Lost History and Houses at the old Dam 50 site

 Our Dam 50 (now known as Riverside Park) was destroyed in Nov. 1980 because it wasn't needed anymore due to the new high lift dam at Smithland.  

A part of the closing of the dam also meant that the Corps of Engineers would be getting rid of the beautiful brick homes of the lock and dam employees.  

These 2-story brick homes were really pretty. Here is a picture of one of them . 

The homes would have to be torn down and removed, no one wanted to do this. 

They tried to sell them through sealed bids, but only one was even bid on and it sold for $307.00, so that left the others for the COE to tear down and remove.

In just a short time after the employees had moved from their homes vandals arrived and destroyed much of the homes insides.   Windows were broken, even the stair rails were destroyed.  This as early as Dec. 1981.

 

 

The tear downs continued until all brick and wooden structures were either torn down or the wooden ones, to the left of the picture, were removed to a different location.

The rest of the story.  In the early 1970s when the Smithland Dam project, which replaced the old wicket dam here, was being planned, the county had expressed an interest in obtaining the reservation and developing it into a park and campground.

The houses, in that early plan, would have been remodeled into vacation cottages.

Those plans fell through when Congress cut the Corps of Engineers' budget allocation for recreational projects and then county officials determined the county could not afford the long-term cost of maintenance of the property.