USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume I > Part 41
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With the problem becoming more serious, Little River was con- sidered, but rejected as too expensive and almost impossible. With the adverse reports concerning Little River before it, the city govern- ment began to consider the Westfield River in hilly Huntington, where already a project had been made at considerable expense. But no sooner had Springfield brought the Huntington water bill before the Legislature than an overwhelming opposition arose from all directions. The city of Holyoke came forward with the assertion that Huntington was the only future source of water supply as far as that city was concerned. And on the heels of this barrier, the town of Westfield also protested with great vigor. The result was that the petition presented by the city of Springfield was thrown out of court.
At this time it seemed that the water question would never become settled. Suggestions flew thick and fast, engineers presented report after report, and hours were spent in futile conference. Finally, the special commission which had indorsed the Westfield River scheme turned a right-about-face in 1904 and advocated the development of Ludlow, which they reported, with increased sources of supply and with regulated and economical use of the water in Springfield, would be adequate for ten or fifteen years. And since there had been various experiments, all without signal success, for the purification of Ludlow
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water, the city council decided to build a filtration plant at Ludlow through which the water of the old reservoir, tainted with abundant animal and vegetable growth, would be made sufficiently pure and palatable for drinking. This order, carrying an appropriation of $300,000, was passed by the council and Allen Hazen, of New York, an expert engineer, was brought up to supervise the construction work.
But there was one man who had faith in Little River. That man was Mayor Everett E. Stone. Impressed with Little River and con- vinced of its feasibility from the start, and despite the official order for the Ludlow Reservoir, the mayor instituted a private survey of the Little River possibilities through Hazen. To Mayor Stone goes much of the credit for our splendid water system of today, since through his insistence the idea was not allowed to die a natural death, but instead was constantly before the city government and the people of Springfield.
The report of Engineer Hazen, sponsored privately by the mayor, stated that it probably would be possible at some expense to get satis- factory water from Ludlow, although no water of this character had as yet been made satisfactory for any city by any method of treatment. But where there was good water, available at no greater and possibly less expense, the continued use of the Ludlow supply could not be recommended, and the sources appearing most worthy of consideration by the city were the tributaries of the Westfield River, especially the east and middle branches, and the Westfield Little River. The board of health, always a potent force, backed Hazen up in his decision con- cerning Ludlow.
After this report, there was bitter strife in the city government, and various contentions between officials and experts. The experts, outside of Engineer Hazen, ridiculed the idea, saying either that it couldn't be done, or that if it were it would cost so much that the city of Springfield would be steeped in debt for many years to come.
But through the dogged fight put up by Mayor Stone and the influence he exercised, the city council finally reversed its stand again and this time ordered an investigation of Little River. On May 2, 1905, the findings of the investigation were submitted to the city gov- ernment and acceptance insured, and this date marks the beginning of the present splendid water system of Springfield. Mayor Stone,
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the leader in the movement, at the close of his mayoralty term was elected chairman of the water commission, and Mr. Hazen was retained as advisory engineer.
More than 3,000 laborers were employed in constructing the sys- tem from the beginning of the work in September, 1907, to the com- pletion in 1909, although at no one time were there more than 1,000 employed. The system constructed then included the Borden Brook Reservoir, the Mundale filtration plant and the Provin Mountain pure water storage.
The skilled labor for the great part came with the working forces of the contractors, but the common labor was furnished by P. A. Breglio, head of the Springfield Labor Company. The workmen in Springfield were given first preference, and at this much joy was evidenced in the south end of the city, where lived a large number of Italian laborers. Work had never been too plentiful, and now came the big job in the hills with prospects of steady pay for a few years. Practically every available laborer in the city was snapped up, and then Breglio, through his agents in Boston, New York and various other cities, secured many more. This work was not merely the routine of hiring a number of men and letting it go at that. The first require- ment was sturdy men who had the stamina to labor in the rock and earth excavations. Then there were concrete workers to be secured for the big dam and the filter plant and the storage basin-men who lived with cement and water and sand, and knew their proportions in terms of yards and gallons, as a chemist knows his in terms of grams and cubic centimeters. Tunnel workers, men who lived much of their lives in darkness below ground, were necessary for the bore through the hill, and many of these had cut through the hearts of mountains in Italy and Switzerland, and some had worked in the great Simplon Tunnel. Then there were expert choppers to cut down tall trees, car- penters to build the bunkhouses and bridges, metal workers to set the girders and a host of others. It was no easy task for the commissioner of labor of the Little River project to house, clothe, and feed these men.
There were four camps in all. The common laborers lived in bunkhouses or "sleeping shacks," housing anywhere from one hun- dred to three hundred men each, while the skilled workmen lived in private rooms and had separate dining accommodations. In this
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respect the army of a labor camp is no different from a military army, with varying degrees of prestige and varying privileges. It was a credit to the labor supervisors that there were very few cases of sick- ness during the two years, men being detailed to keep the camps clean and in good sanitary condition.
At each camp large ovens were constructed, where expert bakers turned out hundreds of loaves of bread each day. To add variety there was a daily meal of spaghetti or beef stew cooked in the open, over rude fireplaces, and there was also considerable canned vegetables and fruits included in the diet. The skilled workmen, mechanics and so-called "regular boarders" had a different daily bill of fare and paid a weekly amount of money for both food and lodging, but the laborers paid only for food, as their bunks were provided free.
Goods were bought by store checks given by the company, and the amounts deducted from the pay envelopes at the end of the week. The prices, despite the great expense involved in transporting supplies from the city to the remote camps, were the same as in the city, and any effort to raise them above this level to take care of the added overhead immediately brought an aroused contingent down on the heads of the storekeepers.
The men held up admirably against great difficulties. An illus- tration of their fortitude may be seen in the experiences they went through at Borden Brook Reservoir. It was in March, and the snow was waist deep in many places, when the pioneer squad of workmen traveled up the wild mountain road to the site of the dam for the purpose of building the shacks and bunkhouses for the great army of laborers who would come with the spring to start active work. It was bitter cold, with a sharp biting wind. On this wild mountain the men were entirely dependent on themselves, for the nearest town was miles away over a difficult route.
A shipment of supplies had preceded the workmen, but through an error in the order, there was no bread in the shipment. They immediately set to work building a rude shelter for themselves and as a substitute for the missing bread they opened a barrel of corn meal, which they cooked over open fires. With no means of com- munication, they stayed there a week, cutting trees and setting house frames, and during this time had nothing to eat but corn meal and a limited supply of canned food. Each morning they would eat
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their "mush" with the hope that a relief expedition was coming up the mountainside with a load of fresh, soft bread, but it was a week before it arrived. During that terrible mealy week the workers lived in a rude lean-to of brush and loose boards, with the cold ground for beds.
As is inevitable in any large group of working men, there were scattered evidences of dissatisfaction, often from the most trivial causes. Some of the laborers were "floaters," men with the blood of wanderers in their veins, seldom staying on a job for more than a month. Others were over-particular as to what was coming to them in the way of food and housing, and some were just lazy. On one morn- ing an entire gang of twenty-five men laid down their tools and quit because a foreman, perhaps loudly and profanely, objected to one of their number lighting his pipe on the windward side of a dynamite shack. Instead of taking the reasonable view of the matter, and lis- tening to persuasion to stay, the men packed their belongings and started down the trail, believing that their rights had been imposed on, but they were quickly replaced through the medium of a telephone call by the labor commissioner, and their successors probably left Boston or New York that night bound for the dam, so that the digging and blasting could go on uninterrupted.
An important part of the entire Little River system is the Mun- dale filtration plant. The pure mountain water which comes in is really fit for consumption as it is, but it is put through a cleansing process that makes its purity absolute. The water first flows into a reservoir, where it settles, giving it a chance to clear itself of soil. It is then conducted through a central powerhouse, from where it is directed into one of the six filter chambers, and between the power- house and the filters the water gushes up like a huge fountain in the center of a large circular concrete basin, in order to give it an air wash before it is passed through alternate layers of crushed rock and sand.
The pipes used to convey the water in the Little River system are made of steel. This was considered an innovation in New England at that time, since previous pipes had been made of cast iron, but the steel since then has demonstrated its superior value time and time again. There are twelve miles of pipe line, some of it forced through rock, but the majority through earth, for which a steam trenching machine was used, saving the labor of hundreds of shovelers. The
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most difficult job faced by those laying the pipe was in crossing the Westfield River, which although ordinarily calm, sometimes becomes a raging torrent. A coffer dam was constructed half way across the river, and inside this structure the pipe was laid in a solid concrete base on the bed of the stream.
Laying pipes across the Connecticut River was another difficult feat, but was accomplished by the use of a whole fleet of floating machinery, including a dredger, pile-driver, barges and diving floats.
The Borden Brook Reservoir covers an area of two hundred and thirteen acres and has enough water to furnish Springfield with a full supply for about five months if all other sources were cut off. The great volume of water, coming from Borden Brook, Alder Brook, and Sugar Cane Creek, is held back by an earth dam that is one of the largest of its kind in New England. From here the water runs through a concrete tunnel in regulated volume down through the valley into Little River, where it is caught by the diversion dam.
One of the best views of Springfield may be obtained from the top of Provin Mountain Reservoir, and with a pair of field glasses the time on the clocks of the municipal tower may be clearly seen. This reservoir is in effect an equalization basin that gives uniform pressure to the city's water supply, and is located in the Feeding Hills region of the town of Agawam.
The Cobble Mountain Dam is located at the foot of the northern slope of Cobble Mountain, in the narrow gorge of the Little River. This great earthen dam, at the time of its completion in 1932, was the highest dam of its type in the world, the height of its center being two hundred and forty-three feet above the original river bed. It was built to conserve water in the streams of the Little River water- shed, no matter how heavy the rain on the watershed nor how deep the snow in the hills during early spring. The new reservoir made by it occupies the site of a glacial reservoir of some millions of years ago, and this reservoir has a capacity of 22.83 billion gallons and an area of 1,134 acres, both staggering figures well in accordance with this tremendous undertaking, which came to successful completion under the able direction of Chief Engineer Elbert E. Lochridge.
Aside from this great conservation of water, the building of the dam made possible the creation of plentiful hydroelectric power and the distribution of this power from the potential energy of the water
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stored in Cobble Mountain Reservoir throughout western Massachu- setts by the Turners Falls Power and Electric Company. This com- pany made an agreement with the city of Springfield whereby it was given under a thirty-year lease all the power it could generate at the power plant from a storage capacity in Cobble Mountain and Borden Brook reservoirs amounting to a maximum of 2.9 billion cubic feet, agreeing at the same time to allow to come through the power plant sufficient water for the city's daily consumption, and not allow the water level in the reservoir to drop below certain stipulated points each month. The hydroelectric plant built near the reservoir for Springfield by the power company cost $1, 100,000 and is leased by the company at approximately $270,000 a year. The pressure tunnel alone cost $651,000.
The great dam was created by sluicing some 1,800,000 cubic yards of material into the valley between two natural mountains. The Cob- ble Mountain Dam today is one of the scenic attractions of the sec- tion. Its width is 50 feet at the top, on which there is a roadway, and this tapers out to a width of 1, 510 feet at the base. The length at the top is seven hundred and thirty feet, in proportion to the whole mammoth enterprise. Among the other features embodied in the construction of the Cobble Mountain Dam was a great spillway, dis- charging water into Little River, a half mile below the dam, and a diversion tunnel cut through the base of the mountain and measuring over a mile in length, the shape being not cylindrical but like a horse- shoe. In the construction of this passageway the muck from the tun- nel was removed by narrow-gauge cars hauled by two locomotives to the site of the division dam, and used to form the upper toe of the Cobble Mountain Dam.
The dam, built at a cost of millions of dollars, but expected to pay for itself in a reasonable time, both through the provision of ample water and ample hydroelectric power, was started in 1927 and com- pleted five years later, by the Springfield Board of Water Commis- sioners, with E. E. Lochridge as chief engineer, the late Allen Hazen as consulting engineer, and H. H. Hatch the division engineer in charge of construction.
A wave of intense excitement spread through Springfield when, in 1879, it was announced that the first public demonstration of Alex- ander Graham Bell's invention would be made. Everyone apparently
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wanted to know what the curious toy was like, and both the few believers and the many skeptics went to the city hall for the demon- stration. Receivers had been put up in the main room and chairs were arranged for the skeptics, who waited grimly for the fantastic dream of communication to fizzle. Presently there was a click, fol- lowed by a buzz, and the amazed listeners heard a weak voice say "Pittsfield on the wire !" Following this startling announcement, came the faint but unmistakable strains of a waltz played by a musician in the hill town over fifty miles away. After this performance, many subscribers signed on the spot, and others took out subscriptions later.
A few months after this initial demonstration, Moody and Sankey, the famous evangelists, visited the city. They were escorted to the city hall, and Sankey, his imagination aflame with the possibilities of the telephone, sat on a sandpile in the cellar of the big building and sang "Nearer, My God to Thee" through the 'phone to eager listeners in towns about Springfield. This marked what was probably the first revivalist meeting ever held by wire.
The pioneer telephone operator of Springfield was Frederick G. Daboll, of Harvard Street, who interested the city in this new and wondrous device only ten years after Bell invented it. A switchboard was located in a little room on Pynchon Street, and from this switch- board Daboll ran fifty wires during the first year of its installation. Henry Denver, who was connected with the Western Union Tele- graph Company, became interested and obtained the first hundred subscribers, and it was W. J. Denver who got the Western Union authority from New York to subsidize the adventure to the amount of $3,000.
The telephone then was a luxury, costing in the vicinity of seventy- five dollars a year. Several of the more affluent citizens had private lines outside the jurisdiction of the Springfield company. Among these was E. S. Bradford, of State Street, who could talk after a fashion with his associates in his woolen mill in Holyoke. The livery stable owned by Oliver Marsh was also a pioneer telephone station in the business section.
John Fitzpatrick was the first telephone lineman in Springfield. He installed the first switchboard and trailed most of the lines over the housetops for the new subscribers. Outside the Pynchon Street room there were two long wooden arms set up and supported over the
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sidewalk, and places for eighteen wires were fixed. When the tele- phone manager for Massachusetts visited the city for a field inspec- tion trip, he was overcome at the extent of the service contemplated . and wanted to know "where they were going to get enough business in a hundred years to fill up eighteen wires." Today the city has sev- eral thousand separate wires at the exchange.
The original switchboard, although awesome-looking, was a tech- nical puzzle. Following Fitzpatrick, a mechanic from Bridgeport named Doolittle constructed the board out of black walnut and rigged each of the fifty line terminals with a small nickel bell. Each of these bells rang vigorously, and each had its individual melody. There were no women operators then, and the young boy who was night operator could tell by the sound of the ring which line it was, and in the darkness run to the correct one and plug in. Like the family doctor or lawyer, the switchboard boy became a family confidant and a storehouse of local information. There was often an unmanageable clicking and buzzing on the out-of-town lines, much as our radio static of today, and central was often asked to relay the message. Miss Lizzie Lane, niece of Henry Denver, was the first girl operator.
The telephone was really in a crude state that first year of opera- tion by Mr. Daboll. No efficient transmitter had been invented, and after a button was pressed and a period spent waiting for the bell to jingle down at the exchange, the patient subscriber would have to take time listening to and talking into the receiver. The mouthpiece was a later development.
The wires in particular puzzled the people of the city, and there were some extraordinary reactions from the willing but uneducated public. One old man said he'd be delighted to subscribe and have a telephone line, but he would not permit any wires to run into his home, for fear of lightning. Many persons of a scientific bent carefully examined the wires, looking for the hole through the wire where the sound traveled. The first linemen would clamber over the housetops with reels of wire, fastening it wherever they could with a complete disregard of property rights.
The Springfield company, although crude to start with, improved rapidly. Many local people invested money in it and came out with their original investments multiplied. One story in connection with this relates that Fred Gower, city editor of the Providence "Journal,"
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came to Springfield to inspect the telephone exchange at city hall. Enthusiastic over its possibilities, he remarked to his host, Solomon Griffin, the former managing editor of the "Springfield Republican," that a man could become a millionaire if he invested $10,000 in the venture at once. Mr. Griffin did not invest any money, but Mr. Gower did, with the result that he became a millionaire a comparatively short time after his prophecy.
Transportation in the city at this time was by horse-cars, and the headquarters of the Springfield Street Railway Company were located at the corner of Main and Hooker streets. The first car was run on March 10, 1870, and the first line of track was laid through Main and State streets to Oak. In the 'eighties, as street car traveling became more practical, there was rapid extension of the lines to all parts of the city and outlying towns. There were other municipal improvements. The reservoir in Cherry Valley, Ludlow, was completed for the city s water supply, a forerunner of the magnificent Little River system. The North End Bridge over the Connecticut was built, and two years later the South End Bridge, made of iron at a cost of $100,000, was com- pleted.
Springfield's splendid park system began when O. H. Greenleaf, a member of the first board of park commissioners, in 1884, gave to the city sixty-four acres of land to be known as Forest Park. Two additional tracts were purchased which brought the acreage up to ninety-acres, and a good start was made toward the seven hundred and fifty-seven acres now in the park. This region was heavily wooded with a remarkably large variety of trees and was the home of many game and song birds. It also had an attractive little brook known as Clay Brook, a branch of the Pecowsic.
The following year Forest Park was developed, and the commis- sion acquired Court Square from the county, which paid $500 to the city for being released of its care. By the time the park department was six years old it had obtained sixteen small parks about the city and had come to the conclusion that Forest Park was not large enough.
The most eventful year in the park history was 1890, when Everett H. Barney gave his beautiful estate of one hundred and nine and one-half acres to the city. Mr. Greenleaf added a small parcel to what he had already given, a group of three men gave the Cooley
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property of forty-one acres, and the city purchased the Dickinson estate of ninety-two acres. During the same year the street railway company extended its tracks to the Summer Avenue entrance and 75,000 people by that means alone visited Forest Park. As many more probably came in other ways.
It was at this time that the city lost the services of J. D. McKnight, a member of the park board, donor of land to Forest Park and many of the small parks, and the one who was principally responsible for the plan and ornamentation of Oak Grove Cemetery, where he was buried.
The next few years were given over to development work. Roads were laid out, croquet and tennis courts started, the ball field improved, white pines planted, and gifts of elk, deer, swans, wild geese and other birds and animals were received. The pheasantry was built, and Bowles Fountain was erected as a memorial to the late Samuel Bowles, by a gift of Mrs. Mary Dwight Bowles. Emphasis was placed on the lotus and lily ponds, and several service buildings were constructed. More donors of land were added to the growing list of those who saw the value of this beautiful piece of property.
The park commission had visioned a possible acquisition of land along the river to beautify the water frontage from Bridge to Howard streets, but finally acquired only the levee, a little tract of less than an acre at the foot of Elm Street. In 1898 the bears' and prairie dogs' cages were built at Forest Park and visitors were becoming familiar with the sight of a shepherd and his flock roaming over the hillsides, and with the herd of many breeds of blooded cattle. The wading pool, built the following year, was the first one ever provided in a public park in the United States. A greenhouse was the gift of Dwight O. Gilmore, and Tilly Haynes gave $10,000 to be used for the Court Square extension.
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