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Huron River and Industry
Anson Brown saw even more potential in the Huron River when he bought and
developed water rights along it in what was to become Lower Town in
1829-30. Earlier entrepreneurs had begun the Ann Arbor milling industry
on North Main Street, harnessing the power of Allen's Creek; Andrew
Nowland built the first saw mill here in 1825, and George W. Noyes
followed him by building a grist mill nearby in 1826. But it was Brown's
commitment that began the milling industry in Lower Town in earnest with
the flouring mill of Swift & Company, and the accompanying Argo Dam and
mill race (see following paragraph) to power it. Click
here to view a map showing early land ownership by these first millers;
notice the mill race which runs beside the Huron toward the left side of
the map. The Swift & Co. mill building is a prominent landmark in early photographs of the Lower Town area. It was this industrial development that began to change the river and Lower Town itself.
The early Ann Arbor dams were not the large constructions that you
recognize today, nor were the earliest mills complicated structures . The
original mills were built primarily to
process the
agricultural materials produced on the farms surrounding Ann Arbor.
The dams of the
mid-1800s were often less than ten feet tall, and were constructed mainly
of wood, with stone fill. Water trapped by the
dam would be diverted into a mill race (a long channel or canal leading
to the mill building) at the end of which the
water would drop from the higher level it had reached behind the dam to
the lower level of the river downstream from the dam, spinning the wooden
water wheel as it dropped. The Huron river has great natural potential
for producing power, dropping 42 feet within the limits of Ann Arbor. Look at the diagrams of the technology used in these first mills.
The mills flourished in the mid to late 19th century, turning the local agricultural products from the numerous area farms into consumer goods. As the mills prospered, so did the farming industry and the local economy. Some of the flouring mills were so successful that they not only provided flour for area residents, but also exported it to Eastern states and to Europe. Woolen mills had a similar success, turning local raw materials into fabrics which were bought by both local and more distant consumers. In the 1860's, steel turbines began to replace the earlier wooden water
wheels. These were more efficient and their position below the
water allowed the mills to operate at lower river levels and even under
icy conditions in winter. The milling industry
prospered along the banks of the Huron until the early 1900s, when the plains states began to dominate the agricultural market due to new technology and cheaper transportation. Changes in manufacturing and the local economy called for the harnessing of the river's power to produce electricity for the growing demand. In 1905 the
Detroit Edison Power Company began buying up land and flow rights along the Huron and began replacing the older mill facilities with a series of modern dams. The Barton Dam was the first, built in 1912 (click here for
photo of the Barton plant and dam during construction, and here to view
the completed dam), and the Argo Dam was similarly rebuilt to modern
specifications in 1913. Click here to view a blueprint engineer Gardner Stuart Williams drew up in 1911 for the building of the Barton Power Plant. The hydroelectric power plants were successful for several years, but
by 1927 Detroit Edison had built only 6 of the 9 dams it had originally
planned. Plans for the remaining three were abandoned because cheaper alternative methods for producing electricity had emerged, and
the Huron's power-producing capabilities were beginning to seem
insignificant in the face of growing demand. Detroit Edison's large
tracts of land along the river remained mostly undeveloped, leaving a
natural area which would eventually be bought by Ann Arbor and developed
as a system of public parks. Read more about the development of the
city's river parks in the SOS parks cluster.
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Students On Site is a community
project of the Arts of Citizenship Program at the University of Michigan,
funded in part by the Michigan Humanities
Council and the U-M Office of the Vice-President For Research.
This website is a collaboration between the Arts of Citizenship Program
theCHICO
Project of the School of Information
and the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.
