Navigating Route 146 from the Route 20-Hartman Corners intersection to Altamont takes minutes, depending on traffic. You are the latest of the peoples who have traveled in the same direction.
In centuries past, Native Americans threading their way through the wilderness that once covered the area created a network of trails. Their trails did not follow the shortest distance between points, but meandered along waterways avoiding difficult or swampy areas, choosing the easiest spot to ford streams.
When in 1712 German Palatines, refugees escaping war and religious persecution in their Rhineland home, traveled from Albany to Schoharie where the British allowed them to settle, they left Albany on the King’s Highway, once a trail through the Pine Bush.
At one of the taverns, most likely the Verraberg Tavern, they began to follow another trail leading in the direction of Schoharie. Entering what is now Guilderland, the trail followed a small stream that ran just to the east of what is now Hamilton Union Presbyterian Church until it reached the Hungerkill. These are among the first Europeans to pass through Guilderland.
“A Brief Sketch of the First Settlement of the County of Schoharie by the Germans,” written by Judge John M. Brown in 1823, based on accounts he had collected from older residents, was the first information in print regarding this route.
He wrote that, in the year 1712, “there were no other roads to Schoharie, but five Indian footpaths … the second, beginning at Albany, led over the Helleberg … to Schoharie at Foxendorf. This was the trail which the settlers traveled when they moved into Schoharie … On this route with very little variation later went the first Schoharie Road to Albany.”
Once the Palatines crossed the Hungerkill, they veered off to the right across the present golf course and Route 146 in the vicinity of Tawasentha Park. Swinging to the south they went down to the flats along the Normanskill where the trail forded the creek.
They continued around and over the hill coming out near the top and went through what is now Guilderland Center on as far as Osborn Corners, picking up Weaver Road and at the end continuing straight into Altamont and on up the escarpment through Knox and Berne to Schoharie.
Of course, this was all wilderness in 1712, but using modern names gives the idea of the route they followed.
Early documentation includes maps drawn by Captain William Gray for George Washington of “Road from Albany to Schoharie” and “Albany to Man’s Mill,” a location on Schoharie Creek. Indicating the meeting house, probably the log prayer house of the Helderberg Reformed Church, the maps show a road similar to Weaver Road.
This route was followed by the later settlers as people moved into Guilderland and beyond and became known as the Schoharie Road, the main road during most of the 18th Century.
A notice relating to a piece of Guilderland real estate in the Albany Register of July 14, 1812 reads, “… being in the Town of Guilderland, in the County of Albany, beginning at the southwest corner of the farm of Nicholas Van Patten and runs thence westerly along the Schoharie Road one hundred and sixty-three feet ….”
This shows that the road, called the Schoharie Road, was down on the flats near the Normanskill, which is near the end of modern-day Vosburgh Road. The location of the Van Patten farm is on the 1767 map of the West Manor of Rensselaerwyck.
If you have ever wondered why the Tories were hiding in and around the Van Patten barn in what seems like a very out-of-the-way spot at the time of the Battle of the Normanskill, his farm was on the road out of town and they were on their way to aid General John Burgoyne.
The Schoharie Road was a circuitous route, time-consuming in the later 18th-Century when farmers began shipping farm products to the Albany market when time on the road became an important factor.
When a more direct route across the Normanskill and up the hill evolved isn’t known, but a bridge across the Normanskill at the spot probably similar to the site of the current bridge can be documented.
In 1804, the second year of Guilderland’s town government, the town’s three road commissioners noted “the sum of Twenty-Three dollars which they have expended on the Bridge across the Normanskill at John Bankers ….”
The Bancker family had settled a farm along the Normanskill prior to 1734 and there is a New York State Historic Marker at the location along Route 146 today. The name became anglicized to Banker and successive bridges over the Normanskill and the hill beyond were informally called Banker Bridge and Banker Hill, later corrupted to Bunker Bridge and Hill, well into the 20th Century.
But, in 1804 did a road continue on up the hill as it does today? It’s probable a simple dirt road went to the top.
Plank Road
In 1849, the Schoharie-Albany Plank Road was chartered. Investors, including several Guilderland men, decided that it would be profitable to construct a turnpike made of planks laid over parallel wooden runners connecting the Great Western Turnpike with Schoharie.
In an era of cheap, plentiful wood, plank roads had become popular, offering a smoother ride than a dirt turnpike. For the convenience, travelers would pay tolls. With Toll Gate Number 5 located on Banker Hill, obviously the plank road followed the shortest way up the hill. The Schoharie Road fell into disuse except for a few local farmers.
Once cresting the hill, the Plank Road followed the route of the Schoharie Road into Guilderland Center. Note as you are approaching the overpass today that there is a New York State Historic Marker at Wagner Road, which veers off. That is the original route into Guilderland Center and the current overpass was placed to the north.
After passing through Guilderland Center, the Plank Road went up to Osborn Corners, picking up Weaver Road and then on into Altamont where it veered right on what is now Schoharie Plank Road. The Plank Road then went on up the escarpment similar to Route 146 today, and on to Knox and Schoharie. Toll Gate Number 4 was part way between Weaver Road and Altamont.
At first successful with a regular stagecoach running between Albany and Schoharie and much farm traffic, the Plank Road in time, had its planks rot. They became increasingly expensive to replace, causing profits to decline.
The finishing blow came in 1863 with the opening of the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad between Albany and Schoharie. The Plank Road was almost immediately out of business, but the route it followed continued to be the route used for local traffic into the 20th Century.
Once the automobiles came chugging along this very poor road, they were facing a challenge with poor road surface and some nasty turns, including the one onto what is now Weaver Road at its upper end.
Early in the 20th Century, New York state stepped in to do some simple upkeep on the main highways. In 1907, an irate Guilderland Center resident complained in The Enterprise about an automobile traveling through the village “at a velocity of speed that would put a western cyclone to blush, giving people on their way to church a good bath of state-road grit.”
In addition to curves, there was the dangerous grade-level railroad crossing in Guilderland Center where two area men were killed in the early 1920s when they pulled in front of an oncoming train. This problem was solved in 1927 when the overpass was built slightly to the north of the original crossing.
Pavement
Finally, in May 1929, the news appeared on page one of The Enterprise announcing “State Plans For New Altamont-Hartmans Road” to be 20 feet wide of reinforced concrete. It would run straight instead of following Weaver Road with a new bridge built over the Black Creek.
The Banker Bridge would be replaced with a steel and concrete structure with a 155-foot span and width between the curbs of 30 feet. There would be a new intersection with Hartmans Corners, which would curve around coming out to the turnpike just west of the Case homestead, years later the site of the M&M Motel. This was supposed to replace a sharp turn and poor visibility.
A few months later, in October 1929, a notice appeared requesting bids for highway improvement for the highway leading out of Altamont east through Guilderland Center to Hartman’s Corners on the Cherry Valley Turnpike.
“This highway has needed reconstruction for some time and the improvement will be welcomed by the traveling public,” the notice said.
Of the 17 bids for construction that were submitted, Lane Construction Corp. of Connecticut would be doing the work. Its winning bid for this stretch of road was $264,132.40.
Within a week, the New York State Department of Transportation was surveying to locate the new highway, eliminating the turn off Weaver Road, running the road straight down “Church Hill.” The name dates back to the 19th Century when St. James Lutheran Church was once located at the top of Weaver Road.
In addition, other sharp curves were to be eliminated including the one at Osborn Corners where the road swung in front of the one-room school. The road, instead, would go straight behind the rear of the school.
April 1930 brought construction crews to town. Their first job was to clear trees along where the road would be widened.
By June, the construction company had begun laying cement and was expected to reach the railroad bridge in Guilderland Center within the week. Two weeks later, all concrete had been put down between Altamont and work would soon begin on the steelwork on the new Bunker Bridge.
Finally, the Aug. 29 Enterprise announced the opening of the “new concrete highway that is one of the finest pieces of engineering to be seen in this part of the country. One may now drive from Altamont to Guilderland in less than 15 minutes, over road as smooth as a parlor floor.”
If ever you are driving Route 146 at a low-traffic time, recall that before you Native Americans hunting or trading, desperate Huguenots trudging to Schoharie, early settlers establishing farms, Patriots and Tories at war with each other, a clattering stage coach carrying passengers, early motorists racing through at 15 or 20 miles per hour all were here before you, and in a few spots over exactly the same stretch of road.
Realize that even this mundane strip of highway has a long and rich history.
