SCHOHARIE — Late in the 19th Century, stone was king of building materials and much of the cut stone that helped transform New York into the Empire State came from Schoharie County.

The Schoharie County Historical Society is hosting local author Dana Cudmore for a look at how that demand for stone impacted Schoharie County during his lecture “Boom and Bust: The Abandoned Stone Quarries of Schoharie County” on Sunday, May 7, at 2 p.m. at Schoharie’s Lasell Hall.

Cudomore has written three books on the caves and limestone quarries of Schoharie County.

“In the decades before concrete, there was cut stone,” said Cudmore in a release from the historical society. “In the final years of the 19th Century, Schoharie County quarries supplied millions of tons of it to help build New York.”

From the Brooklyn Bridge to New York’s expanding barge canal system, the numerous engineering marvels of the period created a huge demand for cut building stone from upstate and elsewhere. However, explains Cudmore, the boom was short-lived.

There were eight limestone quarries in the town of Cobleskill, with six in the village alone. The largest, located near Barnerville, employed 450 men to fulfill a huge contract with the city of New York, worth the equivalent of approximately $65 million today.

These are not the same quarries we see today; they have all since been abandoned. This presentation looks at some of the largest and catalogs the others, long forgotten.

A question-and-answer period will follow the presentation.

Signed copies of Cudmore’s 2021 book, “Underground Empires: Two Centuries of Exploration, Adventure, and Enterprise in NY’s Cave Country,” will be available to those attending and can be found locally and online at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Admission is by donation. Lasell Hall is located at 262 Main Street in Schoharie.