Spier Falls Dam facts for kids
The Spier Falls Dam is a large dam on the Hudson River in New York. It's located between the towns of Moreau, New York and Lake Luzerne, New York. This dam is special because it uses the power of flowing water to create electricity. This process is called hydroelectric power.
Building the Dam: A Big Project
The Spier Falls Dam was built by a company called the Hudson River Water Power Company. The main engineer in charge of the project was Charles E. Parsons. Building started in 1900 and finished in 1903. It cost about $3 million, which was a huge amount of money back then! When it was completed, it was one of the biggest dams in the world and the largest one built to make electricity.
The dam is made from strong materials like concrete and granite. The granite rocks were dug up from nearby areas. Workers moved a massive amount of rock and dirt, enough to fill many, many trucks. At times, as many as 1,500 people worked on building the dam. It was a very big and challenging construction job!
How the Dam Makes Electricity
When the Spier Falls Dam was first built, it could make 37 megawatts (MW) of electricity. This power was sent to several cities in New York, including Saratoga, Schenectady, Glens Falls, Troy, and Albany.
Today, the dam is owned by a company called Brookfield Power. It has been updated and can now produce even more electricity, about 56 MW. This means it can power even more homes and businesses using clean energy from the river.
Interesting Facts About the Dam
The water held back by the dam forms a large lake, which is called a reservoir. This reservoir is about 5 miles (8 kilometers) long and about half a mile (800 meters) wide. At its deepest point, the water can be as deep as 135 feet (41 meters)!
When the reservoir was first being filled with water, the flow of the Hudson River had to be stopped for a whole day. This meant that the riverbed downstream, past a place called Fort Edward, actually went dry! People were able to walk across the river where water usually flowed.
The dam was named after William E. Spier, who was the head of a paper company in Glens Falls.
