The Rocky River Basin Project

Click to view the two proposed Rocky River Basin project reports outlined in Lynn Taborsack's: A History of Candlewood Lake. 

Candlewood Lake's Beginnings

Connecticut Light and Power Co. first hydroelectric project was the Stevenson Dam built on the Housatonic River right above the town of Derby. Completed in 1919, it impounded what came to be called Lake Zoar.

The combined capacity of the Stevenson and Bulls Bridge stations was only ten thousand kilowatts, and the basic problem of regulating the flow of the Housatonic River was unresolved by the construction. The Stevenson Dam also doubled the water load of the Housatonic. In 1922, plans were made to provide more electricity to the area and to better control the flow of the Housatonic.  The solution involved a proposed reservoir that would connect the various creeks flowing between the steep hills coming south from Candlewood Mountain, and also subsume the natural ponds in the area: Neversink, Barses, Creek (or Crick), and Squantz.

For the most part, the area of this basin was a swamp. CL&P proposed to fill the basin partially by natural drainage and part from a pump on the Housatonic. In 1919, CL&P had already convinced the Connecticut legislature to give them the right to divert water from the Housatonic back into the Rocky River, where it could be dammed and stored for release in periods of low water flow. For the basin to be complete, they would also need to excavate land to connect two "fingers" in the northeast of the valleys going up through Brookfield, New Milford, and Sherman. The proposed Rocky River Basin project was unique at the time, not only for its overall size and scope but for the fact that a massive pump would be required to bring water up from and down to the Housatonic. 

Elevation Criteria and Purchasing:

In 1926, at the southeast end of the lake in Danbury, Jeffery Lewis and a small crew set out surveying where the water line of the basin would be, and therefore, what land would need to be acquired.   The water line was planned to be at a 440-foot elevation. Elevation contours were given a classification system: the land at the 440-elevation line, the land above the 440-line; and the land would be isolated by the rising water level. This classification was important for the CL&P agents as they set about purchasing land in the five towns touched by the basin.

CL&P's agents, Edmund Bly, J.T. Rogers, and Mr. Beach, set out to contact land owners.  A local Danbury lawyer, Thomas Keating, was hired as their legal advisor for title searches. From the Grantee and Grantor lists at the City of Danbury's Clerk's office, one can see purchase transactions that took place between 1926 and 1927. Much of the land purchases were credited to CL&P's secretary-treasurer, C.L Campbell. Campbell is the named grantor for CL&P's final acquisition of the land in 1929 and 1930.

In preparing the basin, CL&P cleared 31 roadways, exhumed two cemeteries, and acquired over 5,000 acres of property. All of the purchasing excavation and flooding was completed within a two-year span, 1927-1928.

Ironically, in the early 1900s, a large Native-American canoe had been uncovered in the mud of Squantz Pond (New Fairfield) which suggested that the area of the basin had been a large waterway centuries before. The area was also widely held to have been frequented by Native-Americans.  Evidence for much of that activity is now under water.  

To learn more about the colonial settlement and Native Americans that occupied Candlewood Lake click the News-Times article below written by Dr. Weinstein (Archeologist and WCSU History & Non-Western Cultures Professor) 

http://www.newstimes.com/opinion/article/Who-were-Danbury-s-first-peoples-The-Pahquioque-1043928.php

Colonial settlement of Jerusalem in New Milford sits about 4 miles back from the mouth of Rocky River tributary. Hine’s mills and the Ferris family land depicted on the interactive map are essential to the creation of the Rocky River Power Plant.