On Monday afternoon I stopped in at the New Croton Dam in
Croton, NY to take photos and video footage of the 106 year old
structure. "New" sounds odd for an old dam, but it replaced an
earlier dam, hence the addition of "New" to its title. As the
aerial photo below indicates, the Croton Reservoir which was
created by the dam covers a huge area of Northern Westchester
County in the region north of New York City. This is one of many
reservoirs that keep the city with an abundant water supply. The
dam was built by the city and is city-owned. There is much
fascinating history relating to the city's reservoirs and a lot
has been written about it, plus it has been the subject of
numerous documentaries. This is one small piece of a huge system
that is really quite mind boggling once you read about how much
was built without the benefit of today's heavy equipment along
with the genius of the water supply's engineers. A lot of farm
land was lost to the building of the reservoir system, even the
farm we have lost 56 ac