Overview
Conowingo, Maryland, gave its name twice: the village that had stood on the Susquehanna's banks since the eighteenth century — mills, bridge, church and homes — and the vast hydroelectric dam whose 1928 completion drowned it, the townsfolk relocated and the new Conowingo rebuilt on the heights while the old one vanished beneath the reservoir. The dam remains one of the great river works of its era, its gates famous for the eagles that fish below them; the drowned town supplies the folklore: boaters and shore watchers have told for generations of lights beneath the surface on still nights, a church bell heard from underwater, and the town's outlines emerging in drought years when the reservoir drops — the last at least partly true, as low water has exposed foundations and the old bridge piers. Present old Conowingo as drowned-town heritage first — a documented displacement — with the underwater bells and lights as river telling, hedged; the reservoir itself is powerful water, viewed from public areas only.