260-foot Drop in 18 Miles
During the Industrial Revolution, the Chicopee River became a particularly sought-after destination for hydropower, largely because it drops 260 feet during its 18 mile course to the Connecticut River. By comparison, the meandering Connecticut River drops just 50 feet from Chicopee to Old Saybrook, Connecticut, where it empties into the Long Island Sound. For this reason, numerous mills were built along the Chicopee River; today, many of them can be found in various states of repurposing, with a particularly famous mill in Springfield Indian Orchard serving as artists' space.
Due in part to its precipitous drop, as of 2011, there are six hydropower dams on the Chicopee River. The average flow of the Chicopee River is 900 cubic feet per second, or about 581,644,800 gallons per day.
Read more about this topic: Chicopee River
Famous quotes containing the words drop and/or miles:
“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)