Mill River Profile
of the drop in the Mill River. Recently my son DJ and I took a walk around the center of town. He brought his hand-held GPS, and after we returned home he brought up the walk on Google Earth. You can see the route of most of our walk as a black line looping around the Draper area and the center of town. Below that is a profile showing change in elevation of the walk from beginning to end. (The profile is done with a vertical exaggeration.) At the dam at Freedom Street the elevation was 275 feet above sea level. At the bridge that crosses the Mill River between the parking lots, it's 243 feet. The difference of 32 feet provided a good deal of power for the machinery. Elevations are from Google Earth, not the GPS..While this number doesn't show how much the drop was from the top of the dam to the outlet below the water wheel, it, together with the profile show that there is quite a drop in the area. For most of the second half of the nineteenth century there was another pond and dam just a few hundred yards below the dam at Freedom Street. The power it supplied was used by the Dutcher Temple Company. Gordon Hopper's History of the Mill River states, "Hopedale Machine Company occupied the sixth privilege with a 12-foot fall, the next site being occupied by the Dutcher Temple Company in Hopedale, probably using a large dam, as it had a 16-foot fall." So there's a total fall in the Draper plant area of 28 feet; The Mill River by Gordon Hopper Mill River Reaches the Blackstone HOME . |