Water
Ways
Water
Ways, an exhibit of the
Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, depicts
the recreational, educational, economic and environmental history
of Mount Holyoke’s
Upper Lake and Lower Lake. Also featured are rarely shown books
with an
artistic and historic focus on water. This
exhibit, done in conjunction with the Weissman Center’s
series Water
Matters, is on display February 1, 2005 – June 13,
2005 in the Fourth Floor Hallway of Williston Library
“Against
the Sun rising. . .is our own Prospect Hill,
which
hides all beyond it. Blue, distant hills lie against the southeastern
sky, and in the foreground are the pond and the old red mill. Wood
and broad fields stretch to the southern horizon and the brook
from the pond winds and twinkles through the nearer meadows until
it flows into ‘Paradise.'” From
Sarah Stow’s
History of Mount Holyoke Seminary, 1887
Recreational
Uses of Water
Upper and Lower lake have played a crucial part in
sports and social life at Mount Holyoke. Boathouses once stood
on both lakes and canoeing has always been a popular pass time.
The lakes, once larger and deeper, were popular swimming locations.
A covered ice skating rink, built in 1896, on the shore of lower
lake, was very popular during the early 1900s. Even today, the
shores of Upper and Lower Lake are popular areas for picnicking,
reading books and taking walks.
Mount
Holyoke students at the opening of the John D. Rockefeller Skating
Rink in 1896
Economic
Uses of Water
The earliest
uses of the campus lakes were for profit. Multiple mills stood
on the waterfall sites and used dams
to power their factories. Paper, cotton, corn, and boxes were among
the products created. The “Old Red” Grist mill, which
the college dismantled in 1898, was the last mill on campus. The
college also used the lakes and streams for gain. In 1853 a pump
house, which still stands near the Willits-Hallowell Center, was
built to provide water to the Seminary building. The college also
supplied its own ice for food storage needs through an ice house
located on Upper Lake until the 1940s.
The
Pump House and Prospect Hill in the 1880s
Educational
Uses of Water
The zoology (later biology) department collected
specimens and conducted research in the lakes and Stony for at
least one hundred years. Professors often took classes out to the
lakes to wade knee-deep in the water observing insects, fish and
animals and monitoring seasonal and long-term changes in the lakes.
Zoology
students collecting specimens in Lower Lake in the 1888
