Middlefield Reservoir Dam re-build. “In 1937 the Bureau of Forestry made an estimate of $25,000 as the total cost of the project over a three-year period, and with this figure as a basis the state appropriated $15,000 as its share upon the promise of the government to furnish the balance of $10,000 in addition to the cost of unskilled labor…A year’s work has now been done during which the brush was cut on the whole 100 acres of lake bed, the walls of the old dam removed and tons of rocks blasted from the ledges at the western end of the dam site for the construction of a spillway 150 feet long making the proposed dam over 600 feet in length.

“… In its efforts to secure sufficient acreage around the lake bed for highways, camp sites, bathing beaches, ski trails and parking places, the owners of abutting property cooperated by selling valuable timber and mowing lands at the nominal price offered by the state for its reservations. After much research by local residents to locate and interest distant claimants and titleholders in the project, the site of the dam and flowage rights over certain parcels of land were also obtained by the state at reasonable figures.”

The CCC boys camp stove and drills still remain!

With the assistance of Doug Lyman lidar mapping genius, we set out to uncover all that the floods and forest have taken back. Contributed photos courtesy of DCR, History of Middlefield, Sternagle, mapping Doug Lyman. https://middlefieldma.net/

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