USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume II > Part 14
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HOLYOKE, THE PAPER CITY
the Armistice and on April 29, 1919, Company D of Holyoke was mustered out at Camp Devens and returned to Holyoke, where they were accorded a great welcome.
An epidemic of serious fires broke out shortly after the war. The Second Congregational Church, at the corner of Maple and Appleton, was burned and another blaze did considerable damage at
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HOLYOKE HIGH SCHOOL
the Whiting farm on Northampton Street. In 1921 the Judd Paper Company's building on Race Street was completely demolished by fire.
Another catastrophe came when $30,000 worth of damage was wrought by fire to a large barn at the Brightside Catholic Orphanage in January of 1923, but quick and efficient work on the part of the fire- men kept the blaze from spreading to the other buildings.
In the year 1923 two important clubs were formed, the Lions and the Exchange clubs. The Women's Municipal League became the
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Holyoke Women's Club. An important business transaction affect- ing the business life of Holyoke was made when the Chemical Com- pany purchased the land and buildings of the Holyoke Envelope Com- pany on Main Street. Perhaps the outstanding event of the entire year came in the last of August and first part of September, when the great semi-centennial celebration of the city was held, with an his- torical pageant, anniversary ball, and mammoth civic parade.
The American Writing Paper Company announced in 1925 that it intended to center all its manufacturing activities in Holyoke. A momentous change came in Holyoke journalism when the Holyoke "Telegram" merged with the "Transcript" to form the new "Tran- script-Telegram." And in the field of art came the news that Rose Desrosiers, a native of Holyoke, had made her operatic début in the opera "Thais" in Paris. The Hadley Falls Trust Company and the City Bank merged, and William and Joseph Skinner gave a new clinic to the Holyoke Hospital. The entire city seemed to be under- going a series of progressive changes and quick modernization.
The Lyman mills faded from Holyoke's industrial picture despite the liquidation of the company in a desperate effort to save it and the property was purchased by the Whiting Paper Company. The Chemical Paper Company started work on a half-million dollar addi- tion and work was also started on the new Holyoke Water Power plant, while the National Blank Book Company announced plans for a hundred thousand dollar mill. The Marvellum Paper Company acquired the Whitmore Paper Company plant and a disastrous fire occurred in the Germania Mills with consequent loss of $100,000.
The worst conflagration in Holyoke's history came in 1930, when a $1,250,000 blaze destroyed the Casper Ranger Lumber Company and did vast damage to the Farr Alpaca Company and the Skinner Mills and for a time threatened the entire business section of the city. Even the city hall tower caught fire, but fortunately help had already been called and the big booster pump from Springfield was powerful enough to raise the water to the top of the tower and save the city hall. The high wind and congested location of the lumber yard required the combined efforts of firemen and volunteers from Holyoke, Chicopee, Springfield, West Springfield, South Hadley, Westfield and North- ampton to finally control the blaze. Another spectacular fire was the burning of the summit house on Mount Tom.
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Holyoke people were in the meantime making names for them- selves everywhere. Mrs. Russell W. Magna, later President-General, was elected Librarian-General of the Daughters of the American Revolution at Washington. Prescott Childs was appointed American Consul at Montevideo, and Jerome O'Connor, a sculptor and former resident of Holyoke, was selected to design the Lusitania Memorial. Many of the men and women who had been pioneers in Holyoke and influential in its progress and development passed on. J. L. Perkins, one of the industrial leaders of Holyoke was one of these, and Wil- liam Judd, a veteran Holyoke educator, died at the age of seventy- five. Belle Skinner died of pneumonia in Paris while she was on a visit to Holyoke's adopted village of Haton-Chatel. In her will she left $100,000 to the Skinner Coffee House, besides other large bequests. At Fruitland Park, W. G. Dwight, the publisher, passed away, and in Holyoke, Mrs. Catharine Shea, Holyoke's oldest resi- dent and one of the pioneer women of the city, died at the age of 103.
A signal honor came to Holyoke when William F. Whiting was named United States Secretary of Commerce by President Calvin Coolidge in 1928. Mr. Whiting was the son of William Whiting, who had died in 191 I, and the entire family was always keenly interested in the public and civic progress of the city of Holyoke. It was Wil- liam Whiting who began the Whiting Paper Company, one of the largest of Holyoke industries, and who was a prominent figure in the political life of Holyoke and the State.
The first Sisters of Providence came from Kingston in 1873 at the instigation of Monsignor Harkins. For a number of years they were familiar angels of mercy to the sick and suffering of Holyoke, as they carried on their fine work in brick dwelling houses on Dwight Street. After some time the "House of Providence" Hospital was established, a building completely fitted out with pleasant and well- lighted ward rooms and all the necessary features of a good hospital. They were aided in their charitable work by the "Ladies of Charity," an organization of prominent Catholic women, who rendered prac- tical assistance and formed a valuable accessory to the work of the Sisters.
In the 'eighties, when their property and buildings overlooking the river were burdened by apparently crushing debts, the Sisters through great sacrifices raised the necessary money to meet the payments.
WHITING PAPER COMPANY, HOLYOKE
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HOLYOKE, THE PAPER CITY
They did all kinds of needlework, sewed flags, vestments and other garments and ran various bazaars. The sisters, in their collection of funds, made trips as far West as Denver, where contributions were solicited of miners. They were well received, thousands of dollars were realized, and gradually Brightside and Ingleside were able to exist on a firm financial footing.
In 1892 the Sisters of Providence, by a decree of Rome, severed their relations from Kingston and became part of the Springfield Diocese. This order is almost exclusively engaged in hospital work and these women are highly trained nurses and hospital managers. Under their administration come the large buildings set back by a sloping area of grassy land above the Holyoke Road and the river. These buildings include the Motherhouse of the order, the Beaven- Kelly Home for Aged Men, the Holy Family Institute Orphanage for Boys, better known as "Brightside," the Bethlehem Infant Asylum, the Novitiate and Summer Home, and Mount St. Vincent Orphanage for Girls, known as "Ingleside." The property on which stands the last-named institution was bought from a Mr. Holman, who on learn- ing it was for the Sisters, reduced the price from $12,000 to $10,000.
New England's largest river is the Connecticut, which rises near the Canadian border and flows on south about four hundred and ten miles. There the journey ends in Long Island Sound. But mean- while the stream has become a great river of much importance by increase from many small rivers that have their source among the hills and mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire. The river starts at an elevation of 1, 589 feet above the sea level and falls nearly two-thirds as much during the first hundred miles. The greater pro- portion of the remaining fall occurs at Bellows Falls and Vernon in Vermont, at Turner's Falls and Holyoke in Massachusetts, and at Windsor Locks in Connecticut.
Many of the tributaries of the Connecticut drop rapidly in the smaller valleys and ravines, but the valley of the main river has a gentle slope that is celebrated for the fertility and beauty of the broad meadows on each side of the slowly moving stream.
Such characteristics have had much to do with the behavior of the Connecticut River during the changing seasons. Seepage from these broad lower valleys has tended to increase the flow of the river
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during periods of drought, and the overflowing of the same large areas has retarded the flow and decreased the heights during times of flood.
Favorable conditions have been increased by the building of reser- voirs on the Deerfield River for the purpose of storing flood waters to be used for the generation of electrical power.
The flow of the Connecticut River changes daily in quantity and, while there are high and low water periods, the records of the flow at Holyoke since the building of the first dam in 1848 indicate that flows of freshet proportions have occurred in nearly every month of the year.
Above Holyoke there is a drainage area of 8,400 square miles, the run-off from which must pass over the dam of the Holyoke Water Power Company or through its canal system.
The dam, constructed in 1849 by the Hadley Falls Company, was of the wooden type so commonly used in the lumbering operations in New England before that time, and although the construction may have seemed crude, the engineering principles involved were sound.
The canal system of the company was designed and partly con- structed by the Hadley Falls Company during the period from 1847 to 1859 and the men not only prepared for extensive waterpower property but also prepared the plans for the present city of Holyoke with its streets 60, 70 and 80 feet in width.
The project was decades ahead of its time and because of its origi- nal cost did not prove to be an early financial success, and in 1859 the entire property was acquired by the newly-organized Holyoke Water Power Company.
The wooden dam gave excellent service until 1894, when the con- struction of a modern masonry dam was started. It took about six years to finish it. Completed at a cost of about $600,000, although frequently called the million dollar dam, it was at the time the largest stone masonry dam in the country. The body of the dam is rubble rock laid in Portland cement mortar and the spillway's front upper and back surfaces are faced with large and durable granite blocks, placed symmetrically. Those heavy blocks placed at the spillway's lower end are fastened with iron dogs and those on top with iron dowels. The entire dam, massive and strong, is in great contrast to the timber dam, which formerly seemed gigantic, but now is relatively
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HOLYOKE, THE PAPER CITY
insignificant beside the new construction of stone. Located but a hundred feet down-stream from the wooden structure, the new con- struction in reality buttresses the old, and between them the silt deposited by the river is slowly raising the river bed at that point. At the base of the dam the river bank is rock and not sand and consider- able blasting and drilling were necessary in the construction.
The dam measures 1,020 feet between abutments and is thirty feet high from the river bedrock. Its granite facing is an insurance against the constant erosion of the river and the destructive abrasive forces of ice or driftwood. In the dam went the staggering total of 50,000 yards of solid masonry. Its down-stream curve is a truly parabolic curve and the center of greatest pressure comes about two- thirds of the distance from the top, depending on the head of water. On this structure depends the power for the various industries, includ- ing the American Writing Paper Company, the Farr Alpaca Com- pany, the Whiting Paper Company and other large textile and paper manufacturing units, as well as a number of industries in the wire, machinery, pump, boiler works and belting fields. On it, also, depends power for municipal electricity.
The dam is located in a strategic position. At South Hadley Falls the river bends around in the form of a half-circle, creating a large, level peninsula ideal for the building of the mill city. The great volume of Connecticut water at this point, together with its fall of sixty feet, makes the Holyoke location of a dam the best in New England and the city has enough power available to almost double its present power output through industrial electrification. There are three different levels of canals fed by the dam gateways, and the various industries pay assessments, according to their individual con- tracts, to the Holyoke Water Power Company for power used.
The maximum of power is obtained from the canals as the water comes from the dam. For generations the water level in the canals had been balanced by the process of sluicing water from one level to another. This method presented no difficulties, but it represented a loss in by-product power. The water today is sluiced as before, but in passing from one level to another it is sent through generating machinery and thus permits the manufacture of electric power. This is accomplished at the Number 2 Generating Station, and here are generated many thousands of by-product kilowatt hours that would have gone to waste.
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Continuous graphic records of the height of water passing over the dam are made by an electrical recording apparatus located in the main office.
During the days preceding the record-breaking Connecticut River flood in November, 1927, the executives of the company had accurate knowledge of the heavy rainfall in Vermont and New Hampshire and of the water going over the three large dams to the north.
Hitherto the greatest depth of water that ever passed over the Holyoke Dam was in March, 1913, when the maximum flow reached twelve feet and nine inches. After that time many freshets passed Holyoke, each with its peculiar characteristics, but in each case the crest was reached and the water level receded without exceeding that record. However, it became evident during the evening of Friday, November 4, that a flood of greater proportions than occurred in 1913 was about to reach Holyoke, for at six o'clock there was a depth of eleven feet on the dam and this depth was increasing at a rate of nearly six inches each hour, while the depths were also increasing on the dams at Turner's Falls, and at Vernon and Bellows Falls in Ver- mont. From these facts it was evident that an increasing flow must be expected at Holyoke for many hours.
The entire organization of the company was summoned at ten o'clock in the evening to combat the inevitable conditions. Empty bags have always been kept in storage at each end of the dam ready to be filled with sand and used to prevent water from passing through the gate houses located at the entrances to the Holyoke and South Hadley canals. Thousands of additional empty bags were obtained from Holyoke dealers and these were filled with any nearby material after the supply of sand was exhausted.
The force of men stayed on duty all night building barricades at the end of the dam and protecting the main power plant from an inflow through the windows. The sills of the window openings were seven feet above the lower generating floor on the river side of the plant and the windows were raised and bags of sand were carefully placed in the openings forming a nearly water-tight wall beyond which the river flowed at a depth of several feet for hours, but the generat- ing machinery continued to operate all night without interruption. Had a log struck one of the window openings with any force the result might have been disastrous. Fortunately, the curve of the river forced all the floating flood trash to the opposite side of the stream.
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At daybreak Saturday morning the water was still rising in the pond above the dam and had submerged the main tracks of the Bos- ton and Maine Railroad; also streams of water began to enter the first level canal and were flowing along the railroad tracks. The Water Power Company's men had been working since midnight placing sand bags and doing other emergency work and it was evident that greater efforts must be made to avoid the serious damage that would
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SAND BAG BARRICADE
Built by Holyoke Water Power Company to exclude flood water from canal system at South Hadley Falls, November 5, 1927
result from such an uncontrolled flow of water into the first level canal.
Local contractors were advised of the necessity for prompt action and with their help a substantial sand bag dam was quickly built across the railroad right-of-way, which together with similar dams built on the South Hadley side of the river, forced all the flood water over the crest of the dam. The river continued to rise until two thirty on Saturday afternoon, and then remained about steady at fourteen feet and nine inches above the crest of the dam until five thirty in the after- noon, when the water began to fall slowly.
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The electric plants of the company continued their operations without interruption throughout the entire period and practically no damage was done to the property of the company.
It would be impossible to describe the conditions prevailing along the river during the hours of maximum flood. The pond above the dam appeared strangely changed. The tracks of the railroad were entirely submerged. Small houses formerly used as camps occasion- ally floated down to the crest of the dam and then entirely disap- peared. The passage of such a vast quantity of water over the dam presented a terrifying sight, particularly at night, as it dashed over the rocky bottom between the dam and the bridge connecting Holyoke and South Hadley Falls. Along the Holyoke bank of the river below the dam the river surged back and forth dashing against the shore and adjacent buildings. While there was some damage to mill and factory properties below the dam the losses have not been considered of much importance when compared with the tremendous damage done in the small communities of Vermont and New Hampshire during the same period. As the water in the river receded the temporary sand bag bar- ricades were replaced by permanent concrete masonry walls along each abutment of the dam and extending to both the Holyoke and South Hadley shores for the purpose of forcing future flood waters over the crest of the dam.
Permanent changes have also been made in the gatehouses leading to both the Holyoke and the South Hadley power canals. The masonry sills of all the windows on the river side of the main power- house have been raised to an elevation well above the 1927 flood level.
The first flood in 1936, one of grinding ice cakes, was an unusual one. The bitter cold of January and February had coated the river at Mount Tom Junction with a solid sheet of ice over two feet thick. On the morning of March 13 at the sharp curve where the ox-bow stream meets the river itself, a tremendous amount of floating ice cakes from up the river piled into great solid masses at the edge of the ice sheet, filling the river up-stream for a distance of more than a mile. This solid mass of ice measured eight hundred feet and more in width.
The water, which amounted to about 100,000 cubic feet a second had to go somewhere, since its regular channel was blocked by the ice. It flowed across the Hockanum meadows, inundating everything
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HOLYOKE, THE PAPER CITY
before it, and finally entered the river channel again below the ice jam. Large quantities of broken ice had come to Holyoke across the Hockanum meadows, but none came from the jam itself until some- what later.
The officials at the Holyoke Dam knew that the ice would melt sooner or later and expected it would release a tremendous flow of water down-stream against the structure. They made preparations to sandbag the abutments at both ends of the dam, so that the surge would do as little property damage as possible. It was not the break- ing of the dam that President Robert Barrett or Hydraulic Engineer Allan Ladd feared; they had the utmost confidence in the masonry as being able to stand up indefinitely, even under extraordinary pressure. The public was under the mistaken conception that the crumbling of the dam was the vital danger, but the real danger was the fact that if the flood waters came down in large enough volume they would over- flow around the abutments and gouge out a new channel through Holyoke or South Hadley Falls instead of flowing over the dam.
News came finally that the ice jam at the junction was breaking and heading for Holyoke. It reached the dam after an hour's travel, averaging about nine feet per second in velocity. The first real mass of ice passed over the crest at about seven o'clock in the evening, and the entire mass, passing over the 1,020 feet of dam across the river, took an hour and a half.
Residents of Holyoke were treated to tremendous crashing noises as the ice broke up in going over the dam and the sound of it could be heard for much longer distances up to nine thirty that evening. The spectacle of the huge ice cakes smashing and grinding into each other was something long to remember. At one time a small house or woodchopper's shanty rode majestically over the dam and shat- tered near the base, leaving only a few jagged pieces of timber below.
The ice first struck the reefs of the old dam up-stream and in doing so the huge cakes were thrown backward a bit and buckled under their own weight, thus reducing the size of the cakes when they struck the crest of the stone dam. The public works department, as a matter of precaution when notified that the jam had broken, closed traffic on the South Hadley Falls Bridge until the ice had passed. During the ice flow the water remained constant at a measurement of about 9.6 feet above the crest of the dam, the breaking of the ice failing to change the height of the water appreciably. This entire ice flood was
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an extraordinary event, as no major ice jam has ever occurred before in this section of the river.
Although it was not known at that time, the dam had not emerged without damage. In the latter part of April officials of the power company found that a section about five feet in height had been taken from the crest of the dam by the ice and this section extended about eight hundred feet out of the total width of over a thousand feet. To repair the dam with granite blocks or concrete will entail an engi- neering feat in itself and it will be necessary for the power company to go to considerable expense before the full dam is restored.
The ice jam had spent itself on the fifteenth, but about midnight of the seventeenth the river again began to rise rapidly. This marked the beginning of a flood several feet higher than any known flood on this river. The officials, noting the uncanny rate of rise of the river, immediately made preparations for an unprecedented height of water for the dam to contend with. Sand-bags were brought from every possible source, and when the Water Power Company's men were exhausted and unable to fill and pile the sand-bags fast enough, Mayor Yeorg called on the Civilian Conservation Camps for help. To Mayor Yeorg's prompt action is given the credit for saving Holyoke from having a new river channel gouged through its streets and buildings.
The waters continued to rise all day of the eighteenth and through the nineteenth, until it reached a record height of 16.8 feet, unprecedented in the history of the dam, and millions of cubic feet of water roared down over the crest and into the swollen river which angrily was flowing over its banks all along its down-stream course. The record height was reach at eight o'clock on the night of the nineteenth and stayed at that level until nine o'clock of the twentieth, when the river slowly started to drop.
It is a popular misconception that the water measured 16.8 feet over the crest of the dam. The crest height is measured at a point about one hundred and fifty feet up-stream, and it is here that the gauge measurement is recorded by standard benchmarks. The river slopes downward as it approaches the top of the dam, due to the increased velocity at that point.
If a flood as great as the one in 1936 ever comes again, the people of Holyoke and the valley below will rest somewhat easier, knowing there is little chance that the Holyoke Dam will go out.
Westfield, or Woronoco
CHAPTER III
Westfield, or Woronoco
The first white men who made a temporary abode in this region were attracted by the opportunities to trade with the Indians for beaver skins and other furs. At one period Connecticut felt she had a claim on the land and Governor Hopkins, in 1640, established a trading house at "Woronock," but the General Court of Massachu- setts wrote him a letter intimating that he was encroaching on their property. As early as 1647 it was recognized that the territory now included in Westfield must be considered a part of Springfield until such time as the court decided otherwise.
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