Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1903 — A $1,000,000 HITCHING POST. [ARTICLE]

A $1,000,000 HITCHING POST.

Relic of Costly Experiment Made Uporr the Erie Railroad Sixty Years Ago. J. B. Posten has in front of his house at Bath, N. Y., what he calls a mllllon-dollar hitching post. It is a white oak post, and was removed from a field near Canister, Steuben county, N. Y., and is believed to be the last of thousands of posts that vtere driven for a distance of more than one hundred miles on the route of the New York and Erie railroad when it was being constructed through the Susquehanna, Canisteo and Allegany valleys sixty-two years ago. It was intended to elevate the rails for the railroad on these posts instead' of laying them on a solid roadbed. This plan of railroad building was abandoned before a rail was put down. The money spent in the useless work amounted to more than $1,000,000 and drove the Erie into its first bankruptcy. The owner of this relic of the old pile roadbed of the Erie obtained it last fall while visiting relatives in the vicinity of where it stood, a lone monument to the costly folly that placed it there two generations ago.