The Mill River Flood: May 16, 1874
When the Williamsburg Reservoir Company set out to build a reservoir dam to increase their waterpower in 1864, one civil engineer quoted them a price of $100,000. Frustrated with that cost, the company, a group of 11 men who operated factories along the Mill River, opted to dictate its own design to an incautious local engineer who had never designed a dam. The contractors they hired for $22,000 to construct the dam made the inadequate design worse. Without regulations on dam construction, the Reservoir Company was free to design and build the dam as they wished. Anxious Valley residents had to trust the reassurances of the manufacturers that the dam would hold. The result of this lack of care and regulation was the Mill River flood, the first major dam disaster in the United States and one of the greatest calamities of the 19th century.
It happened early on the morning of May 16, 1874, in the hills above the towns of Williamsburg and Northampton, when the reservoir dam suddenly burst, sending an avalanche of water down a narrow valley lined with factories, farms, and homes. Within an hour, 139 people were dead, and four mill villages—Williamsburg village, Skinnerville, Haydenville, and Leeds—were washed away.
The Mill River flood immediately became one of the nation’s biggest news stories. Newspapers and magazines reported survivors’ daring escapes from the floodwaters and described the horrors of the search for the dead among acres of debris. Investigations showed that the dam had collapsed because it was poorly and negligently constructed, but like many other disasters of the 19th century, no one was held accountable financially, although five parties were named at fault. The flood prompted Massachusetts and nearby states to pass dam-safety laws. Americans in 1874 saw the Mill River flood not only as a terrible tragedy, but also as one example out of hundreds of contemporary disasters caused by the carelessness and dishonesty of self-interested manufacturers and businessmen.
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