When the Hadley Falls Company began to plan the New City, as for a few years it was called, negotiations were opened with the farmers living along the river-bend and occupying the lands which the new company wished to own.  Mr. Geo. C. Ewing was the company’s agent, and one after another the land-owners were persuaded to sell their acres.  Samuel Ely was an exception.  He held fast to his land property, but some twenty years later, when the sandy acres had become a valuable possession, Samuel Ely sold his farm-lands to Messrs. Bowers and Mosher who surveyed and sold it as building lots and it is now known as Depot Hill.  Mr. Ely retained through life the old farmhouse where he was born and reared and where he died in 1879.

[Illustration:  THE SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT.]

In the Summer of 1848, a dam was constructed across the Connecticut river by the Hadley Falls Company.  It was finished on the morning of Nov. 16, 1848.  A great crowd of ten thousand people collected on the river-bank to witness the filling of the pond and closing of the gates.  At ten o’clock the gates were let down and the pond began to fill.  The massive foundation stones of the bulk-head at the west end began to move under the great pressure.  The water had risen to within two feet of the top of the dam when the break began at about one hundred feet from the east end and the structure tipped over and gave way.  A massive wall of water and moving timbers rose high in air, (a sight terrific to remember by those who saw it), and with a mighty roar and sweep the great structure went down the stream in ruins.

Great as this disaster was to the Company, there was no yielding to discouragement.  The work of reconstruction was begun at once and a second dam of improved pattern was built upon the site and so strongly constructed that it remains a part of the present dam.  Eighteen years later it was improved and strengthened by building a front extension, in such a manner that the dam now has a sloping front, giving it the form of a roof, both the old and the new structure being made absolutely solid.  The original cost of the structure in 1849 was $150,000.  The cost of the extension finished in 1870, was $350,000.  By that time the town of Holyoke and its water-power were rapidly realizing the anticipations of its projectors.

The water of the river is distributed through a series of three canals aggregating three and a half miles in length, the power being repeatedly utilized, as after leaving the first level canal, the water flows from the wheels into the canal of the second level, from the second level into the third level, and thence to the river, which completes its perfect curve to the south of the city.

[Illustration:  THE HOLYOKE DAM.]