Opalescent River Dam

Lake Tear of the Clouds, the romantic headwaters of the Hudson River, drains into Feldspar Brook, which flows into the Opalescent River. In the 1840s a small but effective dam was built on the Opalescent River, forming a backwater called the Flowed Lands, which diverted the Opalescent’s flow into Calamity Brook. Calamity Brook enters the Hudson River upstream of the Opalescent’s confluence with the Hudson, and this diversion provided more water to power the bellows of the iron furnaces at the McIntyre Iron Works, a 19th century mine and smelter on the Hudson River.