History
Since the settlement of Springfield in the mid-18th century, the river has been at its heart. A source of power for the many industrial factories built on her shores, many small hydro dams were built near the impressive Comtu Falls in the center of Springfield.
Flooding was a common occurrence on the Black River. Particularly noteworthy was the flood of 1927. A late-season tropical storm brought torrential rains to the lower towns of the watershed in early November. The small tributary streams overflowed their banks, releasing thousands of gallons of cold water into the Black River. Homes were lost, hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage was done, and businesses were destroyed.
1 Wood, John. A Leap in the Dark: How Springfield, Vermont Coped with Industrialization, Immigration and War, 1890-1920. Dissertation: California State University, 1987.
2 Lyndes, E.J. The Black River's Rampage, 1927: Springfield, VT. American Legion Press, 195_.
Read more about this topic: Black River (Connecticut River)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
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Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)