Between houses and greenery in the heart of Cabot, the Winooski River now runs unrestricted. Rubble along the banks serves as the sole reminder of what once was — a dam that powered industry in the town for decades.
The Clark Sawmill Dam, the most common name for the dam about 5 miles downstream from the source of the river, collapsed suddenly during the catastrophic flooding that hit Vermont in 2023, punctuating years of back-and-forths about its future.
Now the town hopes to clean up the area, removing the rubble and restoring the riverbank to create an undeveloped natural area.
“There's debris from the components of the dam and the sawmill that are still there after many, many years, and we basically want it to be turned into a green space,” said Michael Hogan, town selectboard chair. “We just want it to be cleaned out and returned to its former condition.”
The debris lodged in the banks of the river will be removed from the area over 200 years after it was initially built into the dam. After receiving grant approval this summer and partnering with the town, the Friends of the Winooski River nonprofit wants to begin the design process with an engineering firm in the coming months.
For some — like Hogan, whose property downstream saw erosion from the dam’s diverting water — the dam was an inconvenience. For others, a potent reminder of the town’s past.
Local historian and writer Jane Brown — who, at 93, has been in Cabot for nearly half the structure’s existence — sees dams like Clark’s as integral infrastructure to the success of earlier Vermonters.
“Water was a renewable resource,” Brown said. “You could have a dam up the river, and as long as you didn't stop the flow for the guy down the river, you could have two or three mill ponds that would survive in a dry spell and so forth and still give power.”
In Lower Cabot, the village district in which the structure stood, the power produced by the dam fueled several mills and factories throughout its operation. It was built in 1797, and much of its history presented here was first compiled by University of Vermont’s Consulting Archaeology Program.
Moses Stone originally owned the structure and ran a sawmill there until 1825. After bouncing between a few short-term owners, the property in 1849 was acquired by the Haines family, who for many years had maintained an ownership stake. They used the dam to power a woolen mill, where workers probably produced practical fabrics for blue-collar goods, like flannel.
“Eventually they had a woolen mill, a large woolen mill, there, and that employed a lot of people,” said Brown. “And at one time — because of the dam and the woolen mill — Lower Cabot was probably the center of the town business.”
The Haineses revamped the factory, updating machinery in the mill to improve the efficiency of power from the dam. The family owned the land until around the turn of the 20th century.
From there, the historical record becomes murky. The property cycled through several owners in just two decades — at one point housing a facility for meat and bone cutting and later a tennis racket manufacturer.
In 1920 the mill was purchased by Harry Clark — the dam’s current namesake. The factory had been converted into a sawmill by that point, and Clark kept it going, producing butter boxes lined with transparent paper for Cabot Creamery.
“It made wooden boxes and lined them with butter paper, which was very transparent. We used it for tracing paper, we kids. They were square ones, oblong,” said local Geraldine Bickford in a 1990s book on Cabot history co-authored by Brown.
Not long after Clark took ownership, the complex caught fire. The fire, which occurred overnight in 1925, turned the sawmill to dust. Clark rebuilt on the same land before selling the property to his son, Clifton "Chub” Clark, in 1946.
The sawmill continued to function as usual under the ownership of the younger Clark. The building was described as small and economical — with Chub inside working on his own schedule, not in a rush.
“He got what he got done when he got done, and that was it, and he didn’t have to have all this fancy equipment and stuff to run a sawmill,” said Carlton Domey, quoted in that same history book. “He made do with what his father had before him and kept it tinkered up.”
For 30 years, Chub stayed at the sawmill. The factory employed a handful of locals.
In 1976 — just three years after a devastating flood wiped out the back part of the mill — Daniel Davis purchased the property and renamed the building Headwater Mill. The factory turned logs into wooden planks for use in local construction and produced cheese boxes and other woodwork.
The mill was proclaimed the “only remaining water-powered commercial sawmill in Vermont” in a 1977 story in the Burlington Free Press.
“There’s an air of pleasing ramshackle permanence in the way the building angles up the streambank,” wrote Judith Raven in the article. “Window-high piles of sawdust seem to anchor it to the ground and cushion the place against its own turbine vibrations.”
Davis upgraded production in the 1980s, purchasing an automatic sawmill rig from Lane Manufacturing Co. in Montpelier — a new machine that the company boasted could produce enough wood for two houses every day, according to a 1981 issue of the Free Press.
The mill halted production in 1997, and by 1999 it had been acquired by Edward Larson. By 2001 everything had stopped, according to regional planning commission documents and Hogan, the selectboard chair.
Larson remained the owner of the land as disputes began mounting about the future of the dam. The building on the property had collapsed. The dam and sawmill were inoperable.
“I was concerned about the dam for lots of different reasons and wanted to take the dam down at that point,” Hogan said.
As documented in 2023 meeting notes from a local workgroup, concerns centered primarily on what would happen if the dam breached in heavy flooding. The uncontrolled rush of water and sediment was unpredictable, and folks worried about a disaster downstream waiting to happen.
But removing a dam is not as simple as it may seem — the town ran into issues almost immediately.
Following Tropical Storm Irene, the town pursued a Federal Emergency Management Agency buyout that ultimately fell through. Later, leaders hoped the town could buy the property and clear out the dam — but a problem arose.
“Part of that process was having this site evaluated for contamination in the soil,” said Michele Braun, executive director of Friends of the Winooski River. “One of the contaminants came back with a crazy high number.”
There was a catch: The high number was a typo. But even when a corrected report came back, it was too late. Locals and town officials had grown wary about the optics and potential liabilities that may fall on the town if they followed through with the purchase. Progress stagnated until 2019.
That’s when an effort led by the Vermont River Conservancy moved to demolish the dam.
“They weren't able to reach an agreement with the landowner. The landowner overvalued the property — thought it was worth more than it was worth,” said Braun.
Larson, the landowner, didn’t return three voicemails left over the span of a week.
Ultimately, the dam remained standing when July 10, 2023 came. Floodwaters rushed down the Winooski River, and the dam burst — spewing over two centuries of debris and sediment build-up downstream.
All that remained of the old structure were two chunks of masonry on either side of the riverbank.
It was only then, after the destruction, that property ownership was successfully transferred to the town this March. The town enrolled the property in a state program that’s meant to protect Cabot from contamination-related liabilities, too.
Now, the town and Friends of the Winooski River are ready to remove the retaining walls of the dam that still cling to the riverbank.
“We work to naturalize the river for the benefit of the river,” Braun said.
The team is paying attention to unstable ground near homes above the river, she said.
The project has received grant approval from Watersheds United Vermont, a network of water quality and restoration groups in the state. The plan now is to enlist an engineering firm to come out to design the project — ideally this fall, Braun said.
“We probably will put down some historical signage down there — maybe some markers, historical markers — for what the dam was and its impact to the community,” Hogan said.
For historians like Brown, safeguarding Cabot’s cultural memory is of great importance.
“You have to preserve what generations before you did and appreciate what they did to make a better life, which is what we have now,” Brown said.
"In making progress, we've lost a lot too,” she said later on. "We've lost a lot of the community, the feeling of working hard for our living, our dependence on one another."
Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, on assignment for the North Star Monthly. The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.
