Archive
Everything, by section
Twelve pieces in four sections, in the order they are meant to be read. The sections follow the water: what fell, what it powered, what replaced it, and what it all sits in.
A town that sited itself on a fall
Waukewan, the outlet, the wheel pit.
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1.1
A town that sited itself on a fall, then sold the lake
Meredith grew where water dropped from Lake Waukewan to the bay, and everything about the centre follows from that drop.
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1.2
Lake Waukewan, held above the village
A lake sitting above a town is a stored head of water, which is what made the site worth building on.
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1.3
The fall, the gate and the wheel pit
The surviving stonework records exactly how the drop was controlled and used.
The mill block, six bays wide
What the water powered.
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2.1
The mill block, six bays wide
The proportions of a New England mill are set by the machinery and the daylight it needed, not by taste.
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2.2
What the water actually powered
Linen, wool and then smaller trades — the sequence is documented in town records.
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2.3
The channel still runs. What changed is what it runs through.
The watercourse survives beneath a centre now built for visitors.
Then sold the lake
The railroad, the steamer, the season.
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3.1
The branch that turned a mill town into a resort
Rail from the 1840s brought summer traffic, and the architecture changed street by street in response.
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3.2
The steamer that has worked the lake since the nineteenth century
A working vessel with a documented service history is the clearest thread through the lake's commercial life.
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3.3
Every hull on this lake spends half its life in a shed
A four-month season and a hard freeze decide the whole local boat trade.
Two hundred and fifty-three islands
The water itself.
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4.1
Two hundred and fifty-three islands
A glacial basin with a counted archipelago, and shallows between them that freeze before the open water does.
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4.2
Bear Island is a village you cannot drive to
An island community with its own arrangements for everything a road would normally provide.
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4.3
The granite underneath all of it
The quarries are the other industry, and the stone is in the buildings.
