Lowell, Massachusetts (Part 3)

Merrimack Flood, May 15, 2006

After unusual amounts of rain in the city and upriver in early May of 2006, Lowell suffered one of its worst floods in history. On the 15th, the Merrimack crested 8 feet above flood stage at Lowell, causing significant damage from Manchester, New Hampshire downriver to Haverhill, Massachusetts. However, an eight-foot flood is more of a spectacle than a real issue to most people, so my girlfriend and I took the afternoon off to go take some pictures.

These are before and after pictures of a park right on the bank of the Merrimack behind the Pawtucket Dam. This is very low-lying land, and is one of the places where the flood was the most dramatic. As you can tell, it wasn't that bad, but floods here virtually never happen. The pictures obviously don't capture the roar of the water falling over the edge of the falls, which are a good 1,000 feet away and only 10 feet high.

These are the falls, before and after. Somehow we failed to capture how many people were standing on the bridge here. There were Boston news crews and everything. Again, the sound of that much water going over the falls and the sight of how fast the Merrimack was moving was impressive. Remember that Lowell was built because of these falls and the fast-moving volume of water that goes over them. In a serious flood, it's really something else.

The "Pawtucket Falls" you see here are actually largely a man-made dam, made to channel the Merrimack into the two enterances to Lowell's canal system. The actual falls are more of a series of rapids a mile long that begins with this dam. You can see in the first picture that the dam is capped by metal poles holding back wooden planks. When there's too much water, the planks burst, as a safety mechanism to keep the canals from topping over. In that picture, they're almost completely gone after the winter. In the second picture, they must've all burst. What you don't see is between the two, the army corps of engineers had just about finished replacing them all. They also maintain dams upriver meant to hold back water to keep the Merrimack at an even level. Originally the upriver dams were to store up water to keep the mills running year round. After the 1936 flood - the worst in Lowell's history - more dams were built that would supposedly prevent a flood like this from happening again. I'm not sure if it was because this was brought on by rain and not a spring thaw, but I don't think they worked...

The white line in the third picture is on a gatehouse that controls the flow into one of the canals. I've heard that that line was the water level in the flood of 1936 - it's 10 feet higher than the highest the river reached this year.

This is the Francis Gatehouse, which is a little behind the Pawtucket Dam. The first picture is from March, like many of the other before pictures.

In the second picture, you can see a large metal bulkhead has been put up against the gatehouse to block the canal. In the third picture, you can see the original wooden gate is up, and water is bursting around the seams of the bulkhead. In the 4th picture, you can get a sense of how big this gate is.

Around 1850, James Francis realized that the Merrimack did occasionally flood, and the canal system that went right through Lowell had no mechanism to keep the waters from topping the canals and flooding the city. People thought he was crazy, since the Merrimack had never flooded in the city's history. So, his gatehouse and huge wooden gate was dubbed "Francis' Folly." However, in 1852, there was a flood (crested 10 feet above flood stage) and the gate was dropped, saving the city from a flood. Nobody called it a folly ever again. In the 1936 flood, the gate was dropped again, but since the city no longer used the canals to power the mills, it was left down. It again prevented a flood in the 1938 hurricane (again 10 feet above flood stage). At some point, it was raised, and hasn't been dropped again - until it was sort of dropped this year by being replaced with the modern metal bulkhead. So, at 8 feet above flood stage, we just had Lowell's 4th worst flood in 150 years.

And in 2007, we again had one almost as bad, and the gate was needed yet again

In the 5th picture, you can see that the 1936 flood was well over the top of the gate. Had the gate failed, a wall of water the height of the gate would've surged into the city.

These are the new Lawrence Mills condos. Bit wet now. I hope that the bottom floor people had flood insurance. The backside of this building is right on the river. The joke has been the Rennaisance on the River, as the project is officially known, is actually the Rennaisance in the river.

This is the flooding downtown. Most of the downtown is well above the river, and the canals were held at level by the mechanisms mentioned above. However, there is this small part that is at the confluence of the Concord and Merrimack Rivers that is very low-lying. Fortunately, the Concord flows into the Merrimack from the south, and the rain was mostly to the North (upriver on the Merrimack). However, the Merrimack was so badly flooded that it backed into the Concord, this being the result.

The rest of these are pictures of things I have photographed on the previous pages, during the flood. The canal water was brown and smelled awful. Fortunately, it didn't take long for the water to go back to normal levels, and my building didn't really get much damage, although it is right on the canal.

A visitor to my site has allowed me to link to his pictures of the flood. (Link)