Bristol news. [volume] (Bristol, Va. & Tenn.) 1867-189?, 1874-05-26
From the N. Y. World.
THE INUNDATION.
FURTHER PARTICULARS OF
THE MASSACHUSETTS (
DISASTER.
"A Picture of the Terrible Devas
tatiOns along the line of Viii
Iages-The Story of Ash
field Dam and what
it has done.

Ashfieid reservoir. whose ruin has
ruined four towns and killed nearly
100 people, was a sham and trap,
whose worse than worthlessnesS OWN
ers and builders, with only common
sense TO help them, must have known
10 be sham and a trap. Its stones
are streWn thrOuSh seven milts of val
ley that was fertile and beautiful last
Saturday. Costing $50, 600 itself, it has
cost the valley 81, ,000. 100 at least, and
all because il did net cost SlO0, ,G0O.-
And because it did not cost SIUU. .O00
men have heen at work for two very
solem and sad days, and have picked
up llS bruised and torn bodies, so that
there is scarcely house in which
there is got one dead. To-day the last
of the collins have come up the valley
and these dead will he buried out of
our sight. Could they come back to
this world they would scarcely know
the valley of the Lie king Water, 80
great was its change when their great
er change came. 1t is soYn with
stones like the DEVILS Garden in the
Hnlyoke range, and this from the very
site of the dam down to Warmers
Flats, that common receptacle of dead
lithihiA lIlc NH DtION
Leeds. Let us go over the track Of
these stone and see whence and why
they came to- be laid as they are. acres
of boulGers over the meadows and
dOOr-yar,ls and over the 81 .cs of hun
dred vanished homes. Ashfield dam,
what is left of it, is opened to amy
ones inspection. Perhaps with the
help of Mr. Emory b. Wells, of North
ampton, who was one of the contrac-
tors for building the dam, we shall be
able to begin at the very beginning
and learn whether that beginning was
in May, 1874, or in July, 1865. In
July, 1865, the mill owners of Licking
Water Valley, who had a reservoir at
Goshen. OH the west branch of the
river, to feed their mills when the
natural stream went dry, wanted an
other, and proposed to put it on the
east branch Oh the river. There were
some objections, principally from the
owners of los acres proposed to be oc-
cupied by this new reservoir, but in
fact from residents of the valley who
had lived tor twelve years in fear
that the Goshen dam would burst
1t is Tor it was; it is cnaos now) a
broad and level plain, gradually though
irregularly narrowing till it gets up TO
Williamsburg, where it splits into two
steep gOrges, running northeast and
northwest. The incline is gradual on
the plain. In the gorges it is one foot
in every six, Every spring when the
snow and ice comes off the cold hills
the Insignificant stream swelIs to a
torreDt. which has to be watched or
makes trouble. The people can pro-
vide for that, but they are not IN a
state of perpetual readiness for del
uge. because they have been weak
enough TO suppose, some of them, that
with the character of the valley so well
understood as they understood il, any
reservoir that might be built by their
own townsmen would be the more
strengthened-hecaus the peculiar dam
ger was 30 well and universally under
stood. That was their mistake. The
mill owners wanted q reservoir, but
they also wanted to pay only $50, 900
for the dam. How, then, did they go
to work to build this remarkably
cheap dam? 1t had to be 500 feet
long, because God had put the hills thus
far apart. 1t had TO hold 1000, 600 tons
of water, because the mill owners want
ed so much water. But above all it had
to cost $50, 900, so Mr.. Wells, with
others, contracted to furnish it for that
amount. Mr.. Harding. then of Flor
ence, now of Northampton, was the
engineer. Mr.. Wells, says they went
down TO hard-pau. except, indeed, for
few feet near one end, where they
builded on good. hard bed of gravel.
Well. the gEeat rent in the dam at the
east side went through foundation and
all, aud there is now disclosed what
this hard-pan was at this end, namely,
a bed of hard clay, smoothly sloping
diagonally down the stream. A little
to the west of this the lower tier of the
foundation remains, aud it is on an ex-
act level with the bed of the empty
lake above. Now rs to the wall itself,
the backbone of the dam. 1t was
made of rough stone of all shapes and
sizes, five feet thick at the base and
diminishing in its rise of forty feet
from its lowest level 10 width of two
feet at the top. five feet broad at the
base, at least 400 feet long, and fcrty
feet high. The back bone of this dam
does not impress one with its strength,
does il? The stones of which it was