The first dam at the town of Old Forge, in the southwestern Adirondacks, was constructed in 1810 to power an iron forge. The dam’s usefulness in regulating the flow for log drives in the Black and Moose Rivers was soon apparent. In 1880 the dam was raised by two feet, merging the lakes of the Fulton Chain up to the sixth lake, where a dam had been constructed the year before, to replenish the Black River for water that had been diverted to feed the Erie Canal. The Lower Fulton Chain is a group of lakes (numbered one through five), which merged into one another when water backed up behind the dam at Old Forge.