This digital story was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.
Recorded by Lansdowne High School Students, 2019.
Speaker 1 (00:41): Water, a natural resource for all life, makes up 71% of our planet. We swim in it, we bathe in it, and drink it. Water is what gives us life and without it there would be no life. For thousands of years humans have relied on water to create power and agriculture. However, what can create can also destroy. This is a story of the waterways of Ellicott City.
Speaker 2 (01:10): Ellicott City, the community in Howard County, Maryland, was first founded by the Ellicott brothers in 1772. Residents historically utilized the Patapsco and Tiber rivers to turn mills and generate electricity. Today, this historic downtown, known as Old Ellicott City, is a tourist spot for shops, restaurants, and other residential properties.
Angie Tersiguel (01:32): So originally, when the town was established in the late 1700s, the people here built their homes and community along the Patapsco River. So the town that you see today didn't exist. And when the Patapsco River would flood, it would destroy the town. And so for several floods, the townspeople were rebuilding, and then they finally recognized, "This is not solving our problem. We need to move the town." And that's when the town began to work its way up Main Street as we know it today. But its relationship really correlates with the Ellicott brothers and coming to this town and creating a mill town. What they did was they manipulated the river beds in such a way to speed up the water so that they could create electricity.
David Adler (02:22): Back then, you definitely needed water, and water power, to operate those mails. So after looking up and down the river, this was one of the places they chose and they thought it was a really good area.
Liz Walsh (02:34): It was built along the banks of the Patapsco River because of the power of the water to drive the industry that came here, and that settled here, and that built this town.
David Adler (02:45): The 1800s, they had a big storm in Howard County. I think it was like in the 1860s. It was over 18 inches of water that fell in just a couple of hours in the western part of Howard County. And all of that just drained down here and it flooded Main Street, the lower part. But today, in the past two years, where we've had these floods and there are these cloudbursts that have occurred, they had like eight inches, six to eight inches, of water falling in just two or three hours. And there's nothing that's going to stop the flooding. It doesn't matter what you can do.
Asset ID: 8618
For a complete transcript, visit www.museumonmainstreet.org
