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 it's an 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

mind us a man for half a 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 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

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

...