Sometimes I come across a structure that really stands out in the landscape and it’s not intuitively obvious to me what it is; I’m curious if this ever happens to any of you. In the town of Northborough, Massachusetts, there is a bridge across the Assabet River that took me a bit to figure out what its function is.
Take a look at this image from 2009…
I walked to see the bridge from a different angle to realize that this indeed is an aqueduct; it was constructed around the beginning of the 20th century. Water is carried from the Wachusett Reservoir in Clinton for 9 miles through a combination of hard rock tunnel and underground aqueduct to a water treatment plant in Marlborough. This aqueduct carried 300 million US gallons of water each day until the 1960s. In 1965, a new tunnel (Cosgrove Tunnel) replaced it, and the old aqueduct still serves a backup role, in case the tunnel becomes unavailable.
Part of what attracts me to this site is the sense of another time that this arched aqueduct provides; it’s a reminder of times much earlier, such as we might get from Roman aqueducts. It gives that sense of permanence that not all of humanity’s structures have.