Read Online The Lightning Keeper by Starling Lawrence - Free Book Online
Authors: Starling Lawrence
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benign hills to the north lies a wild tumble of rock, a gorge by the name of the Stony Lonesome, and that the construction there claimed the lives of nine men, or ten if we include the engineer of the first train to cross the trestle, who died of a heart attack.
Rails and river converge a half mile from the town where the Long Bridge, parallel to the older, eponymous structure of Beecherâs Bridgeâan architectural marvel in its dayâconveys goods and passengers to our eastern bank of the Buttermilk. As the town was laid out before the railroad came here, and as there is not such a distance between the river and the foot of the mountain, the townsmen, both the rich and the poor, have had to make their peace with this energetic and sometimes inconvenient neighbor. And not only the townsmen, but their wives, who must wash their curtains twice weekly to banish the soot, and whose gossip must yield each day to the clamorous interruption of four passenger and six freight trains.
Once past the town, the river begins to drop and to gather speed on its way due south. It is checked briefly by the old upper dam that has diverted some water to the Bigelow Iron Company for well over a century, and again only a few rods downstream by that more ambitious concrete barrier erected by a Bigelow scion, Aaron Bigelow of Civil War fame, father to the present ironmaster. And then the water frees itself from the hand of man to plunge recklessly a hundred and sixty feet in those thunderous cataracts of the Great Falls of the Buttermilk, whose din and mists rise even to the height of our balloon.
Now rails and river diverge, for such an acrobatic display would be fatal to any machinery, and many miles of gentle gradient intervene before they are reunited at Perrysville, near the junction of the Buttermilk and the broad Housatonic. In the triangle of land between these two paths we may glimpse the traces of an even grander ambition belonging to that same Aaron Bigelow.
From the eastern edge of his new damâwhich, unlike the older one, harnessed the entire flow of the Buttermilkâthe ironmaster projected a canal, an earthwork faced in massive stone that descends in a slow serpentine, the better part of a mile from bend to bend, until it rejoins the river below the falls. Along the canal, at irregular intervalson the various tiers, stand foundation works and sometimes entire buildings now fallen to ruin, and this is all that remains of the dream of Aaron Bigelow, the dream he called Power City.
On the ground there is not much to see, and few to see it anyway, for there are superstitions attached to this place that distilled so much pride and ill luck and animosity. The history of Beecherâs Bridge, according to the Congregational minister who preached here for almost fifty years, is by and large the history of failed enterprise; and if that be true, then here in these damp thickets entwined with the great weed-choked serpent of the canal, here is failure writ in stone, and the intrepid local historian, or perhaps the errant tourist, considers one of these canal walls, twenty feet high and vanishing right and left into the forest, with the same awe and pity as one who encounters the remains of Nebuchadnezzarâs palace or the fallen statue of Ozymandias.
It was not a bad or a foolish plan, this Power City, or, if it was, then at least many people shared it, and sought to tie their own fortunes to Bigelowâs vaulting ambition. He was, physically, a big man and had already achieved a great fortune by dint of his daring. In 1860, Aaron Bigelow, having recently taken control of the ironworks from his own father, set about tinkering with a new process whereby iron was cast into rings and the rings then fused together to make a tube of superior properties. Bigelow thought he was improving the performance and durability of the cast pipe of those days, and he imagined burgeoning new markets in the metropolises of Hartford and
Rails and river converge a half mile from the town where the Long Bridge, parallel to the older, eponymous structure of Beecherâs Bridgeâan architectural marvel in its dayâconveys goods and passengers to our eastern bank of the Buttermilk. As the town was laid out before the railroad came here, and as there is not such a distance between the river and the foot of the mountain, the townsmen, both the rich and the poor, have had to make their peace with this energetic and sometimes inconvenient neighbor. And not only the townsmen, but their wives, who must wash their curtains twice weekly to banish the soot, and whose gossip must yield each day to the clamorous interruption of four passenger and six freight trains.
Once past the town, the river begins to drop and to gather speed on its way due south. It is checked briefly by the old upper dam that has diverted some water to the Bigelow Iron Company for well over a century, and again only a few rods downstream by that more ambitious concrete barrier erected by a Bigelow scion, Aaron Bigelow of Civil War fame, father to the present ironmaster. And then the water frees itself from the hand of man to plunge recklessly a hundred and sixty feet in those thunderous cataracts of the Great Falls of the Buttermilk, whose din and mists rise even to the height of our balloon.
Now rails and river diverge, for such an acrobatic display would be fatal to any machinery, and many miles of gentle gradient intervene before they are reunited at Perrysville, near the junction of the Buttermilk and the broad Housatonic. In the triangle of land between these two paths we may glimpse the traces of an even grander ambition belonging to that same Aaron Bigelow.
From the eastern edge of his new damâwhich, unlike the older one, harnessed the entire flow of the Buttermilkâthe ironmaster projected a canal, an earthwork faced in massive stone that descends in a slow serpentine, the better part of a mile from bend to bend, until it rejoins the river below the falls. Along the canal, at irregular intervalson the various tiers, stand foundation works and sometimes entire buildings now fallen to ruin, and this is all that remains of the dream of Aaron Bigelow, the dream he called Power City.
On the ground there is not much to see, and few to see it anyway, for there are superstitions attached to this place that distilled so much pride and ill luck and animosity. The history of Beecherâs Bridge, according to the Congregational minister who preached here for almost fifty years, is by and large the history of failed enterprise; and if that be true, then here in these damp thickets entwined with the great weed-choked serpent of the canal, here is failure writ in stone, and the intrepid local historian, or perhaps the errant tourist, considers one of these canal walls, twenty feet high and vanishing right and left into the forest, with the same awe and pity as one who encounters the remains of Nebuchadnezzarâs palace or the fallen statue of Ozymandias.
It was not a bad or a foolish plan, this Power City, or, if it was, then at least many people shared it, and sought to tie their own fortunes to Bigelowâs vaulting ambition. He was, physically, a big man and had already achieved a great fortune by dint of his daring. In 1860, Aaron Bigelow, having recently taken control of the ironworks from his own father, set about tinkering with a new process whereby iron was cast into rings and the rings then fused together to make a tube of superior properties. Bigelow thought he was improving the performance and durability of the cast pipe of those days, and he imagined burgeoning new markets in the metropolises of Hartford and
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