A Fascination with Disaster in Ulster County

Rondout and its Environs: Picture Imperfect

No doubt a hundred years ago a few trains and trollies everyday made it to their destinations in the Hudson Valley. Every train travelling up from Maybrook to Kingston on the Wallkill Valley Railroad didn’t fall off the track. Neither did the bridges collapse nor the buildings along the line go up in smoke. At Kingston-Rondout a few of the trollies must have come to a complete stop short of disaster but you won’t know it from the photographic postcards that come down to us as a record of life in Ulster County in the 1902-1915 period. From these images life is one long unfolding disaster.

At the turn of the 20^th century the industrial revolution was sixty years underway with advances in speed and productivity far outpacing advances in safety. In that era if one worked on the railroad or on a boat, boarded a train or a trolley one did so with the explicit [or implicit] understanding that such modern advances carried risks. Caveat emptor.

Why do we have these images?

In the Hudson Valley and elsewhere train accidents and fires, although relatively uncommon, were predictable and train, trolley crashes and fires particularly photogenic. This apparently led an enterprising Ulster County photographer or two to be prepared for the inevitable next gruesome occurrence, then race to the scenes of mayhem, take photographs and quickly print them as postcards. On postcards? Using images of peril in this way seems a gristly thing to do. How must the postman have felt? “What do you have for me today?” Such Ulster County cards must have once been somewhat common because they come up on eBay from time to time. They may also have been particularly local phenomena, an unlucky confluence of disaster and photographer that nearby larger towns Poughkeepsie and Newburgh somehow missed or avoided. It may have been a matter of personal taste.

In any case fires were particularly photogenic. Factories, storefronts, even entire blocks disappeared into the fiery maw. So too did the New Paltz Normal School in 1906 and the carpet mill at Rifton twenty years later. Descriptions of the fire fighting equipment deployed suggest the local fire departments and rescue teams had more spirit than armaments. Fire was a necessary ingredient in life but an ever-risky element. It seems likely fire departments, while undermanned, were often busy.

Sometimes the line between railroad and fires crossed as they did in Rondout in 1904 when a nearby freight depot set tight between railroad tracks and the Rondout Creek went up in smoke. So too did boats and ships moored nearby. Before the tools for firefighting were perfected and widely disseminated everything that could burn did.

Fortunately, while accidents in and around Rondout were common, fatal accidents were not. The equipment used in Ulster County a hundred years ago, be it railcars and locomotives or fire fighting wagons and later trucks, were probably consistently a step behind the cities. This equipment was safe enough but probably not as safe as it could be. The first locomotive on the Wallkill Valley Railroad was purchased used in the late 1860’s. Thirty years later many of the local trollies were also purchased second hand. You made due with what you could afford, took the discount and took your chances. No doubt the risks were understood and precautions taken.

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A Fascination with Disaster in Ulster County

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A Fascination with Disaster in Ulster County

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