Franklin Falls Dam, New Hampshire

The dam at Franklin Falls was completed in 1943, and is located on the Pemigewasset River, a few miles upstream of where it joins the Winnipesaukee River to form the Merrimack River. The Franklin Falls dam has a “dry reservoir” behind it, meaning it is only activated during a potential major flooding event, when the dam gates close to hold back the drainage from a thousand square miles of watershed, forming a reservoir out of the riverbed that would extend past the town of Bristol, ten miles upstream. Because of this, development in the potential reservoir area is limited, and many structures were removed. Most of the time, and normally, the river flows through the bottom of dam, but is otherwise unobstructed. This dam is one of several in New Hampshire that were built by the Army Corps of Engineers starting in the late 1930s to control flooding, following a disastrous flood in the spring of 1936, which especially effected areas along the Merrimack, from Concord, to the coast, including cities in Massachusetts. Though these dams look small and park like, causing them to go unnoticed in the rolling landscape of the state, they significantly control drainage, and operate as a system over a wide area. The system is operated out the Reservoir Control Center, in Waltham, Massachusetts.