The Dam

The Dam. . , In 1860, Eli Whitney Jr. confronted two massive problems..., . His armory was thirsty for power. The 6 foot log dam he had inherited supplied limited and inconsistent power. Steam engines gave his rivals superior muscle., . New Haven was thirsty. Between 1850 and 1860, New Haven had nearly doubled in size. With no sanitation system, its public wells became unusable. Proliferating factories increased the danger of fire., Efforts to establish a modern water system had languished, deadlocked by politics for a decade. Whitney solved the two challenges with one stone dam. He marshalled public investment to finance the 38 foot tall, 500 foot long dam that still supplies a portion of New Haven's water., The dams's construction was just half the problem. Its stone was quarried in place from Mill Rock to your left and from the northern ridge of East Rock to your right. Eighteen miles of pipe distributed water to New Haven. Lake Whitney, the new dam's reservoir, stretched two miles to the north. Three mills were submerged. Three bridges and 20 other buildings had to be relocated. Oxen dragged the Town Bridge north to the crossing we now call Davis Street. The original dam and reservoir have been expanded twice since it opened in 1862.