What was the dam and structure on Nineteen Mile Brook Trail for?

Can't search on "dam" -- too short, and searching for nineteen mile brook gives hundreds of hits.

What is/was the concrete dam and structure (pump house?) on 19MBT used for?



Thanks,
Tim

as i understand it water from 19 mile is used for the fire system at the great glen complex. periodically they actually go up there with an excavator (via the forest road on the other side of the brook) and dig out the pool behind the dam. was surprised a few years back hiking up 19 mile hearing the sounds of heavy machinery and found they were digging it out. this was summer 05. made a big difference as sediment had piled up to make the pool quite shallow.

bryan

bikehikeskifish said:

Can't search on "dam" -- too short, and searching for nineteen mile brook gives hundreds of hits.

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Use Google advanced search to get around the shortcomings of the internal search.

What is/was the concrete dam and structure (pump house?) on 19MBT used for?

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My recollection (from way back) is similar to bryan's: water supply for the hotel at Great Glen.

Doug

DougPaul said:

My recollection (from way back) is similar to bryan's: water supply for the hotel at Great Glen.

Doug

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Hope that's fire suppression water and not drinking water! Lots of dirty hikers swim in that water before heading back to the trailhead.

bryan said:

as i understand it water from 19 mile is used for the fire system at the great glen complex. periodically they actually go up there with an excavator (via the forest road on the other side of the brook) and dig out the pool behind the dam. was surprised a few years back hiking up 19 mile hearing the sounds of heavy machinery and found they were digging it out. this was summer 05. made a big difference as sediment had piled up to make the pool quite shallow.

bryan

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I have seen the forest road many times. Does anyone know where the road begins and if hikers are allowed to use it?

leaf said:

Hope that's fire suppression water and not drinking water! Lots of dirty hikers swim in that water before heading back to the trailhead.

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That is quite possible, although back it the days of the grand hotels they might not have worried about such things.

I hope they treat it first if they drink it...

Doug

There is a gate on the entrance of the road just south of the 19 mile brook lot.

The trail on the other side is connected to the aquaduct loop trail at great glen.

http://www.greatglentrails.com/files/file/TrailsInterior/greatglentrailsmap.pdf

Very easy to follow as we did with out any knowledge of the trail. You end up back at the Glen house / Auto Rd.

Looking at the map provided you follow the southern part of the loop trail heading west. The Dam is connected to the loop, but not part of it.

Also noticing the ponds along the way of the trail there is piping that connects these.

Thanks all! FWIW, it's not super deep right now. Swimable, yes, but it is only really deep against the concrete.

Tim

Aqueduct Path

I remember that dam and pool from my first trip to Carter Notch Hut in the summer of 1959. On the way out I fell and sprained a finger. My grandfather soaked his bandanna in the water of the pool and wrapped my finger with it.

There was a path that led over the brook and down to the Glen House in those days. The Great Glen trail system seems to have incorporated parts of the old route of that trail in their Aqueduct Loop.

My grandfather's 1928 White Mt. Guide describes the Aqueduct Path (A.M.C.) as:

"A branch trail starts at the rear of the Glen House and follows the aqueduct E. and N.E. to Nineteen Mile Brook. The trail crosses the brook and joins the Nineteen Mile Brook Path close to the stream. In descending from Carter Notch to the Glen House the junction of the Nineteen Mile Brook Trail with the Aqueduct Path is not readily noticed. It is just above a dam in the brook. Crossing the brook the path rises steeply, turns R. and on crossing the aqueduct turns sharp L.
Distances. Glen House to Nineteen Mile Brook Trail 1 m. (35 min.); to Carter Notch 3.6 m. (2 hrs. 45 min.)."

Great Glen had this to say about their Aqueduct Loop:

"The Aqueduct Loop is named after the open aqueduct that used to supply the Glen House Hotel water in 1880."

bcskier

Mike said:

I have seen the forest road many times. Does anyone know where the road begins and if hikers are allowed to use it?

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Both this road and the former Aqueduct Path are part of the Great Glen Trails complex. Hikers can use them free in summer last time I heard (donations accepted) but mtn bikers pay a fee. In winter everybody pays.

There are more water supply structures along Aqueduct Path.

As a hutperson in the late 1960s, we used the Aquaduct Path for packing into Carter Notch Hut (Cata), where the joke was an upstream fall off the narrow plank (2 x 8?) bridging the weir in the dam would be wet but a downstream fall would be deadly (none of us ever fell there, as far as I know ). The trail was closed by the Glen House and USFS/AMC folks in the 1970s, I believe.

That dam looks very similiar to the structure you see on Gibbs Brooks, below the falls, on the Crawford Path on the way up to Pierce.

dentonfabrics said:

That dam looks very similiar to the structure you see on Gibbs Brooks, below the falls, on the Crawford Path on the way up to Pierce.

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Why yes it does.

Tim

Update

Dr. Dasypodidae said:

As a hutperson in the late 1960s, we used the Aquaduct Path for packing into Carter Notch Hut (Cata), where the joke was an upstream fall off the narrow plank (2 x 8?) bridging the weir in the dam would be wet but a downstream fall would be deadly (none of us ever fell there, as far as I know ). The trail was closed by the Glen House and USFS/AMC folks in the 1970s, I believe.

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Aqueduct Path appears on map for 1969 AMC Guide, but not on map for the 1972 edition.