NEW SALEM — Nature photographer and Quabbin historian Dale Monette will share images of the houses that existed in the four towns abandoned to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir at two presentations this month.
The first, hosted by Greenfield Community College, will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 13, at the Greenfield Garden Cinemas. The following evening, April 14, Monette will appear at the Gardner Museum from 7 to 8 p.m., with a reception to precede the event at 6:30 p.m. There will be a $3 charge for adult non-members and all museum visitors must wear masks inside, regardless of vaccination status.
Monette lives in New Salem and has spent his entire life in the North Quabbin.
“I grew up in Athol and went to Athol High School — 1967 is when I graduated,” he said. “Then I worked at Union Twist Drill. When they closed — I want to say in 1987 or ’88 — they put a lot of people out of work, including me.
“So, I went back to school at UMass and got my degree in natural resource management,” he continued. “While I was going to school, I worked part-time for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. I did that for a couple of years, then got a job at the Quabbin. I worked at the Quabbin for 30 years before I retired.”
While employed at the Quabbin, Monette worked in the natural resources division where he undertook numerous wildlife surveys. During his last 15 years, however, he worked as program coordinator at the visitor’s center planning school programs.
While his education and background may apply more to natural resources around the Quabbin Reservoir, his connection to the Quabbin’s houses is more personal.
“My great-grandparents had to move out of North Prescott,” he said, “and they moved to uptown Athol. But the thing that really got me going on the houses is, when they built the Quabbin in the 1930s, the state bought all the land — all the houses — from the residents. And if they owned a business, they didn’t get paid for the business. They just bought the houses.
“Then they told the people, ‘Look, if you want to keep your houses, you can tear them down,’” he continued. “Or, if people had the money, they could jack them up, put them on a truck and truck them out of the valley. But they had to get everything out.
“When they started flooding the reservoir, it looked like the moon — no houses, no telephone poles, no trees.”
Monette was quick to debunk a popular misconception.
“Contrary to a rumor, or a legend — we’ll call it a legend — there are no church steeples sticking out of the water at the Quabbin Reservoir,” he said. “If I had a nickel for every time someone came into the visitor’s center and asked if I could tell them where they could go to see the church steeples, I would have a pretty good bank account.”
The four towns that were disincorporated to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir included Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott. Monette said that each house that once existed in the four communities was memorialized.
“(The state) photographed every house that they purchased,” he explained. “They documented it. They would put a big sign in front with the person’s name and a lot of serial numbers on it, then they photographed the house. There were over 3,000 of these photographs.
“They were stored in the archives in Belchertown and there was also a set down in Boston,” he continued. “The DCR (state Department of Conservation and Recreation) decided that they would scan these photographs once the technology was there. It took about three years.”
Monette managed to obtain a copy of the photos on disc.
“So,” he said, “I went out one day with these black-and-white photos of these houses and I found the foundations. I put myself where the photographer would have been, and I replicated the photographs without the house there.
“When I got back to the office, I put them up in a PowerPoint program,” he explained. “I put one picture on top of the other and faded the house out, and so all I had left was the photograph I had taken earlier in the day — and it knocked me out. So, that’s the basis of my program. It’s not a Quabbin history program. I start with the houses and I talk about the houses.”
Monette has written two books: “Secret Lives of the Quabbin Watershed” and “Voyagers, Visitors and Home.” They are available in several local stores or by contacting the author through his website, northquabbinphotography.com. His third book, about the great blue heron, is due out this fall.
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.