Where's The Dam Cache - #4
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(regular)
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This is number four in a series of four. Columbus has 4 dams in the county located on the Chattahoochee River. Each dam has its own history as well as grand views and other local history in the surrounding area.
Oliver Dam and Generating Plant was completed in 1959 by Georgia Power. The lake and dam was named for James McCoy Oliver, an executive of Georgia Power at the time. Oliver Dam has four turbine units, and the dam itself is 70 feet tall and 2,150 feet long. The dam was to be named Clapps Factory Dam but that name was lost as well as all the old history in the area.
A SAD STORY:
Soon after the 1830's establishment of a mill, which came to be known as Clapp's Factory, near this site, a village developed. This community included tenement housing for the mill workers and their families, who traded at a store also owned and run by the company, as well as a Methodist church and a cemetery.
The factory carded wool and spun cotton thread and yarn, as well as manufacturing cotton sheeting, shirting, and batting, including such material as jean and osnaburg. Operations came to include a corn and wheat gristmill, a tannery and shoe shop, a machine shop, a cotton gin, and a wood-working shop, large dwellings for Factory Officers, stables, storerooms and warehouse space.
In 1832 the mill operation was powered with an overshot wheel turned by the waters of the Chattahoochee. At this point, where rocks formed a natural dam across most of the river, a wooden dam was constructed between an island and the Georgia bank, creating an immense amount of water power.
Nearby, (and perhaps one was on top of the wooden dam) a pair of bridges, each joining a bank to an island called Magnolia in the middle of the river, forming the only link in this area during the early years between Georgia and Alabama, as there were no bridges in Columbus in that day. During Wilson's Raid in April 1865, (Also known as The Battle of Columbus and The last battle of the Civil War) the Georgia Bridge was set afire by locals to prevent Union troops crossing from Alabama, and the Alabama Bridge was burned by the Union troops.
Horace King is a story unto himself. Born into slavery in South Carolina in 1807, King became a prominent bridge architect and construction manager in the Chattahoochee River Valley region of Alabama and Georgia before purchasing his freedom in 1846. Not long after Union troops burned Clapp’s Factory, Horace King rebuilt the factory. Horace also built the Columbus 14th Street Bridge and Dillingham Street covered bridge and served as a Republican member of the Alabama House of Representatives from 1868 to 1872.
Clapp's Factory accidentally burned in 1910 and was never rebuilt.
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THIS?
Clapp's Factory Cemetery served the people who worked at the Clapp's Factory (founded in the 1830s), most of whom lived in the Clapp's Factory village. The mill ceased operations in the mid-1880s and most of the folk moved away to find work elsewhere. In 1916, the Columbus Water Works facility on River Road took in most of what was left of the village, and Oliver Dam was constructed in 1959 on the old mill site; what remained of the village was razed when J. R. Allen Parkway was put through in the 1980s. The last remnant of a once-thriving community, Clapp's Factory Cemetery is now bounded by the river and the Riverwalk. Among those believed to be buried at Clapp's Factory Cemetery are area pioneers, Confederate soldiers and veterans, slaves, American Indians, and the poor. They are all a part of the heritage of Columbus, GA.
This cemetery, said originally to have been an Indian burial ground, was established to serve the Clapp's Factory community. The first known burial was in 1856, and the cemetery eventually covered five acres. Some workers at the factory had money deducted from their paychecks to pay for burial plots. As many as twenty Confederate soldiers from Georgia and Alabama, some killed during the Battle of Columbus and many only sixteen or seventeen years of age, are said to be interred here, as are some slaves and ex-slaves. Described as a beautiful and well-maintained cemetery, surrounded by an iron fence and gate and with some graves formed of hand-made bricks, the graveyard continued to be used after the factory ceased operation in the mid-1880's.
Burials continued at the cemetery until at least 1904. However, the site was still outside the city limits of Columbus at that time, and as family members moved away, no one took responsibility for the care of the cemetery. Eventually, the fence was torn down, the grave markers and other improvements vandalized. If a record of the burials in the Clapp's Factory Cemetery was kept, none has been located. A partial list has been compiled from various sources, including obituaries, funeral home records, and family histories. The land surrounding the cemetery is presently the property of the Georgia Power Company, which owns and maintains nearby Oliver dam. Some records and research say the cemetery has between 300 and 500 graves.
No Georgia historical markers are located in this area of the dam, factory or cemetery to commemorate its history.
The cache is a Lock and Lock. It is hidden off a trail that goes through the Clapp’s Factory Cemetery. During your hike to the cache, you will encounter one grave stone of a child. A great view of Oliver Dam can be had from the cache location. Directions: Turn into the city marina off River Road and keep to the first left. Follow this road until it stops at the gate to the dam. You can park here and enter the Riverwalk at this point (going south). You will find the cemetery trail head at light pole #7. Follow it to GZ. *** CONGRATS TO THE FUDDSTER ON HIS FIRST TO FIND ***
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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