Village of the Dammed: The Fight for Open Space and the Flooding of a Connecticut Town

Document Type

Book

Publication Date

2005

Abstract

Since the early 1940s, the remains of Valley Forge, Connecticut have lain one hundred feet beneath the waters of the Saugatuck Reservoir. The town, once a thriving nineteenth-century iron and steel manufacturing town, was rendered an unwilling victim to the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company's post-World War 1 plans for the scenic valley. Historic glass plate negatives depicting the lost town in its heyday, documented in the 1860s by Civil War photographer Charles H.D. Adelbert Whitlock and others, lay unnoticed in an abandoned garage until their chance discovery in 1969. In Village of the Dammed, James Lomuscio has reconstructed from these images and other remarkable primary sources the story of the rise and fall of Valley Forge. He shares with the reader extraordinary reproductions of the historical photographs and reminiscences of the futile battle to save the town. Village of the Dammed is the story of the proud Yankee residents' resistance in the late 1930s to the proposed flooding and its life-altering repercussions.

Comments

ISBN 9781584654773

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