- Waterworks
- Water
- 1906-07 to the 1940s; dams dynamited about 1965
- DeKalb County
- Location approximate
Decatur Waterworks (Mason Mill)
Decatur's water works, completed in 1907 at Ezekiel Mason's old flour-mill site, with dams on South Fork Peachtree Creek and Burnt Fork Creek. It closed in the 1940s and its dams were dynamited about 1965.
The record
Mason's mill on Burnt Fork Creek dated from the 1850s. The waterworks produced about 1.8 million gallons a day, which became too little for the growing town; in the 1940s DeKalb County's new system, the Scott Candler plant on the Chattahoochee, took over (Wikipedia's mill list gives 1906-1947 for the works). About 1965 the two dams were dynamited and the reservoirs drained. Surviving pieces include aeration and solids-removal tanks, two storage tanks and an office building, plus WPA-era granite benches, grills, tables, a stacked-stone fountain and a stone bridge over Burnt Fork Creek. The site was listed on the National Register on March 15, 2006.
Today: Mason Mill Park (DeKalb County) off McConnell Drive, on the South Fork Peachtree Creek Trail.
Look for: Tank and filter ruins; the two dam sites on South Fork Peachtree and Burnt Fork creeks and the drained reservoir flats behind them.