I had posted this view before, but two more views of this dam have come into the Society’s collection, so I wanted to offer an update.
In case you missed the earlier post, Hayden’s Dam was located upstream, or south of Hayden Road, which is two miles south of Port Byron. The dam, which dates back to before 1830, was used to power Hayden’s Mill which was located on the Outlet here. It was also used power Beach’s Mill which was located in the village. When the mill burned in 1857, the millrace was taken over by the State to feed water into the Erie Canal.
This photo was taken from the Hayden Road bridge, looking upstream. The trolley bed can be seen along the left bank of the Outlet, and if you look upstream, you can just make out the dam. When these photos were taken, Hayden’s Mill had been torn down to make way for the trolley line. Hayden’s Mill would have been fed by a mill race on the left side of the view.
Here is an another view of the dam. The little building to the right was the gate house that controlled the flow of water into the mill race. The goal of building a mill race this far up the valley was to get good head at the mill wheel. The head is the amount of energy that the water can exert on the mill wheel. Between Hayden’s Dam and the village, there is 20 feet of fall, which is what was needed to turn the massive wheel at Beach’s Mill. In short, it took two miles of mill race to get the power needed to run the mill. The State didn’t need head to fill the canal, but since the race was in place, it made sense to use it. The building basically contained the on / off valve for feeding water into the canal.
And here is the view today, looking upstream from Hayden Road.
Hayden’s Dam was one of four dams built across the Outlet in Mentz.