The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1874-06-04
The Mill River Disaster.
From the New York Worlds Northampton ca


The Mill River Disaster.
From the New York Worlds Northampton Cor
respondent
Mill River Valley is peculiarly well
adapted for freshets, if there were me-
reservoirs at all to burst. 1t is Tor it was
1t Is chaos n0w) a broad and level plain
gradually though irregularly NARROWING
TILL 1t gets up to Williamsport. where Il
splits into two deep gorges, running north.
east and northwest. The incline iseradual
ON the plain. In the gorges it is one foot
in every six. Every spring when the
snow and ice come off the cold hills the
insignificant stream swells to a torrent,
which has to be watched or makes trouble.
The people can provide for that, but they
are not In state of perpetual readiness
for deluge, because they have been weak
enough to suppose, some of them, that
with the character of the valley so we'll
understood as they understood it, any
reservoir that might be built by their
own townsmen would be the more
strengthened because the peculiar danger
was so well and universally understood
That was their mistake. The mill owners
wanted reservoir, but they also wanted
to pay only $500 for the dam. How,
then, did they go to work to build this
remarkably cheap dam? 1t had to be
five hundred feet long, because God had
put the hills thus far apart. 1t had to
hold three million tons of water, because
the mill owners wanted so much water.
But above all, it had to cost thirty thous-
and dollars, so Mr.. Wells, with others,
contrancted to furnish it for that amount.
Mr.. Harding, then of Florence, now of
Northampton, was the engineer. Mr..
Wells says they went down to hard-pan,
except, indeed, for few feet near one end,
where they builded on good, hard bed of
gravel. Well, the great rent in the dam
at the east side went through foundation
and all, and there is now disclosed what
this hard-pan was at this end, namely:
bed of hard clay, smoothly sloping d.
agonally down the stream. A little to the
west OF this the lower tier of the founda-
ton remains, and it is on an exact line
with the bed of the empty lake above.
Now as to the wall itself, the backbone of
the dam. 1t is made of rough stone of
all shapes and sizes, five feet thick at the
base and diminishing in its rise of forty
feet from the lowest level to a width of
two feet at the top, five feet broad at the
base, at least four hundred feet long, and
forty feet high. The backbone of this
dam does not impress one with its strength
does 1t? The stones of which it was built
were cemented together so as to form, as
one OF the owners has said, zone piece of
masonry strong as a granite shaft" When
the stones did not fit, the vacant crannies
and pores and holes were filed up with
cement. Earthworks fifty feet broad at
the base and slOping to joint width of
sixteen feet at the summit are thrown up
against this barrier, and there was your
dam. They began this dam in July
they finished it, Mr.. Wells says, in the
following January; in the depth, that is
to say, of New England winter. Mr..
Bodman, one of the projectors, admits
that it was hurried along that it might be
finished before winter. Haste and waste
In an hour and half from the begin
ming, the last house had been upset or
torn into bits. Quick and terrible work.
williamsburg, Skinnerville, Haydenville.
Leeds, pleasant little towns with white
cottages arranged i'm straight rows and
rectangles, and with a wide spread of
green meadows to the south or west little
feudal hamlets, whose people were almost
owned by one man, generally he for whom
each village was named; busy little
places, with plenty of factories, plenty of
oustling life and hard work; pretty, clus-
'ered villages, clinging each around some
Jail chimney, all standing on the broad
1ats, with hills of more and more gentle
lope, down and down the valley, not hem
ming them in, but making way for them
rom out the bald mountains above. Such
vas the valley before the storm of water
oosed by the neglect of the great men of
he valley, fell upon it, and turned the
!ats into deserts, and the gentle hills into
he barriers of such deluge as Massa- ,
husetts had never seen before. At Will
amsburg the torrent was as deep as it {
'as wide, but here it reached the plain
nd spread into food. The flood went I
,,raight down the valley. 1t attacked I
not with water merely, but I
nth the bones of Williamsburg, great |
mbers and tree-bOles, and the stones
hich it lifted and whirled along. 1t at I
'cked Haydenville with weapons caught /
p from both villages above, and was here i
torrent thick with dead bodies. Here a
iere is sudden bend eastward and 7
arrowing. in the old stream bed Just i
bove the first dam. The food thus for s
loment contracted, raised into wall in its a
cry front the spoils of the bridges, houses, y
rchards, it had swept away. 1t hurled n
etore it a great boiler picked up at r
and descended headlong "
pom this third village. 1t made sieve "
the brick factory, tore out another Fl
'iler, laid hold of two great iron safes, b
Id added these to its weapons; piled d
,use upon housetop, drove two houses h
to one, cut one house into two, splin- Il
red others, turned an island meadow g
to desert of sand, smooth as a billiard Fl
bic, except where strewn with tree h
inks and stones, and carried sixty bodies o,
towards Leeds. Leeds it struck on the Il
'rthwestern corner, and broke for itself al
straight path through till it landed Il
irty dead in twisted mass of rubbish Il
ainst the hill below Warmers flats. al
he loss of life was terrible, but undoubt- 81
ly far less than it would have been but
: milkman Collins Graves, who carried
e news of the food Just breathing
ace ahead of it, from williamsburg la