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The Great Stone Dam (also called the ''Lawrence Dam'' or ''Lawrence Great Dam'') was built between 1845 and 1848〔http://www.lawrencehistory.org/timeline〕 on the site of Bodwell's Falls 〔History of the City of Lawrence by Jonathan Franklin Chesley Hayes, 1868, p. 11〕 on the Merrimack River in what became Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1847. The dam has a length of and a height of .〔()〕 Lawrence is in Essex County, Massachusetts, approximately north of Boston and only a few miles south of the New Hampshire border (Salem), located in the Merrimack Valley. The dam is downstream from Lowell and is visible from Route 28 (Broadway) in Lawrence and from behind the Pacific Paper Mill (now defunct).〔http://www.lawrencehistory.org/files/exhibits/s.php?directory=maps¤tPic=11〕 The dam feeds two canals (North, re-built in 1848, and South, completed in 1896). At their peak, the North Canal provided up to 13,000 horsepower and the South Canal 2,000 horsepower; the Essex Company sold "mill rights" to its water power, allowing mills to use the energy provided.〔 The North Canal existed before the dam, but was redeveloped both to better feed the mills and to accommodate the drop caused by the dam. About a mile in length, the canal had a guard lock and three lift locks with mitered gates. The locks were abandoned in the 1960s.〔http://www.canals.org/researchers/Canal_Profiles/United_States/Northeast/The_Merrimack_River_Canals〕 Today the dam is the site of a hydroelectric plant, completed in 1981, which is owned by Enel (now parent company of the Essex Company, which still owns the dam).〔http://www.enelgreenpower.com/en-GB/ena/events_news/news/great_stone/〕 and the Lawrence Hydroelectric Associates.〔http://www.enelgreenpower.com/en-GB/ena/power_plants/ne/lawrence/〕〔http://www.greatstonedam.com/home/the-great-stone-dam〕 == Background == In part due to the successful use of the river's power to develop the industrial potential of the city of Lowell, a consortium of local industrialists (Abbott Lawrence, Edmund Bartlett, Thomas Hopkinson of Lowell, John Nesmith, and Daniel Saunders) set out to create a "New City on the Merrimack", which would later become known as Lawrence.〔〔http://www.lawrencehistory.org/files/library/essex-collection-overview.pdf〕 Land was acquired from towns on both sides of the Merrimack River (North Andover, Andover and Methuen) 11 miles downstream from Lowell.〔〔http://archive.org/stream/lawrenceyesterda00dorg/lawrenceyesterda00dorg_djvu.txt page 26〕 However, water power required a fall greater than the provided by the natural river drop; to achieve a usable water height of no less than , a dam of unprecedented size would be required.〔 Initially known as "The Merrimack Water Power Association" (1843) under Samuel Lawrence and Daniel Saunders, the association had identified that "there lay a tract of land resting upon foundations of imperishable blue stone and so shaped and environed by nature as to be a rare site for a permanent dam and a connected system of canals, and for the building of a manufacturing city"; this tract was at Bodwell's Falls.〔〔History of the City of Lawrence by Jonathan Franklin Chesley Hayes, 1868, p. 17〕 In 1845 Abbott Lawrence, Nathan Appleton, Patrick T. Jackson, John A. Lowell, Ignatius Sargent, William Sturgis and Charles S. Storrow incorporated as the Essex Company with a charter to develop water power for planned textile mills along the Merrimack River by building a dam at the preferred site. In addition to being a company director, Storrow〔 was the lead engineer for the Essex Company and is credited as the designer and engineer of the dam.〔http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3106537?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103182709431〕 Previous to incorporating as the Essex Company, the group of men had been known as the "Boston Associates" and had made similar developments upstream in Lowell,〔http://dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/breadandroses/lawrence〕 where a dam of similar (but smaller) size had already been built, giving rise to that industrial city.〔〔http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_15342162?IADID=Search-www.lowellsun.com-www.lowellsun.com〕 The plans set forth by the Essex Company, for the dam and surrounding industrialization, were so popular that it took less than one month to acquire capital of 1 million dollars.〔http://archive.org/stream/lawrenceyesterda00dorg/lawrenceyesterda00dorg_djvu.txt page 21〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Great Stone Dam」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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