Towns and Nature: Paterson, NJ: 11mw Great Falls, first planned industrial city in USA, and hydro plant

Power Plant: (Satellite)

(HAER, the server was broken when I tried to access the photos.)

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The Great Falls is 77' (23.5m) high and has a flow second only to Niagara Falls in Eastern USA.

nps, Terry McKenna
"When Alexander Hamilton and the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures (S.U.M.) set out to build the first planned industrial city in America in 1792, the key factor was waterpower. Paterson’s industries clustered around the raceway system built by the company, harnessing the potential energy of the Passaic River and the 77-foot drop in elevation with a three-tiered, human built network of artificial channels. Water, diverted above the great falls, flowed through this system, and drove water wheels, and later, turbines. The mechanical, kinetic energy was connected to machines throughout each factory by a network of shafts, gears, belts, and pulleys."

Here is a stronger flow over the falls.

nps, Paterson Museum
All of the factory sites along the raceways were occupied by the 1850s. So, when electric power became viable, they switched to the new form of power distribution.

nps, Paterson Museum
"The plant as built had four 2400-volt, sixty-cycle alternating Westinghouse generators."

Today, the power plant has "three vertical Kaplan turbine generators" that were installed in 1986. [EagleCreekRE]

The fourth unit was preserved, inoperable. [nps]

PatersonGreatFalls
Today, the three tier raceways and 118-acres of old factories are a national park.
"The waterpower system fostered many technological advances in industry, such as the first cotton duck cloth for sails, the first continuous sheet paper, the first revolver by Samuel Colt, and the first practical submarine by John Holland. Paterson became the world's center for the production of cotton, silk and locomotives."

The upper raceway is now a park. The first tier of the raceways went south of the river along the escarpment.