I have a goal to hike daily and many of those hikes will be in the Patapsco River valley. The State Park in the valley offers a variety of trails in the hills along the river. Today’s hike took me down to the site of Bloede Dam, a former hydroelectric dam that powered the mills along the river a century ago.
The picture below is from Buzzards Rock Overlook, high on a cliff above the river. I stopped there to rest yesterday on a hike I took on the north side of the river. Before the dam was removed last year, you would have been able to see it in this picture.
Here’s a shot I took last winter from just below the frozen dam.
The dam was determined to block the migration of spawning shad and perch and the fish ladder they built about 25 years ago was ineffective in letting the fish get upstream.
Here’s a picture from today. The small whitewater area is all that’s left of the dam. The fish will have no problems swimming up these rapids.
This project has been in the works for years and the River banks are being reinforced and restored for at least a quarter mile upstream. It will be interesting to see how nature takes back over the areas they have reinforced and whether the reinforcements will hold after the next big flood.
I’m looking forward to the spring shad run to watch them jump up through the rapids to get upstream to spawn.