Oneida County History Center

A Homestead, A Waterwheel, and Power Dam By Janice Reilly

This year, 2020, marks one hundred years that members of the Zegibe family have resided in their homestead on Mohawk Street in New Hartford. Herb Zegibe lives in the old stone house built in 1802. Written in white chalk on a beam found when Herb remodeled is: “started March 1802, framed in April 1802. Signed: McBride.” Herb is the youngest son of Abdoo and Stella Slade Zegibe. His brother George lives next door; he was Supervisor of the Town of New Hartford from 1975-1981.

Abdoo immigrated to the U.S. with his father, Elias, in 1906 from Bayrouth, Syria; Abdoo was 11 years old at the time. A plague destroyed their flock of sheep in the old country; they joined relatives living in Utica. Abdoo married in 1920, bought the property from Johnny R. Jones’s widow in 1920, and raised eleven children here. Across the road from the homestead, readily recognizable to all who pass by, is the entrance to Heron Landing, marked by the original waterwheel that Abdoo built because he needed electricity for his cow barn and farmhouse. “Ab was getting nervous with the kids carrying lamps out to the barn with the hay and straw around,” Stella said. There was a real good creek that originated in the Graffenburg Springs; it ran through Zegibe’s pasture. Ab said to himself: “I’m going to build a dam and get electricity.” Rural electrification had not come to isolated spots in the country as yet.

Waterwheel from municipalities, New Hartford

Swimmers on diving board at Power Dam

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The manager of the Utica Gas & Electric Company told him it would cost $1700. “I don’t have 17 cents,” said Ab. He went to the library to look up how to build a dam, but Ab’s reading was limited – he only went to school for about three months. So, Stella read; they both looked at the drawings and found out how to do it. Stella later told her nephews; “if Ab had had an education, there would have been no limit to what he could do.” He scooped out a large dam using his team of horses and built the first waterwheel out of wood, a small wheel, so he could watch it perform. One day he heard there was an old wheel that had not been used for 25 years; it was laying alongside the road in Franklin Springs. It had the capacity to light up four or five houses at a time. Abdoo bought it for $25, dismantled it, and every Sunday, he and the kids went with the truck to load up the parts. “Well, the wheel didn’t have any buckets,” Stella continued, “but we found out that the manufacturer was the Fitz Water Wheel in Pennsylvania.” Stella wrote a letter to the company to ask if they could buy buckets and “the next morning a salesman who happened to be in Hotel Utica knocked on the door with enough buckets in his hand. We paid him $260.” Abdoo paid $10 for a used generator. He hitched up the works and “we had electricity!” He wired the barn and the chicken coup. He used a tractor to run the generator when the water was low. The family used it from 1927 until 1937 when Roosevelt “got elected and brought electricity in for free then! They didn’t charge you for putting poles in.”

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The natural springs from the hills above fed the creek. Ab was told it would be wise to build a mud pond above the dam that would catch all the dirt as it came down. Clear water would run into a pond – clear as crystal. By 1930 the family opened Power Dam; George and Herb were in charge of the gate. To begin, the charge was 5 cents per person and 5 cents per car. At its peak in 1985, the rate reached $2.50 for adults and $2 per child. The pool’s success was owed to its proximity to Utica for children who could bike or walk there. When temperatures in the city rose, families would pack a picnic and their swimsuits, and spend the day where it was cooler.

Ab was warned by the health department to put enough chlorine in to kill the bacteria. He built a bathhouse to meet regulations, and then a dance hall in 1939. That structure was an old horse barn from the Hughes Ice Company. “He brought it up here and took the slate shingles off one by one and they are on this house today,” Stella recalled in an interview. City slickers joined the area’s farmers and came a-stompin’ and dancin’ on Saturday nights to the square dances! The dance hall closed in 1954.

The concession stand had flop-open wooden doors to make sales windows where you could buy ice cream, potato chips, candy, and soda. One hundred picnic tables, some with charcoal grills, were available or you could lie on your own blanket on the grass under the maple tree shade. There were seven lifeguards; efficient and well-trained young men. One day there were more than 4,000 who paid admission to enter Power Dam. Herb recalls: “my brother and I closed the gate and wouldn’t let anyone else in—it was so crowded! At the end of the day, my father handed us a big roll of money. He had been letting cars in through the golf range parking lot!!!”

Power Dam was the only privately owned swimming hole around that also had diving boards. There were three. Abdoo made the structure out of streetcar rails; they were tearing up the tracks [in Utica] and giving them

Power Dam also had its own diving team; Joan Zegibe Astafan was a star. Pictured here is George and Joe Mishalanie and Tony Skane, members of the team [circa 1942] [courtesy of H. Zegibe]

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away. He would drag one behind the truck every day when he came back from delivering the milk. Herb said, “I tell people that would get us in jail nowadays.”

After their seven-year-old son, Leo was killed in an automobile accident, Mr. and Mrs. Zegibe held annual picnic dinners in the grove for boys from St. John’s Orphanage. For years children from Utica Day Camp and Boys Club had swimming lessons at Power Dam. George was an instructor there for the Red Cross Senior Life-Saving program. Square dances, big Halloween parties, and family reunions were held in the pavilion. The Republican Club [George’s political party] held picnics and receptions for Republican candidates. Jumpers and hunters competed in the nearby fields during the Mohawk Valley Hunt Club events.

Power Dam closed in 1986. The property was sold and in July 1996, a newspaper announcement said that Power Dam, where children of the “average worker spent their lazy summers, would be turning into an exclusive housing development for the rich.” Two acre lots were to sell for $150,000; homes would be priced from $500,000. New Hartford was deemed an economically stable town. Upon the sixty acres of Heron Landing, the pond still survives. The waterwheel welcomes the dozen residents to their homes. •

Zegibe Homestead built 1802

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