Learning about the Quabbin!

BEFORE WE LEARNED ABOUT THE QUABBIN RESERVOIR, THIS IS WHAT WE KNEW:

Bald eagles are nested around the Reservoir. There is a church and cemetery under the water. It opens on Saturday for fishing. It supplies water to Boston. It covers a few towns.

My Grandpa was the last baby born in Enfield before they flooded it. My Grandma’s house was moved from the Quabbin to Pelham and is still standing. The cemetery’s moved to across the street. The Quabbin is Boston’s main water supply. Five towns were flooded.

You can’t swim there. People lived there.

Can’t swim in the water. Made up of a lot of land. Many towns were flooded.

The Quabbin Reservoir is one of the states main supplies of water.

No dogs. Only fly fishing in Swift River. No swimming in the water. Carry in, carry out trash.

Quabbin has a lot of grass. It has a lot of water. It has a lot of trees. It is very nice.

AFTER WE LEARNED ABOUT THE QUABBIN, AND WENT ON A TRIP THERE, THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW:

The preliminary work of surveying land, photographing buildings, confirming ownership of property and planning ways to relocate roads lasted several years. Some residents of the valley towns left as soon as they could, but many didn’t relocate until 1936, at the height of the Great Depression. As construction began on the Quabbin Dam, immense blocks of reinforced concrete sixteen feet high, nine feet wide and forty-five feet long were sunk to bed rock ledge. As the dam neared completion, the hurricane of 1938 tested its construction. In July 1939, the river was finally improved, and 412 billion gallons of water gathered behind the dam.

Today the Quabbin Reservoir is surrounded by a reservation of 85,000 acres. Home to bald eagles, rainbow trout, coyotes and many deer, it preserves a place of resurgent nature and having memories.

People in the towns ran family farms or small country businesses that sound quaint to our ears today. Gristmills box factories, harness, shops, a hat company and a maker of pewter buttons were part of the rural scene. Swift River Valley is seventy-five miles west of Boston. When the legislature focused its attention on the Swift River as a possible source of the water that Boston needed, a political battle ensued.

The Quabbin is thirty-six square miles. The fresh water began early as 1652, when settlers constructed a wooden reservoir in what is now the center of town. City first reached beyond it’s boundaries to tap into a neighboring pond in 1795. Industrial growth late in the 1800’s swelled the surrounding suburbs. Enfield, Greenwich, Dana and Prescott were sleepy rural towns.

In 1952 began for fresh water supply.

1936 legislature approved the high service pressure aqueduct system to deliver water to the metropolitan’s area.

Filling was done August 14, 1949. Enfield, Greenwich, Prescott, Dana were flooded. Many towns did not relocate until 1936. The largest man made Reservoir in the world which was devoted solely to water supplies. Wachussets and Colebrook tunnel was extended to the swift river. Four million cubic yards of clay, sand, gravel, were spread on top to finish the job.