Tag Archives: Patapsco

Patapsco State Park Bloede’s Dam

25 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by in Dams, Floods, Hiking

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Sunday was a nice day for a hike so we seized the moment and headed to Patapsco State Park. Because of all the flooding and the on-going construction to remove the Bloede’s Dam, a lot of the areas were closed off, which meant the same amount of people trying to cram the smaller accessible areas. Good thing we went early. Other than some parking at the Avalon side, the only other parking was on River Road near the swinging bridge, which was also closed off.

So we parked and took this trail.

I remember seeing this a few years ago. still not sure what it is. I think it may have been a water fountain, that by river pressure through a pipe, supplied water?

A Maryland Department of Natural Resources Geological Survey marker off the side of the trail.

The devastation from the flooding was unbelievable. This area is a few miles downstream from Ellicott City. Part of someone’s fence.

Part of a car.

Trees wrapped around trees…

Or just snapped off

Snap…

Debris everywhere, unless maybe brought here by a fisherman? Did find a bunch of sea glass (or stream glass!)

Heading to the dam, which is just under a mile away, we can see some construction debris on the other side.

Along with some debris you really don’t want to see in a stream.

Approach to the dam and construction site. From what I read, they are moving the sewer line, putting the Grist Mill Trail over it and removing the dam. 

The fish lift. Trees in the fence. 

The sewer line that needs moving.

Another view of dam.

Above the dam. The construction site, which a lot was washed away in the flood. I like how in this photo the sky is white but the reflection is blue.

On top of dam abutment. Debris just rolled right over the fence.

 

 

Historic photo of dam about 1907. Good history on Wiki.

These two photos courtesy of Baltimore County Public Library and Wikipedia.

If you read the Wiki article you can see that this was a world’s first hydro dam, 1906.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloede%27s_Dam

 

 

Loose Ends Never End

05 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by in Archives, engineering, water history

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Loose Ends Never End sounds like some spiritual/metaphysical quote (It does come from the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 9). But in my case it is more about my trying to tie up some loose ends before I retire. Just when I think I’m about done documenting and scanning the archives – Poof!! More just appear out of nowhere. Well actually I found a bunch more under my work bench. Three index drawers full of 3-1/2″ x 5″ photographic negatives. At first I thought there was only 500 or so. There are over 1,500 of them! I started scanning them yesterday and got about 100 done. Below is a sampling of those. 

Just glancing through the first couple hundred, it appears these are from the building of the Liberty Dam, starting in 1952. This photo shows a happy foreman on top of the intake structure as it is being built.

The Engineer’s Office – must be before MBE/WBE requirements. Not sure why the one guy has his arm around the other one?

There were four floods on the Patapsco during 1952, all stopping work for a few days – Change Order!

The coffer dams held back some of the water.

The Arundel Corporation’s cement plant.

Ooopps! Not looking too happy now. There were a lot of accidents on the job site in 1952. Most notably a crane fell, crushing one of the workers. There are actually a few photos in this group of that, but I am not posting those. One shows the worker’s head crushed under the I-beam. I cannot believe someone took that photo.

This looks like an accident waiting to happen. I don’t think that truck is capable of holding that bucket safely.

These guys are working. Trying to make up for lost days due to flooding.

The intake structure rising from the river.

I have been using an Epson 4990 scanner for a few years now. It works pretty good, except the software that came with it is a little off. By that I mean, if I scan a photo negative, it automatically turns it into a positive in a file, but it is too dark and takes a lot of work in the Photoshop Elements software. So I scan it as a positive, which it converts to a negative. Then in PE I invert it and hit auto levels and it looks just right. Some of course will never look right, only because of what the photographer did when taking the photo.

I guess taking care of these loose ends will give me something to do for a while!