Overview
The longest river in Vermont, Otter Creek flows north from southern Vermont through a number of waterfalls. Before the widespread availability and use of fossil fuels, these waterfalls were invaluable as sites for hydropower, forges, and turning the mills that ground grain and milled lumber.
Otter Creek is still a workhorse of a river, hosting several hydroelectric facilities and wastewater treatment plants. At its lower section of about seven miles below Vergennes, Otter Creek is at lake level, and then flows into Lake Champlain. Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area and Cornwall Swamp Wildlife Management Area provide protection & conservation for wildlife.
History
Native peoples arrived here between about 10,000 and 11,000 years ago to hunt and fish in a marshy landscape. Later, the Abenaki and Iroquois hunted, fished, gathered various herbs and fruits, grew crops, and settled in this abundant valley. Called “The Indian Road” by early white settlers, Otter Creek was a long, easily navigated channel that offered access from Lake Champlain upriver to the headwaters of streams that flow east into the Connecticut River Valley and Massachusetts.
Compared to other areas in Vermont, the Otter Creek Valley is rich in bedrock that was used by native tribes to make tools for hunting, trapping, fishing, and for processing plant products. In this valley Native Americans found highly useful outcroppings of chert and quartzite. Evidence shows that hard-working, knowledgeable native people developed a systematic quarry industry here. It appears that blocks of ore were removed from the bedrock, impurities and low grade ore were knocked off, and then the ore was flaked and ground down into axes, knives, arrowheads, spearheads, and other tools.
Evidence uncovered in archaeological digs in the Otter Valley reveal that for hundreds, even thousands of years, the creek served as a link in a vast network of Native American trade routes sending goods all over the Northeast and beyond.
As the word got out in lower New York and New England that the Otter Valley and the Champlain Valley were fertile, productive places, settlers migrated here. Communities sprung up at the more powerful falls along Otter Creek at Rutland, Brandon, Middlebury, and Vergennes. The soils in the valley produced corn, rye, oats, barley, wheat, peas, beans, hemp and flax.
In the 1700s and 1800s, men dammed Otter Creek at nearly every location where its water flowed swiftly. During that era, water power was king – it was necessary for almost all the settlers’ activities including milling grain, sawing wood, forging iron, and making cloth. Mills were located at waterfalls, where water tumbled down forcefully and was able to turn the large waterwheels that powered the mills. Hydropower dams were built and often later rebuilt at Center Rutland, Proctor, Brandon, Middlebury, Weybridge, and Vergennes.
Most of these dam sites were buzzing hubs of activity. The falls at Vergennes, where factories were set up on the both sides of the dam and downstream, were especially rampant with industry. The first sawmill was erected in 1764 and soon other mills sprung up. The Vergennes waterfalls soon became an area of dispute between New York and Vermont interests, with Ethan Allen in the thick of it. After the Revolutionary War, mill construction at the falls increased rapidly, one of which was the Monkton Ironworks, later replaced by the National Horse Nail Company. By the early 1800s, Vergennes had one of the most developed iron industries in the region. This is one of the reasons that Lt. Thomas McDonough built in 1814 the largest vessels in his fleet of ships just below the Vergennes falls.
Water Quality
River Watch has been monitoring water quality in the lower Otter Creek since 1992. Otter Creek has one of the most intact, wide floodplains in the state. The broad wetlands beside the creek helped lessen the massive floods of 2011, one sign of a healthy river. E.coli levels are high at and near the river’s mouth. An increased number of monitoring sites in the Otter Creek watershed were being evaluated in 2014-2015.
Otter Creek is listed by the State of Vermont as impaired for swimming from the mouth of the Middlebury River down to the Weybridge Dam and, farther downstream, from the Vergennes Falls to Otter Creek’s mouth at Lake Champlain in Ferrisburgh. E. coli counts tend to exceed the Vermont State Standard downstream from Middlebury (sampling station OTR23) to the Route 17 Bridge (sampling station OTR13). Counts at other locations often exceed the standard, especially during periods of high runoff.
Turbidity levels in Otter Creek are generally well below the Vermont State Standard of 25 NTU, but approach or exceed the standard at Belden Falls (sampling station OTR21) during periods of high flow and runoff. Concentrations of phosphorus in Otter Creek generally mirror those of suspended sediment in the water measured as turbidity. The primary source of phosphorus is erosion, and the phosphorus load transported by the river can be very high during periods of high flow.