Poestenkill Falls | Restoraton Obscura

Poestenkill Falls // Troy, New York
42°43'14.79"N / 73°40'42.16"W

Photographers have been making images from this spot since the 1800s, when early practitioners carried heavy cameras and fragile glass plates into the gorge to fix the falls in long, deliberate exposures. Some of the region’s earliest landscape photographs were made right here, recording the same stream and dramatic movement that continues to shape the descent today.

To honor that lineage, this photograph was created through century-old optics, using glass crafted in the era when those first images were made.

Long before photography reached the Capital District, the Poestenkill powered the early industrial rise of Troy. The falls drop into a narrow gorge cut through the Rensselaer Plateau, and that dependable fall line made this one of the city’s earliest and most productive mill sites. By the early 1800s, water from the Poestenkill was being diverted through races and flumes to drive textile mills, tanneries, iron works, and small machine shops along its banks. This industrial corridor shaped Troy’s growth and helped cement its reputation for iron, stoves, bells, and later shirt manufacturing.

The falls remained a landmark even as the surroundings industrialized. Nineteenth-century photographs show mill buildings perched close to the gorge and footbridges spanning the water, evidence of how closely the natural drop and the built environment once intertwined. As industry shifted and many of those structures disappeared, the falls retained their basic form, shaped far more by geology than by the machinery that once worked at its edges.

What survives today is the same stepped cascade that drew early photographers, mill workers, surveyors, and naturalists. The river has carried on through changing eras of industry, decline, and restoration, leaving the falls as one of the most steady and familiar features in Troy’s evolving landscape.

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
www.bulmerphotography.com | www.johnbulmermedia.com

www.noreasterfilms.com | www.restorationobscura.com

All Rights Reserved 

Return To The Hoosac Tunnel | Restoration Obscura

Restoration Obscura Photo Feature: Return to the Bloody Pit
Eastern Portal, Hoosac Tunnel
42.6937° N, 72.9994° W

Last week I returned to the Eastern Portal of the Hoosac Tunnel with antique cameras and a plan to map the forgotten ruins that still line the slope above the grade. The bare trees and gray skies of November fit the reputation perfectly. Scattered through the woods are the foundations of compressor housings and the stone footings of the old alignment towers, built to keep the tunnel’s twin headings perfectly true as engineers bored from both sides of the mountain. These remnants frame the eastern approach to one of the most ambitious engineering projects of the nineteenth century.

To the left of the main portal lies the 1853 test bore, an early attempt to cut into Hoosac Mountain using a newly designed steam-driven rock drill. The experiment advanced only about ten feet before the machine shattered against the rock and seized. The shallow recess that remains, mostly buried in loose stone and runoff, marks the site of that first setback in a long and punishing effort to push a railroad through solid mountain.

Construction of the Hoosac Tunnel continued through two decades of political scandal, contractor disputes, and technological change. Workers blasted and drilled their way through nearly five miles of rock, facing deadly gases, flooding, and frequent explosions. The 1870 collapse of the central shaft and the earlier 1867 shaft fire, when thirteen men were trapped and suffocated underground, cemented its grim reputation. In all, more than 190 men died driving the railroad through the mountain. Newspapers began calling it The Bloody Pit, a name that stuck as stories spread of ghostly lights and phantom voices deep within the bore.

Today, the eastern portal exhales a steady draft of cold air from the depths. Beside it, the remains of that 1853 test bore sit half hidden in the slope, a scar of ambition, invention, and loss at the mouth of one of America’s most haunted works of engineering.

You can explore more about the Hoosac Tunnel on Restoration Obscura, and hear the full story in The Bloody Pit, an episode of the Restoration Obscura Field Guide Podcast, available wherever you listen.

More at www.restorationobscura.com

© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
www.bulmerphotography.com | www.johnbulmermedia.com

www.noreasterfilms.com | www.restorationobscura.com

All Rights Reserved