Had an idyllic day this past Monday for paddling around the above pictured Wickasee Island (aka Tyng's Island) in the Merrimack River. I was returning to where I had paddled the previous week and found myself wondering about the canal lock that long ago served in helping boats navigate around the rapids known as Wicasee Falls. I'd recently stumbled upon "A Plan of Dunstable and Tyngsborough (Massachusetts towns)" drawn by surveyor John G. Hales back in 1831. The plan was found on the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center's website...
Shown clearly within the area depicted on the plan is Wickasee Island, Wiccassee Falls, and the canal around the island, along with the lock and lock-tender's house. Also within the area depicted on the plan, upriver-traveling boaters John and Henry Thoreau in 1839 encountered two fellows hoping to gain passage aboard their boat. The incident is described by Henry D. Thoreau in his book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Thoreau's description of the event begins with the longest sentence I've ever read...133 words. As I understand it, the Thoreau brothers opted not to utilize the canal as fifteen years earlier, in 1824, the creation of the Pawtucket Dam in Lowell submerged Wicassee Falls. Thus in 1839, the lock and canal were, for the most part, redundant. Subsequently, they rowed past the canal and remained in the river's main channel hugging the island's west shore to avoid the current. Working their way upriver they kept the submerged rocks of Wicasee Falls to their left. This rock poking above the surface is one of the few remaining signs of Wicassee Falls...
This small hill that rises on the island might be where John and Henry were hailed by two men...
Thoreau describes them as "two men who looked as if they had just run out of Lowell, where they had been waylaid by the Sabbath, meaning to go to Nashua (about 8 miles upriver)." The men "called out from the high bank above our heads to know if we would take them as passengers, as if this was the street they had missed; that they might sit and chat and drive away the time, and so at last find themselves in Nashua." The Thoreau brothers explained that their boat was already loaded to capacity "and moreover required to be worked, for even
it did not progress against the stream without effort; so we were obliged to deny them passage". Nonetheless the two fellows ran along the shore trying to keep up with the boat until they ran out of real estate at the island's north tip...
As the Thoreau brothers rowed away from the island they watched as the two men came to the realization, perhaps for the first time, that they were on an island. Henry wrote "They ran about like ants on a burning brand..." Thoreau also surmised how he thought the men got onto the island "probably crossed upon the locks below." After rowing a mile or so above the island John and Henry may have made camp near the present-day American Legion Hall in Tyngsborough...
Their Sunday had been a long and tiring day starting early from where they'd camped alongside the river in Billerica. They'd guided their boat down the Concord River through the Fordway to North Billerica where they left the river and entered the Middlesex Canal for 6 miles to Middlesex Village. There, despite it being the Sabbath (when recreation on Sundays was frowned upon), a friendly lock-tender lowered them down through the locks and into the Merrimack River. Then came more rowing, now against the current, up to and past Wickasee Island. Once encamped they "were kept awake by the boisterous sport of some Irish laborers on the railroad, wafted to us over the water, still unwearied and unresting on this seventh day, who would not have done with whirling up and down the track with ever increasing velocity and still reviving shouts, till late in the night." (the Lowell and Nashua Railroad was being built across the river from their campsite). One of the brothers had a good and restful night's sleep while the other suffered nightmares. Thoreau isn't clear as to which of them had the nightmares. My guess is it was Henry.
I returned to the island's north end and entered the canal in hopes of visiting the aforementioned lock. Passed one sign related to the island's history...
...and another relating to its present use...
Near the downstream end of the 0.75 mile-long canal is where Hales' 1831 plan shows the lock as having been located fairly close to the present-day golf cart bridge spanning the canal (photo from under bridge)...
In the Middlesex Canal Association's publication
Towpath Topics (Vol 39 Numbers 1 and 2, and Vol. 47 No.2) I found a series of articles written by Bill Gerber entitled "Locks and Canals of the Merrimack River" describing the system of locks and canals allowing navigation all the way up to Concord, NH. In
Towpath Topics Vol. 47 No. 2 Gerber provides John L. Sullivan's description of the Wicasee Falls dam and lock: "A rapid for a half mile between an island and the western shore is crossed with a dam of stone and timber, 200 yards. This raises the water above (the dam) about a foot, which saved digging on the other side of the island where the lock is placed. This side afforded a passage for high water, six rids wide (99 feet). From the lock to its entrance is 1900 feet. This space was encumbered with masses of rock of every size and with earth, estimated at 4,000 square yards. The lock is placed in the middle of the stream (canal), its side walls are 100 feet in length, connected with the shore by wing-walls, each about 50 feet." Gerber added that "It appears the lock was operable by 1815; a lock-tender's house was added by 1817. The lock and dam at Wicasee may have been short-lived. The Pawtucket Canal (in Lowell) was rebuilt in 1824, much enlarged to supply water power for the textile mills. At this time, a large stone dam was constructed across the river at the head of Pawtucket Falls. This raised the water level by an additional 5 feet, so that it flooded the Wicasee structures." Therefore, I'm guessing that as the Thoreau brothers rowed past the canal's downstream entrance they would have seen something resembling two 50-foot wing-walls on either side of the lock; and this might explain how the two men they encountered gained access to the island. Aside from the lock still being there in 1839 there doesn't appear to be any record of it later being dismantled.
My view of the same place on Monday shows the approximately 100 foot-long golf cart bridge spanning the canal at roughly the spot where the lock once stood...
Guess it makes sense that the golf course would place their cart bridge close to where a previous structure spanned the canal. Perhaps using some of the wing-wall's abutments?
Another thing Gerber mentioned was that the Cromwell Lock and Wicasee Lock were similar to each other. I'd paddled through the Cromwell Lock this past August when it looked like this...
As I was exiting the canal at Wickasee and rejoining the river an eagle was seen landing in a pine tree on the river's far side. Upon getting a little closer I found not one but two...
Other wildlife seen in the vicinity of Wickasee Island was this heron...
This Bunker Hill Marine barge was out working on the river...
...its crew later installed a boom at Wickasee Island's north end...
By the way, the spelling of the Pennacook word Wicassee has many variations depending on how Europeans thought they heard it. These are ones I've come across: wicassee, wicasee, wiccasee, wicosucke, wicosuche, weikeset, wekesoak, wicassic, wickasee. The word is similar to the name for a town in Maine, Wiscasset. In the book
Native Names of New England Towns and Villages by C. Lawrence Bond the author lists a meaning for the word Wiscasset provided by Maine writer, ornithologist, and folklorist Fannie Hardy Eckstorm: "Comes out from but you don't see where". That could accurately describe any vessel emerging from behind Wickasee Island.
Trash gathered up along the way included 9 "nip" bottles, 8 cigarette lighters, and 20 golf balls...
