Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. 16 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1886.
From the record
“The Great Stone Dam, also called the Lawrence Dam or Lawrence Great Dam, was built between 1845 and 1848 on the site of Bodwell's Falls on the Merrimack River in what became Lawrence, Massachusetts.”
Wikipedia article Great Stone Dam, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 480 National Register listings published here for Essex County · listed in 1977 · category: Structure.
National Register reference number.77000184- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Stephen P. Simmons, a native of Rhode Island, came to Lawrence in 1847. He assisted in work on the dam, built the stone chimney of the Lawrence Machine-Shop Company, and other large amounts ot stone-work for the Essex Company. He also constructed Grace Episcopal Church, the stone church at Methuen and the foundations of the Lawrence jail.
The first cashier of the company during its earliest and busiest years was Geo. D. Cabot, who resigned in January, 185;j, and after a short period of rest became agent of the Lawrence Gas Company. He was succeeded by John R. Rollins who remained somewhat more than eleven years till the summer of 1864, when Henry H. Hall became cashier, succeeded by Hon. Robert H. Tewksbury. Present organization, - Hon. Chas. S. Storrow, president; Howard Stockton, treasurer; Hiram F. Mills, chief engineer.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 88 fires within 5 miles of Great Stone Dam
between 2002 and 2020, burning about 24 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 5 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
20
Smoking
19
Debris and open burning
10
Recreation and ceremony
8
Equipment and vehicle use
8
Misuse of fire by a minor
8
Power generation/transmission/distribution
5
Arson/incendiarism
5
Railroad operations and maintenance
4
Natural
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,218 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Great Stone Dam between 1816 and 1975: 716 Plantae, 364 Animalia, 120 Fungi, 5 Protozoa, 5 Bacteria, 4 Unrecorded, 4 Chromista.
12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A Brown, A S Gaunt, A. C. Mathieson and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
9 workings within 5 miles of Great Stone Dam: 5 past producers, 2 producers, 1 unknown, 1 plant.
3 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Nickel, Gold, Silver, Copper, Perlite. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Lawrence, the town this property stands in, in 26 storm reports between 1998 and 2025: 7 flash flood, 7 thunderstorm wind, 7 flood, 3 hail.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
In Lawrence, trees were downed on Winthrop Avenue, Essex Street, Everett Street, and Methuen Street. A tree fell onto a house on Furber Street and another on Melvin Street. In North Andover, a large tree was downed on Boston Road near Route 114 and on Main Street. Damage was a little more extensive in Andover, where many trees were downed on the south side of town including on Vine Street. Trees and wires were downed on Bridle Path Road.
Trees and wires on South Union, Kent, Baily, and Dorchester Streets were downed by thunderstorm winds. A tree on Dorchester Street was downed onto a car.
At 455 PM EST, an amateur radio operator reported Chickering Road at State Route 114 in South Lawrence was flooded. A car nearby on Halsey Street was trapped in flood waters. At 524 PM EST a car was disabled in street flooding at Cutler Avenue and Chickering Road. Grafton Street was flooded and impassable.
Several streets were closed due to flooding. A car was stuck in floodwaters at the intersection of Andover Street and South Broadway near the Walgreens.
In Methuen, Lowell Street was impassable due to flash flooding. Two cars were trapped there. Broadway near Granite Street was flooded and impassable. Also, Route 110 near Bates Street was flooded and impassable. Jackson Street was also flooded and impassable.
In Lawrence, police reported street flooding on Andover Street between Clifron and Amherst Streets. The road was flooded and impassable. Report relayed by amateur radio.
In Lawrence, Berkeley Street was flooded and impassable from Sheridan Street to Jackson Street to East Haverhill Street. In addition, Parker Street was closed at the Merrimack River bridge due to flooding.
At 1124 AM EST, an amateur radio operator reported a car trapped in flood waters behind Partham Elementary School in Lawrence. The Automated Surface Observation System platform at Lawrence Airport recorded a storm total rainfall of 2.62 inches.
At 1045 AM EST, Parker Street in Lawrence was reported flooded and impassable between Merrimack and Market Streets. At 11 AM EST, the intersection of Salem Street and South Union Street was reported flooded and impassable. The Community Cooperative Rain Hail and Snow observer in Andover reported a storm total rainfall of 2.18 inches.
United States Geological Survey topographic
sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the coordinate the National Park Service records for this property, then
testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Great Stone Dam crosses the Merrimack River in Lawrence, Massachusetts. It is located west of the center of the city at the point where State Highway 28 crosses the Merrimack River. The Essex Company Dam is an overflow weir the purpose of which is to impound the flow of the Merrimack River and to raise its water to a head sufficient for the generation of power. The dam is 900 feet in length and is gently curved upstream, with a center or- dinate of 14.97 feet. The dam is skewed across the river, its southern end being about 200 feet further upstream than the northern end. The dam is anchored to the north and south mill islands by wing walls of random coursed, rough cut granite blocks, bricks and large pieces of granite rubble.
The northern wing wall is 405 feet long and the southern hnebbleine Thus the entire length of the dam is 1,629 feet. The overflow section of the dam varies in height from thirty to forty feet, with its average height The dam is trapezoidal in profile, with a base of thirty-five feet and a top width of twelve and a half feet. The accompanying sketch provides addi- tional information. The downstream side of the dam slopes at a rate of one foot in twelve, thus allowing the water to fall freely onto the blue quartzite ledge of the river bottom. The downstream face of the dam is of ashlar construction, consisting of quarry faced hammered granite headers and stretchers, set in hydraulic cement.
The bottom row of headers was doweled to the bed of the river and set in a trench, eight feet wide and four feet deep, which was blasted for the entire overflow length of the weir.
/ARCHITECT Charles S. Storrow STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE The Essex Company Dam was the first weir to cross a large American river with a height that exceeded ten feet. Since the overturning movement exerted upon a dam increases as the cube of its height, it required great engineering skill to design and construct such a structure. Moreoever, the dam had to be constructed to resist the huge freshets which periodically occurred on the Merrimack River. The average flow of the Merrimack is less than six thousand cubic feet per second. In the freshet of 1936 over two hundred thousand cubic feet per second were flowing over the dam's crest.
Charles Storrow, a graduate of Harvard (number one in the Class of 1829) and the Ecole Nationale de Ponts et Chaussees (1833), had studied in the offices of Loammi Baldwin, Jr., and had toured the major engineering sites of France and Great Britian during the years 1830-1834. Storrow was the author of the first American treatise on hydraulic engineering (1835), and was a prominent railroad engineer (Boston and Lowell Railroad), and hydraulic engineer (Proprietors of Locks and Canals at Lowell). Storrow employed design principles which were followed by other dam builders for the remainder of the nineteenth century. Such renowned engineers as James Francis, Ezra Worthen, and Joseph Freeman modeled their own dams upon that of Storrow.
Dam designers of more recent years have employed dif- ferent techniques based upon the empirical data accumulated in the years since 1845. this day the design of overflow weirs is largely a matter of good judgment upon the To part of the engineer rather than such hard and fast rules as apply to the design of reservoir dams.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 77000184, 11 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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