MAINE HISTORIC ENGINEERING RECORD FORMER CITY MILLS DAM MHER No. 44 Location
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MAINE HISTORIC ENGINEERING RECORD FORMER CITY MILLS DAM MHER No. 44 Location: The former City Mills Dam is located within what had been the impoundment of the modern Veazie Dam on the Penobscot River, in the Village of Veazie, Penobscot County, Maine. Quad: Veazie, Maine UTM: N: 4964554 E: 523613. Zone 19 Date of Construction: 1835 ca. Present Owner: Penobscot River Restoration Trust Present Use: Submerged ruins Significance: The former City Mills Dam, located within what had been the impoundment of the modern Veazie Dam, was built in the mid-1830s to provide water for an early sawmill complex on the Penobscot River. This mill and dam complex, which contained several blocks of sawmills, was built as a wing dam that extended upriver and out from the west bank of the river. A spillway then extended from the upstream end of the wing dam to the east bank of the river, which impounded water for the sawmills while allowing logs to float to other mills downstream of Veazie. Samuel Veazie, one of Bangor’s wealthiest and most influential business men, bought the mill in the 1840s and soon relocated near the dam in the town that now bears his name. This dam served its original purpose, to provide power for lumber mills, until the 1880s, when it was purchased by investors for use as an early hydroelectric plant. The remains of the dam and spillway are significant for their association with Samuel Veazie, the early development of the timber milling industry on the Penobscot River, the shift in the use of water power from lumber production to hydroelectric power, and as an example of early dam construction technology. Project Information: Originally constructed in approximately 1835 and used by the City Mills until its purchase by Samuel Veazie in the 1840s, the original timber crib dam at Veazie was submerged in 1913 when the modern Veazie Dam was constructed at the same time as the modern brick powerhouse. The CITY MILLS DAM MHER No. 44 Page 2 remains of the original dam and spillway, which have lain within the impoundment since the modern Veazie Dam was constructed, have been revealed with the removal of the modern dam in the autumn of 2013. Several sections of the original City Mills dam have been identified as being obstructions to fish passage, and will be removed. These sections consist of the entire upstream end of the dam including the spillway and sluice sections, and portions of the dam complex at the downstream end that cross the direction of the river’s flow. The status of other portions of the original City Mills dam is uncertain until follow-up studies to the removal of the 1913 dam can be carried out. Historian: Bruce G. Harvey Harvey Research and Consulting Syracuse, NY January 2014 CITY MILLS DAM MHER No. 44 Page 3 I. PROJECT SUMMARY The modern Veazie Dam, with its associated hydroelectric facilities, replaced an earlier dam complex on the Penobscot River in the Towns of Veazie and Eddington, Maine that had been built originally by the Penobscot Mill Dam Company in approximately 1835; the mills were soon known as the City Mills. This dam consisted of a wing dam and a spillway, and provided water for saw mills that, by the 1840s, were owned by Samuel Veazie, one of Bangor’s most important businessmen with interests in manufacturing, railroads, and banking in addition to his vast lumber holdings on the Penobscot River. The dam and mill complex remained in the Veazie family until the 1880s. The Bangor Electric Light & Power Company acquired the mill and dam complex in 1888 for use as an early hydroelectric plant. The plant operated for over 20 years with a mix of water wheels and generators, producing both direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC) electricity using water provided by the original timber crib dam. In 1912-1913, the Bangor Power Company built a new concrete dam immediately downstream of the original timber crib dam, and built a new brick powerhouse with modern AC generating units. This early hydroelectric operation at the former City Mills site was operated under a number of different corporate names during the first several decades, including the Bangor Power Company, the Public Works Company, and the Penobscot Water & Power Company; ownership of the plant was consolidated finally in the Bangor Hydro Electric Company in 1924. The Veazie Project continued under the ownership of the Bangor Hydro Electric Company until 1999, when Penobscot Hydro LLC acquired the plant.1 In 2004, the Penobscot River Restoration Trust entered into an agreement that would allow it to purchase three dams from PPL Corporation, which by then owned the Veazie Project. In 2009, PPL sold most of its hydroelectric facilities on the Penobscot River to Black Bear Hydro LLC, excepting the Howland, Great Works, and Veazie hydroelectric projects. Under a complex multi-party agreement that included American Rivers, Atlantic Salmon Federation, CITY MILLS DAM MHER No. 44 Page 4 Maine Audubon, Natural Resources Council of Maine, Trout Unlimited, PPL Corporation, the U.S. Department of the Interior (consisting of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs), and several State of Maine Agencies, together with the Penobscot Indian Nation as an independent signatory, the Penobscot River Restoration Trust in 2010 purchased the three hydroelectric facilities from PPL with the understanding that the Trust, working with its partners, would decommission and remove the current Veazie and Great Works dams and decommission and bypass the Howland dam in order to significantly improve access to approximately 1,000 miles of habitat for severely depleted historic sea-run fisheries in the Penobscot River system. The Penobscot River Restoration Project (the Project) aims to restore natural, historic, economic, and cultural connections between inland waters and the ocean that are currently broken, while maintaining hydropower production.2 For nearly two centuries, the cumulative impacts of the several dams on the Penobscot River have severely depleted the river’s native migratory fish, including Atlantic salmon, American shad, alewives, blueback herring, and seven other species, which have resulted in notable ecological, cultural and economic losses. By reducing the number of dams that fish must pass on their way to and from spawning grounds and maximizing fish passage technology at remaining dams, the project will help to help re-establish a sustainable river ecosystem. As part of the engineering studies to determine the strategy for removing the dams and restoring the channel of the Penobscot River following the removal, engineers conducted bathymetric surveys of the bed of the impoundment. These bathymetric surveys revealed that substantial portions of the original nineteenth-century dams remained on the impoundment floor upstream of the existing dams at Veazie and Great Works. The structures that remain are underwater archaeological resources that appeared to have a high degree of integrity. Figure 1 presents a plan of the modern Veazie Dam and the original nineteenth century dam. Several portions of the original dam are also likely to be barriers to sea-run fish attempting to pass through this site. Therefore, the Trust, working with its engineers and fisheries agencies CITY MILLS DAM MHER No. 44 Page 5 determined that removing portions of the original nineteenth century dams would be integral to the project and necessary for achieving its objectives. The former City Mills dam at Veazie runs at a shallow angle to the flow of the Penobscot River, extending from near the west bank of the river and angling slightly toward the center of the river channel as it extend upstream. At the upstream end, near the center of the river, the wing dam joins a spillway which extends straight across to the east bank of the river. This spillway, along with an adjacent sluice, was designed originally to allow for the downstream passage of logs that would be used by other mills. Given its size and its structural integrity, several portions of the City Mills dam continue to act as a dam that impedes the upstream passage of fish. In order to allow for effective upstream passage of migratory fish, the entire upstream end of the dam including the spillway and sluice sections, and portions of the dam complex at the downstream end that cross the direction of the river’s flow, will be removed. The status of other portions of the original City Mills dam is uncertain until follow-up studies to the removal of the 1913 dam can be carried out. Research into the history of the original nineteenth century dam at Veazie was carried out in 2008 and 2013, and the photography was carried out in the autumn of 2013 immediately following the removal of the modern Veazie Dam. The timing of the photography was determined in part to allow access during a period of seasonally low flow in the Penobscot River, which in turn allowed for the most extensive view of the original dam complex. The rapid flow of the water and the potential for underwater obstacles required that all photography be carried out from the east and west banks of the river. In the absence of detailed historical records, the description of the construction methods used in building the wing dam is limited to what could be observed from the banks, supported by examination of the photographs in association with historic maps. Digital aerial photographs were taken of the Veazie Dam site as the dam was being removed. Two aerial photographs, included as Figures 9 and 10 in this report, supplement CITY MILLS DAM MHER No. 44 Page 6 the black and white large-format negatives in order to help in the documentation and interpretation of the former City Mills dam.