap carefully folded in together and sealed with a gob of sealing wax or many gay colored wafers and was carefully left unpaid.

"It was the only rapid transit to and over the Helderbergs.

"In winter when the countryside was rich in snow banks that filled the lanes from the top rail to the top rail of the staked fences."