The Great Falls are once again the site of astonishing sound and fury.

The uproar is coming from the Hilton Garden Inn next to the falls, where hearings on pollution permits for the Androscoggin River are being held.

A few miles upstream, Gulf Island Dam spans the Androscoggin, and it’s in the spotlight at these hearings. Interested parties are debating effective oxygen monitoring and injection methods in the 15-mile pond behind the dam.

While most L-A residents know about the dam, few have actually seen it. Fewer still know its history.

I’m preserving a small collection of Gulf Island Dam construction photos taken by my father in the summer of 1926, when he was 15 years old.

There’s also material from writings of my aunt, Edith Labbie, that appeared in the Lewiston Evening Journal.

It all documents a massive project that employed a small army of laborers living in on-site barracks. Calvin Irish and his wife had a front-yard view of the project from their Auburn farm, knowing that much of its 200 acres would soon disappear. Nevertheless, that farm supplied fresh milk, eggs, vegetables and drinking water for the men in the new nearby bunkhouse.

The work drew hundreds of curious people, but the project was finished in a relatively short time. Remarkably, this huge structure that is so close to downtown L-A has withdrawn from public sight because of its location.

In the early 1920s, farmers along the river heard about plans for a power plant. Surveyors scouted riverbank land and deals were made to buy up farms that would be flooded. Easements were secured for pole lines along the shore.

Just about this time of year, construction on the $5 million project was moving into high gear for the summer of ’26. The curved structure was eventually going to measure 2,200 feet across the river. That’s almost half a mile.

It would rise to 58 feet with a 60-foot base tapering up to 16 feet wide at the top. Work would be finished in 1927.

Drill crews spent months boring test holes for the dam’s foundation. Four coffer dams were the first step in construction, diverting the river around the work areas so fill could be dumped and immense cement forms erected on a steel skeleton.

On the Lewiston side, a spur railroad was built to bring gravel for concrete from Leeds to Switzerland Road. The concrete traveled out above the river on large cable cars to be dumped into the forms.

Hundreds of men worked 12-hour shifts, day and night. In the early stages they had to walk a high, swaying suspension bridge, lighted at night, to get from one side to the other. My aunt remembered walking the bridge when she was 7 years old.

Flooding the land to create Gulf Island Pond began on Sept. 20, 1926. It took 43 days for the water level to rise from 8.7 feet to 48.7 feet.

Today, we can sit on the riverbank of our woodlot and enjoy a spectacular view of Gulf Island Dam. Its construction had a tremendous psychological effect on shoreland owners, but over the years our family got unforeseen benefits from this great alteration of the Androscoggin.

North River Road was once a busy dirt road that took people past our 140-year-old farm between Auburn and Turner. The dam meant that all kinds of development took place along Center Street and our road became a relatively quiet county byway.

The river hearings under way in Auburn are important. There’s still room for water quality improvement, and it’s proper for citizens and officials to keep up the pressure for improvement. I often feel I am hearing too many calls for an immediate remedy, as well as too many news reports and analyses that still talk about the “most polluted” river in the nation.

History tells us this is a river of many changes – good, bad, fast and slow – and I hope it all proceeds with realistic expectations.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and an Auburn native. You can e-mail him at [email protected].