Carroll County Chronicles Fall 2020

Where the end of the dam was attached to the rock outcropping, they depended only on the adhesion of the concrete to a rough-surfaced rock. Had they drilled the rock and inserted some steel rods, it would have been much stronger and might not have failed … at least in the manner it did. In an attempt to minimize costs, they used far too many stones as filler in the dam construction and far too little concrete. In addition, the stones were fairly large and were smooth creek rock and, what concrete there was, didn’t adhere all that well to them. No reinforcing steel was used in the dam itself, but some fence wire WAS used in the wall of the power house. (The front wall was only 2 inches thick!) The raceway from the lake to the sluice of the power house was earthen and the resulting silt would have accumulated rapidly in the sluice requiring almost constant removal with shovels. The buttresses on the downstream side of the dam were not anchored well, as evidenced today by their settling and fracturing. In addition, water pouring over the top of the dam would have eroded the stream bed around the buttresses fairly quickly and they would have failed long before they actually did in later years. Although we only have word of mouth that has come down as evidence, likely the base of the dam was not dug deeply enough into the stream bed and would have leaked, resulting in erosion under the dam. This would have also caused the dam to fail in time. A powerhouse was constructed and the generating equipment installed in it. A single transmission line was run to Hillsville and a single-bulb fixture was installed over the middle of Main Street in front of the courthouse.

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