Monday, October 14, 2024

Forge Pond and Finding Counterpane

 

Explored several ponds this past week:  Forge Pond in Westford/Littleton MA on Tuesday, and the South Meadow Ponds complex in Clinton MA on Thursday and Sunday. (Above photo Coachlace Pond)

While I'd paddled Forge Pond before, I hadn't yet seen the recently rebuilt boat launch on Beaver Brook Road which was well done...


Beaver Brook offers paddlers a mile or so of a winding course through tall cattails going upstream...
...or a short trip down the brook brings one out into Forge Pond (aka Lake Matawanakee), a 203 acre Massachusetts "great pond"...

Beaver Brook and Gilson Brook are tributaries, whereas the pond's outlet is Stony Brook where a dam remains from the 1800s...

To the dam's right is a gate structure...
...which is used to lower the pond's level in late fall.  The drawdown helps to control invasive plants.

With it being a weekday the pond was very quiet...that is until I stopped for a lunch break alongside the railroad tracks on the pond's west side.  My break coincided with the passage of a long westbound freight train heading from Maine to Selkirk, NY...
Train was CSXT M427 and pulled by 4 locomotives (474, 486, 7029, 775).

After the train left the area things got quiet again much to this heron's liking...



On Thursday I made my first visit to a group of ponds sometimes referred to as the South Meadow Ponds Complex.  I'd seen the ponds on maps and couldn't tell if they were connected by navigable culverts.  Came across mention of them on the Massachusetts Paddler website where it was stated that the culverts were navigable.  Launched from South Meadow Rd. in Clinton...

Paddled from South Meadow Pond over to Mossy Pond and its Blueberry Island...
Then back to South Meadow and over to the culvert connecting South Meadow and Coachlace ponds...

View of the culvert's narrow confines (4.5' wide)...

The railroad above the culvert is the CSXT which is the same line which the freight seen 2 days earlier on Forge Pond would have passed over...



Once into Coachlace Pond I looked northward to the mills of Clinton...


At the pond's northwest corner are the remains of Gate House A built in 1881...

...which once diverted the pond's water from Counterpane Brook via culverts to the mill.

While exploring Coachlace Pond I never saw or heard any water exiting the pond.  Thus, yesterday, after studying a 1978 Army Corps of Engineers report, I returned to the pond in hopes of finding the outlet and spillway for Counterpane Brook.  The likely spot was overgrown with tall and impenetrable grasses.  However, going ashore near Gate House A allowed me to see where water exits the pond (view is looking upstream towards the pond)...

A short distance downstream and behind Gate House A is the spillway with its overhead arch...

A closer look reveals one of the splash boards still being in place (right side of spillway)...
Water is presently leaking through the wall beneath the spillway

While there I took a closer look at Gate House A and noted the opening being boarded-up...

Counterpane Brook disappears into a culvert of its own a short distance downstream of the spillway and doesn't re-emerge into daylight for nearly half a mile at the Prescott Mill on Water Street...

  
Google Maps doesn't show Counterpane Brook.  However, this Metropolitan District Commission map (from The Central Mass Railroad) shows the outlets to Counterpane Brook (red arrow) and Coachlace Pond (blue arrow) fairly well...
The map also shows the pond's proximity to the large Wachusett Reservoir created about 1900.

The only map I could find showing the area before it was altered was this 1831 map found on the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center's website.  Note it's incorrectly labeled as 1851.  The actual date on the map is 1831 when Clinton was still part of Lancaster.  It shows only a 35-acre Mossy Pond and no Coachlace Pond.  Counterpane Brook was then shown as South Meadow Brook flowing through present-day Coachlace Pond all the way to the Nashua River.


The mill that once used the water from Coachlace Pond...

According to the Army Corps of Engineers 1978 report  the Coachlace Dam was built in 1846 and the outlet structures (Gate Houses and spillway) were added in 1881.  The mill was owned by the Clinton Company which manufactured coachlace used for carriages, and counterpanes for bedspreads, as well as carpets.  The Clinton Company later became the Bigelow Carpet Company and was owned by the Bigelow brothers, Erastus and Horatio.  According to The Bigelow Society's website they named their company for their favorite New York hotel, The Dewitt Clinton Hotel.  In 1850 the mill village separated from Lancaster and adopted the name Clinton.  



 Tuesday's trash from Forge Pond...



Thursday's trash from the South Meadow/Mossy/Coachlace ponds complex...

Sunday's trash from Coachlace Pond...



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