Drained Smithville Reservoir

I've been taking a morning walk with my friends John and Angelika Weber and their son Parker by the Smithville Reservoir for over 10 years. We've seen it flood and we've seen it drained. These photos were taken in September of 2006. I'm not sure why they drained it, but I'll guess the fish and otters were not happy about it.

The flood control dams were constructed in the 1960s as a response to occurrences of repetitive flooding. The worst flooding occurred in 1936 and the hurricane of 1938. Dam Site 35 is 30 feet high and 1,209 feet long. Smithville Reservoir (Dam Site 35) holds 1,787 acre-feet of water.

The Souhegan River's headwaters are located in New Ipswich, the flood control dams hold back the water during heavy rains, They are earthern structures that slow the release of the water but don't stop it completely. New Ipswich has 4 of the 12 sites on the Souhegan River.

John and Butch check out the Smithville Reservor as Bud the dog looks on

September 2006
Stumps remain, preserved under the water









Location: Binney Hill Rd, New Ipswich, NH 03071, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Look What I Saw at the Dump

Image
  New Ipswich Transfer Station We no longer have a dump in traditional sense. We have a transfer station. However I have fond memories of Scofield Town Dump picking with my dad on Saturday in Stamford, CT. Old habits don't fade away, so I still check out the metal pile in New Ipswich to see what treasures I might find. Imagine my surprise when I saw an Oscilloscope. I wasn't just any run of of the mill oscilloscope, it was made by DuMont Laboratories . They were pioneers in television technology. They were famous for their Cathode Ray Tubes, which is the heart of an Oscilloscope. What the hell is an Oscilloscope? In my opinion an oscilloscope is the ultimate electronic test instrument. It can graph an electrical signal in X-Y coordinates and display it on a CRT screen. If you've ever watched Outer Limits or Ernie Kovacs , you've seen an oscilloscope display. Usually the electrical signal is plotted against time but if two sinusoidal signal are plotted against each othe
Read more

The Water Loom Dragon

Image
 A Fire-Breathing Dragon I guess it was inevitable that Bill Tobin would come up with something special for the 1987 Regatta on Water Loom Pond. He was a builder with a creative mind. He wasn't going to settle with just a Loch Ness replica, this was a fully operational FIRE BREATHING Loch Ness replica. The Seal Of New Hampshire Years later, Bill would create his masterpiece. A larger than life three dimensional replica of Seal of New Hampshire. It made many appearances over the years such as this on in the Amherst, NH 2011 Fourth of July parade. I never did learn what became of the dragon. Perhaps some misty morning I might spot it at Water Loom belching fire.
Read more