1994 Town of Knox Comprehensive Plan: Travel

Travel

Before plank roads and railroads, farmers were obliged to carry all their marketable produce to Albany in lumber wagons, traveling through deep sands for about half way. A letter to the editor in 1884 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."

An issue of the Enterprise in 18 98 reminisced about the stage coach:

"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 boot 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."

In the 1920's, transportation to the city was provided by the Jitney bus, a gasoline - powered vehicle with open sides. Later, in the 1940's, Wade's bus service brought workers from Middleburg to Schenectady.