Assabet River

The Assabet River is a small, long river located about west of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The Assabet rises from a swampy area known as the Assabet Reservoir in Westborough, Massachusetts, and flows northeast before merging with the Sudbury River at Egg Rock in Concord, Massachusetts, to become the Concord River. The Organization for the Assabet, Sudbury and Concord Rivers (OARS), headquartered in West Concord, Massachusetts, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation, protection, and enhancement of the natural and recreational features of these three rivers and their watershed. As the Concord River is a tributary of the Merrimack River, it and the Assabet and Sudbury rivers are part of the larger Merrimack River watershed.

Etymology

The indigenous people of this region first named the Assabet River, though the original meaning of the word "Assabet" is uncertain. Assabet is said to come from the Algonquian word for "the place where materials for making fish nets comes from". Other cited Algonquian meanings include "at the miry place", "it is miry", or "the reedy place".

It is also possible to decode the name Assabet in the Eastern Algonquian Loup language spoken by the Nipmuc people who lived and fished on the river prior to European settlement. The word assa-pe-t segments into: assa, "turn back"; pe, a short form of nippe, "water", used in compounds; and a locative suffix, -t, a shorter form of -et after the vowel, so its name in Loup means "at the place where the river turns back". During floods the Assabet River reaches peak height sooner than the Sudbury River, so that at the junction of the two rivers the Sudbury's direction of flow can temporarily reverse.

A Eurocentric interpretation is that the river's name is a corrupted spelling of Elizabeth, or an attempted transliteration of the Nipmuc name. Various historic maps and documents denote the river's name as Asibath, Assabeth, Asabett, Assabet, Elizbeth, Elzibeth, Elizabet, Elizabeth, Elsabeth, Elsibeth, and Isabaeth. The uniform spelling "Assabet" was not adopted until at least 1850. The name's history is further complicated by the fact that the tributary Elizabeth Brook in present-day Stow flows into the Assabet River. Nipmuc settlements on the Assabet intersected with the territories of three other related Algonquian-speaking peoples: the Massachusett, Pennacook, and Wampanoag.

Geography

thumb|right|Bridge completed in 2017 for the [[Assabet River Rail Trail in downtown Maynard]]

The Assabet River rises from a swampy area in Westborough known as the Assabet Reservoir. Streams located in the towns of Shrewsbury and Grafton feed the reservoir. The Nichols and Tyler dams are modern dams built for flood control. Damonmill Dam is partially breached so it does not retain water, though it slows flow at flood times. A tenth mill dam—Paper Mill Dam in Maynard—was destroyed by the 1927 flood. As of 2020, 39 road bridges, two Assabet River Rail Trail pedestrian and cycle bridges, the Taylor Memorial Bridge (a pedestrian bridge) in Hudson, one abandoned railroad bridge in Hudson, and one active railroad bridge in Concord cross the river.

The Powdermill Dam was constructed to power the American Powder Mills, a complex of 40 buildings situated on along both sides of the river through the towns of Acton, Concord, Maynard, and Sudbury. The complex manufactured gunpowder between 1835 and 1940. Evidence of 23 recorded explosions during that period remains at a few locations along the river. Acton Hydro Company, Inc., currently owns the dam and is renovating it to generate electricity again.

Native and naturalized species

Trees native to the Assabet River area include red maple, silver maple, black willow, river birch, hemlock, and swamp white oak. They are joined by the native shrubs buttonbush, common elderberry, highbush blueberry, multiflora rose, smooth arrowwood, and sweet pepperbush.

Wildflowers abound along the Assabet's banks. Blue flag and yellow flag—the latter particularly abundant between Hudson and Stow—grace the riverbanks with color. Other wildflowers present in the area include arrow arum, arrowweed, bittersweet nightshade, cardinal flower, jewelweed, joe-pye weed, pickerelweed, purple loosestrife, swamp loosestrife, swamp smartweed, sweetflag, true forget-me-not, and the poisonous water hemlock. Native aquatic plants present on or under the Assabet's waters include common elodea, coontail, duckweed, low watermilfoil, various species of pondweeds, water celery, watermeal, watershield, white water lily, and yellow pond lily.

Given the Assabet's proximity to differing habitats such as forests, pastures, fields, and marshes, a wide variety of birds live in or migrate to the area. The belted kingfisher—the only kingfisher of the northeastern United States—summers and sometimes winters on the lower Assabet. Bobolinks nest in the grass at Orchard Hill in Stow along the Assabet.

A variety of migratory and nonmigratory ducks habitate the Assabet watershed, including American black duck, blue-winged teal, common merganser, mallard, pied-billed grebe, ring-necked duck, and wood duck. Depending on the time of year, one may see some birds of prey along the Assabet. The osprey is uncommon but may be encountered near the Assabet, especially in Stow and Hudson. The migratory broad-winged hawk is common in the fall, while the red-tailed hawk lives in the area year-round. Chain pickerel live in weedy areas along the Assabet.

Common mammals living near the Assabet include minks, muskrats, raccoons, red foxes, and white-tailed deer. North American river otters are less common but may be encountered along the river. Other reptiles—Blanding's turtle and spotted turtle—are critically endangered, and though present along the Assabet are rarely seen by humans. Spring peeper, wood frog, and eastern newt also live in the area.

The Assabet's shaded banks provide prime mating grounds for damselfly and dragonfly species, as they mate near streams and wetlands and lay their eggs underwater. Damselfly species in the area include bluet, black-winged damselfly, eastern forktail (Massachusetts's most common damselfly), and violet dancer. Dragonfly species mating along the Assabet include cherry-faced meadowhawk and other species of the genus Sympetrum, common whitetail, the migratory green darner, and twelve-spotted skimmer. It is now an invasive, habitat-destroying plant across many eastern states, including along the Assabet River. On the Assabet River, OARS organizes an annual plant pulling event in early July. Volunteers in canoes hand-pull the surface-floating rosettes of leaves and nuts before the nuts mature and fall to the river bottom.

Other invasive species in the Assabet basin include the aquatic plant European water clover In pre-colonial and early colonial times, during their spring mating season alewife swam from the Atlantic Ocean upstream into the Merrimack River and then up the Concord, Assabet, and Sudbury rivers. The Industrial Age brought mill dams to these rivers. The dams denied alewife access to the upper reaches of the rivers, causing their local extinction. Around 1630 it was estimated more than 10,000 beaver pelts were being taken annually in land that now makes up Massachusetts and Connecticut. Due to aggressive hunting, European settlers extirpated beaver from Massachusetts by 1750. Reintroduction to the state started in the Berkshires around 1930, then spread east. Beavers once again populate the Assabet River watershed: they are numerous enough that stream culverts under roads need to be periodically cleared of in-progress beaver dams, and beavers down trees on land adjacent to the river for food, dam construction, and den building. Licensed trappers are hired to remove nuisance beaver families.

Historic floods and flood control

The official designation of major flooding on the Assabet River is a water depth of more than and a flow rate of per second as measured at the gauge maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey on a site near the Waltham Street Bridge in Maynard. The gauge site is downstream of of the making up the Assabet River drainage. Major tributaries below the gauge which can contribute to downstream flooding are Fort Pond, Spencer, and Nashoba brooks.

1927

According to the National Weather Service, "The 1927 hurricane season brought a tropical storm that swept northward across western New England on Nov. 3-4, 1927. As its warm, humid air rose over the mountains and hills, torrential rains fell, causing severe flooding over extensive areas in virtually all of northern New England and the upper Hudson basin in New York. Much of New England had been soaked by rains throughout October. In all, 85 people were lost." Locally, the November 11, 1927, issue of The Maynard News reported damaged bridges, flooding at mill buildings closest to the river, and flooding further east at American Powder Mills. The Waltham Street Bridge was destroyed in the flood. The bridge dated to 1840, and was widened to accommodate an electric trolley track and sidewalk in 1900. The bridge was replaced in 1928 and again in 2013.</blockquote>

Henry David Thoreau regularly visited and often took his students, including Louisa May Alcott, on educational boat trips up the Assabet River. Thoreau wrote a poem titled "The Assabet" to a love interest; its first stanza references rowing upon the river and reads:

<poem>Up this pleasant stream let's row

For the livelong summer's day,

Sprinkling foam where'er we go

In wreaths as white as driven snow—

Ply the oars, away! away! </poem>

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Thoreau reflected on the Assabet's natural sensory pleasures in his journal, contrasting them favorably against the heights of human endeavor and creation:

July 10, 1852 Assabet River<br> I wonder if any Roman emperor ever indulged in such luxury as this—of walking up and down a river in torrid weather with only a hat to shade the head. What were the baths of Caracalla to this? Now we traverse a long water plan some two feet deep; now we descend into a darker river valley, where the bottom is lost sight of and the water rises to our armpits; now we go over a hard iron pan; now we stoop and go under a low bough of the Salix nigra; now we slump into soft mud amid the pads of the Nymphaea odorata, at this hour shut.

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Notes

References

External links

OARS: Organization for the Assabet, Sudbury and Concord Rivers, a local conservation group
U.S. Geological Survey, Assabet River, provides current and historic river depths and flow rates