In 1850, the Lawrence Cement Company and the Newark Rosendale Lime and Cement Company formed a corporation to construct a plank road from Hickory Bush through Whiteport to Eddyville so their northern Binnewater region operations could send cement to the navigable waters of Rondout Creek at Eddyville, since they were too far north to access the D&H Canal in Rosendale. Although it improved on an unimproved road, the plank road soon outlived its usefulness, and the two companies then built a horse-drawn railroad known as the Hickory Bush-Eddyville Railroad to replace it. An 1893 image shows the cement mines of the Lawrence Cement Company works and the tracks of the Wallkill Valley Railroad in Hickory Bush, and in 1872 the arrival of that railroad allowed even more efficient shipping of cement from the region.