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In last week’s column we made note of a proposal to create locally a dam and a reservoir that could store 10,300,000,000 cubic feet of water and produce 150,000 horsepower.

The late Louis Simmons, editor emeritus of the Tupper Lake Free Press and Herald and local historian for almost fifty years, felt that from a historical point of view the details of that project rated rekindling. What follows is from Louie’s notes as contained in an article he submitted to the Franklin Historical Review, Volume 26, 1989. In his typical good humor, he entitled it, “Not Worth a Dam?”

It was advanced by the New York State Water Supply Commission, and outlined at considerable length in its Fourth Annual Report to the legislature, published in 1909. The Tupper Lake area was the focal point in the proposal, which involved the water storage and power development potential of the Raquette River. Had it been carried to completion as planned in its early stages, it would have made downtown Tupper Lake a cross between Atlantis and Venice — largely under water — and inundated camps along the shores of Big Tupper Lake and other area waters, as well as homes in low-lying sections of the uptown village.

The project “died a ‘borning,’” and its details have been largely forgotten, but from the historian’s point of view, they rate resurrections.

The engineers envisioned a reservoir area in that stretch with a storage capacity of some 10 billion cubic feet by raising the present level of Tupper Lake area waters about 28 feet. That could be accomplished, they found, by adding 15 to 20 feet to the height of the existing dam at Piercefield, or 10- 12 feet to the height of what was left of the old reservoir dam at Setting Pole Rapids below Raquette Pond.

Either stop would have involved some serious problems, they found. “If either of these dams was to be built it would submerge the little town of Faust (post office designation then for downtown Tupper Lake) and inundate the New York & Ottawa Railroad for a distance of about four miles. Also it would flood the present site of four large sawmills, with their lumber yards and trackage facilities, and inflict considerable damage on the lower margins of Tupper Lake village.” The report prudently added that while these injuries could be repaired by moving the structures to higher ground, “the cost involved is obviously so large as to render it a very serious obstacle.”

“We appear to be driven to selection of the narrowest part of the strait, which connects Big Tupper Lake with Raquette Pond,” they reported. Their reservations regarding that site are understandable. What had once been a timbered flat, mostly above water, had been turned into a “stump-covered morass” by flooding when the reservoir dam was built at Setting Pole Rapids, where test borings to a depth of 90 to 100 feet failed to reach rock bottom. Terming it “altogether a forbidding place for a dam site,” they could find no better alternative and added that considering it offered greater water storage potential than all the others combined it “seemed to justify extreme measures.”

Their plans for the dam indicate there were no ribbon clerks among the survey party, whose engineers conceived a monumental project, even by today’s standards. They chose for its site the narrowest point of the strait, extending from near the lower section of the present Rock Ridge housing development in uptown Tupper Lake across to the promontory on the west shore. The design called for digging a trench in the mud and silt of the river bottom, from the middle of which sheet piling in three tiers, bolted together, would form a water-tight bulkhead driven into the sand. The trench would then be filled with an impervious and tightly packed soil, further strengthened by a curtain wall of reinforced concrete rising to the top of the dam and extending throughout its entire length. On that foundation and with a concrete core, the earth embankment was to be constructed, making a dam 55 feet high, 450 feet thick at the lowest point of the base, 220 feet thick at the water line and 100 feet thick at the top. A masonry spillway would be built on a solid rock foundation at the easterly end of the dam, and provision was made for the necessary gates and a log run to accommodate the spring log drives down the Raquette River, still in progress here in 1908 and for many years thereafter.

The engineers reported that timber in the area to be flooded had already been mostly removed by lumbering or rendered worthless by the great forest fires of 1903 and 1908. The reservoir lake the dam would create was to cover some 15,800 acres — about four times as large as the present Big Tupper Lake and 15 times the size of Raquette Pond. It would have been the largest lake in the Adirondacks, with some 180 miles of shoreline, and have substantially increased the navigable mileage open to the few shallow-draft steamboats that operated on Tupper waters 80 years ago.

The magnitude of the project is pointed up in the 1909 report. Construction of the dam would have necessitated rebuilding nearly 17 miles of road between Tupper Lake village and Wawbeek, Axton, Ampersand Lake, Tromblee’s and Follensby Pond, which would have been submerged. It would have required moving, or rebuilding on higher ground, 172 buildings, including one church, one school, three hotels, 68 dwellings, 14 barns, 57 outbuildings and 28 boathouses. A map prepared by the State Water Commission of the Moody area at the foot of Big Tupper Lake showed the home locations of many Tupper pioneer settlers which would have been flooded out, including Martin Moody, Jabez Alexander, Col. William Barbour, Pliny Robbins, Fred Moody, Jim Minogue, Richard S. Gile, J.T. Johnson, C.E. Hathaway and George McBride.

In addition, the camps and summer homes of many would have to be moved to higher ground, including, on the Big Tupper Lake, the Barbour estate (later the American Legion Mountain Camp), and the Levey, Sprague and Stern camp developments, among others; the lakefront holdings of the Edward H. Litchfield private preserve; the Titus B. Meigs estate and others on Follensby Pond, and a tract of 1,333 acres bordering and surrounding Raquette Falls. The report also noted that some 4,400 acres of state land would also be flooded if the dam became a reality.

Conceding that “some inconvenience would doubtless be caused” by the proposed dam, the report said “the strength of the opposition which is bound to come from some quarters, also the amounts which will be appraised for damages, will depend on the importance which these matters will assume in the public mind. How far the creation of a magnificent lake, which will be larger than any other of the Adirondack plateau and at the same time will be unique among all the beautiful lakes of that region for the notable irregularity of its shore line and the number of its islands, the increased scope of navigation by pleasure craft, and improved transportation will go toward reconciling the permanent and temporary dwellers of that section to the annoyance and moving back their homes and rebuilding their boat landings, and to the minor inconveniences due to periodic variations of water level cannot be foretold at this time.”

The best laid plans of mice and men, including state engineers, “gang aft aglee” . . . it’s interesting to speculate on why a plan which promised major benefits — flood control, development of cheap and dependable hydroelectric power, improvement of navigation and replacement of swamp areas by attractive lakes — never got off the ground. The engineers did an impressive job, starting in the early spring of 1908 with a survey of the Raquette River from Norwood to the river’s source. It was nearly August before the corps of three stadia parties of seven men each, a smaller party of four or five men for the special work, borings, triangulations, etc., was in the field. Nearly all the topographical work was in the woods, where experienced woodsmen had to cut and clear lines for the surveyors and tote in subsistence supplies.

The great forest fires of 1908 seriously interfered with the work, a dense pall of smoke bringing all operations to a standstill at times in September and October. The entire survey was completed on November 5th, and by December 23rd all notes had been reduced and plotted at the field headquarters in Tupper Lake Village, the corps was disbanded and engineer Erwin E. Haslam and his assistants returned to Albany to complete mapping and put the work in shape for permanent record.

What killed the reservoir dam project? Probably a combination of factors. Apparently it was a little ahead of its time. Electric power demands had not yet progressed to the point where they would warrant construction of a network of dams. the “forever wild” concept for the Adirondack Park may have stirred opposition, and the owners of those 172 buildings, which would have had to be moved to higher ground or rebuilt above the flood level, as well as others whose property would have been affected by periodic variations of water level didn’t agree with the survey notion which spoke of these as “annoyances” and “minor inconveniences.”

We wrote the New York State Division of Water Resources in Albany while preparing these notes, but received no answer to our inquiry as to what was the deciding factor in abandoning the project. It is interesting to speculate on what effect the availability of abundant and cheap hydroelectric power would have had on the development of this region if the dreams of the engineers 80 years ago had been a reality. If nothing more, it would have spared homeowners and business interests the “adjustment factor” tacked on to electric bills in recent years to pay for the costly nuclear power which has virtually doubled those bills.

NOTE: Beavers were the first dam builders. Incredibly at the turn of the century there were less than 15 beavers in the Adirondacks. The efforts of people like Edward H. Litchfield, who in 1901 liberated a dozen beavers on his private park, helped save Castor Candadensis from extinction. (Most of Mr. Litchfield’s beavers escaped to the Raquette River system, where their numbers steadily increased. They became known as the Litchfield beavers.)