very rainy today so you see these little signs that look like they've been here

since the 1950s and you walk along this gravel path it's fall right now so

leaves everywhere just outside the entrance to the mine so old black-and-white

photo that says workers in the widow Jane mine guys and suspenders with

hink or chiefs and boulder hats a horse and a cart they are the miners who

mine this amendment for half in New York

so you walk through the woods on this path you turn a corner you come upon

these huge holes in the side of a rock face and the path just leads you right

inside

I'm Dylan Thores and this is Atlas Obscura a celebration of the world's

strange incredible and amazing places in today's show I'll take you to a

wonder in my own backyard to a mine that once helped create the cement for

the footings of the Brooklyn Bridge and the base of the Statue of Liberty a

a mine with a long and strange history today I'm going inside and I'm digging

it to the widow Jane mine but first some words from our sponsors

you can immediately feel the difference in environment this mine is carved out

of the side of a mountain and it is this huge cavernous space where the

ceiling is a giant flat slab it's not like a cave ceiling because it was it was

mined out it's not natural at all I was created by Rosendale cement miners and

it is held up by these giant rock columns the miners left behind to keep it

obviously from collapsing on themselves and the whole place slopes downwards it

becomes this perfectly still perfectly reflective lake and it's very strange and

...