MONDAY MEMORIES

Geysers on the Maumee

8/18/2014

A geyser is not something you expect to see while traveling along or over the Maumee River. Well, if they are the result of human efforts, it is possible.

This was the sight along the Maumee River on the evening of Aug. 19, 1952. Photographer Bruce Sinner captured the moment when many houses and an untold number of fish were jarred as several thousand pounds of dynamite was set off in the river near Perrysburg. The blast loosened rock in the river bed to make a trench for a 16-inch water line tying in Perrysburg’s water system with Toledo’s.

Windows of homes within a three-mile radius of the detonation rattled from the blast. Numerous people frightened by the noise, called the Maumee and Perrysburg police stations, as well as the newspaper office. Several hundred others who knew in advance of the blast lined the river banks to watch the dynamite send a spray of water several hundred feet into the air. The river crossing was constructed by the H.L. Gentry Construction Co. in Perrysburg, and ran from the foot of Corey Street in Maumee to near Maple Street in Perrysburg. A similar blast occurred a couple weeks earlier, on the Maumee side of the river.

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