Ninety years ago this month, the Conklingville Dam went into operation. The dam was designed, in part, to control meltwater flowing out of the Adirondacks and into the Hudson River. Prior to its construction, frequent flooding bedeviled communities along the upper Hudson. The flood of late March 1913, for example, saw the Hudson at an all-time high floodstage and led to the decision to create Great Sacandaga Lake with a new dam.
This kind of flooding was not unknown in the colonial era. In the seventeenth century the patroonship of Rensselaerswijck was particularly impacted by spring flooding. For example, an extreme springtime flood occurred in 1666 that piled ice as high as the roofs, saw sand and wood cover farms, and washed buildings away. Many farms never recovered, and Rensselaerswijck suffered economically for years. Jeremias and Maria van Rensselaer and their children had to abandon their home and temporarily live elsewhere. Nearly 20 years later, Maria told a visitor that when the ice broke up it “carried away her entire mansion, and everything connected with it."* * Correspondence of Maria van Rensselaer, p. 214. Thank you to Chelsea Teale for contributing this entry. |
