Page 11 - QuakerMillDam

Quaker Mill Dam and bridge, circa 1914–1922,
showing 1914 concrete dam (Robert Ungs).

A Glance Into the Past

When the Quaker Mill Dam was removed in 2017,
April 1922, the Iowa Electric Company mounted an exten- numerous objects were discovered in the sediment
sive public relations campaign to present the “real facts” in at the bottom of the former mill pond which cast
response to the “consistent, continuous effort to misrepre- light onto the area’s past. Among the most inter-
sent every act of the Iowa Electric Company, in respect to esting are several metal license plate toppers, extra
the Quaker Mill, steam rates and service, and many other plates that could be attached to a vehicle’s license
matters.” Whether or not the people of Manchester accept- plate to promote a message. The license plate top-
16
ed the company’s version of events, the Quaker Mill property pers display political slogans from the 1932 presi-
was transferred to the Iowa Electric Company. Iowa Electric dential election, in which Democratic challenger
demolished the former Quaker Mill and built a new hydro- Franklin D. Roosevelt beat Republican incumbent
electric plant on the site in 1922. The company also raised Herbert Hoover in a landslide victory several years
into the Great Depression. One set of plates reads
the height of the dam an additional four feet, increasing the simply “Roosevelt for President.” Another reads
size of the mill pond from about 86 acres to 126 acres. 17 “Repeal 18th Amendment,” a reference to the
Democratic Party’s call to repeal Prohibition, the
The Iowa Electric Company’s 1922 expansion of Joseph 1919 constitutional amendment that prohibited
Hutchinson’s dam resulted in the dam that persisted through the production, transportation, or sale of alcoholic
the rest of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. beverages in the United States.
Features added at this time include the Tainter gate and the
concrete fishway at the west end of the dam and a power-
house and powerhouse base on the east end. Of these, only
the powerhouse base now survives. The powerhouse, and
perhaps also the modified dam, were designed by the engi-
neering firm of Holland, Ackerman & Holland of Ann Arbor,
Michigan, and Chicago. The chief engineer on the site ap- Recovered
pears to have been Joseph D. Wardle, chief engineer with plates (Doug
the Iowa Electric Company’s sister organization, the Iowa Hawker)
Railway and Light Company. 18

The Prettiest Dam on the Maquoketa River—The Quaker Mill Dam at Manchester, Iowa 9