Announcement - State-Created Archival Photos of Ware River Watershed for Quabbin Reservoir Construction Project Now Online
Fisher, Sean (DCR)
The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, and the Massachusetts Archives jointly announce the digital online access, through Digital Commonwealth, of just under 2,000 photographic prints and negatives documenting the real estate, sanitary conditions, and flooding in the Ware River Watershed as part of the Quabbin Reservoir construction, the water supply reservoir for the metropolitan Boston region.
In order to improve the water supply to the greater Boston metropolitan area, the Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission (1926-1947) was authorized to take property in the watersheds of the Swift and Ware rivers to develop what became the Quabbin Reservoir. These photographs, largely taken between 1928 and the early 1940s, depict factories and mills, and their tenements, churches, cemeteries, schoolhouses, general stores, railroad stations, homes, barns, chicken houses, a prison camp, seasonal dwellings (including camps) along lakes and ponds, and brooks and rivers.
After years of engineering study and debate, the Commonwealth created the Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission (MDWSC) to build an improved water supply reservoir and system to serve metropolitan Boston, in the valley of the Swift River, a tributary of the Connecticut River. The Ware River Act (St. 1926, c. 375) and the later Swift River Act (St. 1927, c. 321) directed the flood waters of the Ware River to be diverted, and the Swift River Valley dammed and flooded for a new water supply reservoir. Known as the Swift River Reservoir from 1926-1932, the MDWSC officially renamed it the Quabbin Reservoir on October 25, 1932. The word “Quabbin” is from the Nipmuck, the Native American tribe that historically inhabited the valley, which roughly translates to “the place or the meeting of many waters”.
A vital component of the Quabbin Reservoir project was the “sanitary protection,” for water supply purposes, of the Ware River Watershed, specifically the upper watershed, from the village of Coldbrook, Barre, and above, as flood waters from the upper watershed are diverted through the Quabbin Aqueduct (at the Ware River Intake and Diversion Works), westward, into the Quabbin Reservoir. The upper Ware Water Watershed consists of 96.8 square miles, and contains nearly all of the town of Hubbardston, the greater part of Rutland, parts of Barre, Phillipston and Templeton, and lesser parts of Oakham, Princeton and Westminster. The MDWSC purchased real estate in these towns for sanitary protection.
Additionally, the taking of water rights in the Ware and Swift Rivers, and its tributaries, would impact the extensive manufacturing industries along the lower Ware River, and Chicopee River, to which the Ware and Swift flow into. At the time, these industries had extensive hydroelectric dams and water power plants along these rivers, in addition to there being smaller mills and their mill dams. The MDWSC studied the flow of water, and established stream gages along them to take measurements. Some manufacturing companies sued the MDWSC for the taking of these water rights, and the MDWSC paid compensation due to diversion damages.
Because the Quabbin Reservoir project included the taking of flood waters from the upper Ware River Watershed, the MDWSC engineers studied the flow of “high water” through the Ware and Chicopee Rivers, and its tributaries of brooks after the 1931 completion of the Quabbin Aqueduct and its facilities.
Throughout New England in the late 1920s and 1930s, there were periodic floods. Two record-setting floods, in March 1936 and in September 1938, during the Hurricane of 1938, significantly impacted the Ware and Chicopee Rivers, and the towns and industries along them.
The MDWSC engineers also studied the wastes that flowed into ponds and lakes, and into brooks and rivers, from residential structures, summer camps, state hospitals and prisons, and from industry throughout the Ware River Watershed. They took water samples which were analyzed in the Commission’s Chemical Laboratory.
The first diversion of flood water from the upper Water River Watershed was made on March 20, 1931 (eastward, through the Quabbin Aqueduct, into the Wachusett Reservoir). The first flow of water from the Quabbin Reservoir into the Wachusett Reservoir was made on September 17, 1941.
All of these subjects are photographically documented in this specific photograph collection. This collection consists of 1,923 photographic prints (5”x7”), and 64 original negatives (5”x7”) for photo prints that do not survive. The MDWSC employed engineering photographers to document these subjects. The buildings and structures of about 21 manufacturing factories are documented in these photos (including some interior views), along with damage incurred from the 1936 and 1938 floods. Flood damage in the town of Ware, along the Ware River, is documented from the September 1938 flood and hurricane.
The photographic prints in this specific set were backed with linen cloth (and stamped in red with the MDWSC name and Boston mailing address on back) and were bound in 39 numbered volumes, 50 prints per volume (2-hole punched, bound with brass fasteners), numbered from 1 to 1921. Multiple official and reference sets were created (a “Secretary” set, a “Chief Engineer” set, etc.) with some set volumes now lost. In the frame of each real estate photograph is a chalk board, indicating various real estate information, and the date. The photos have a caption along the bottom (called ‘titling’ by the photographers) with changing formats, with the photographer’s last name nearly always stated. The photographic prints were annotated by the MDWSC with property sale information.
Five separately-numbered sets of 5”x7” captioned photographic prints were created by MDWSC engineering photographers, with four of these sets now available online: Swift River Real Estate and Quabbin Reservoir General Engineering set (2,931); the Cemeteries set (1,980); and the Quabbin Park Cemetery set (108).
See,
Massachusetts Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission, Quabbin Reservoir, Photographs of Real Estate in the Swift River Valley, and of General Engineering of Quabbin Reservoir, 1927-1950
https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/collections/commonwealth:qr46sf05h
Notable additions have been uploaded in April 2022.
Massachusetts Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission, Quabbin Reservoir, Photographs of Cemeteries, 1928-1945
https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/collections/commonwealth:76537133j
Project Background
In 2018, the DCR, the MWRA and the Massachusetts Archives joined in a cooperative effort to undertake a multi-phase, multi-year effort to meticulously catalog each photographic print created by the MDWSC between 1926 and 1947, when its functions were transferred to the now former Metropolitan District Commission, a legacy agency to both the DCR and the MWRA.
The digital access project is led jointly by DCR (through its Archives Management function in the Office of Cultural Resources) and the MWRA (through its Library), and in cooperation with the Massachusetts Archives, and DCR’s Division of Water Supply Protection, Office of Watershed Management.
The professional digital imaging was undertaken by the Boston Public Library (BPL) Digital Services Lab, on behalf of Digital Commonwealth, a non-profit web portal for the cultural heritage materials held by Massachusetts libraries, archives, historical societies, and museums. BPL Digital Services is financially supported by funding through the state’s annual budget, under the Mass. Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).
Like many functions and services across our society, the Boston Public Library Digital Services Lab was shutdown for most of 2020 due to the pandemic. We are grateful that their services resumed in 2021, and appreciative of the work the Digital Services staff did on this project during the ongoing pandemic.
Co-project manager, and DCR Archivist, Sean Fisher would like to specifically thank the MWRA for financially supporting multiple metadata project archivists required to undertake the cataloging, through its Librarian, and co-project manager, Karen Graham. This project could not have been started or continued without that support.
The original photographs are safely preserved for future generations at the Massachusetts Archives.
Between 2012 and 2015, these same three agencies worked cooperatively to make available online, through Digital Commonwealth and the Boston Public Library Digital Services Program, 8,800 photographic images that document the Massachusetts Metropolitan Water Works (MWW) System between 1890s and 1926. The MWW photographs document the real estate takings for and construction and operations of the Wachusett Reservoir, Wachusett Dam, Wachusett Aqueduct, Sudbury Reservoir, Sudbury Dam, Weston Aqueduct, Weston Reservoir, and the expansion of a water supply distribution system throughout metropolitan Boston (pipe lines, pumping stations, reservoirs, standpipes).
State Cell 339-224-3558
Sean M. Fisher, DCR Archivist
Office of Cultural Resources
Resource Protection Bureau
MA Department of Conservation and Recreation