Shawsheen Aqueduct

The Shawsheen Aqueduct carried the Middlesex Canal across the Shawsheen River on the Billerica-Wilmington line, beside Salem Road (Route 129). Built by the canal's engineers Loammi Baldwin and William Weston, probably about 1796 (the canal was dug from 1794 and opened to Charlestown in 1803), it was the largest of the canal's eight aqueducts. The canal ran in a wooden trough, about 188 feet long and some 30 to 35 feet above the river, resting on two great wing abutments on the banks and a pier in the middle of the stream.

The wooden trough disappeared after the canal closed, but the stonework still stands. The abutments, about 50 feet wide and 20 feet high, are laid without mortar in granite blocks in alternate courses of headers and stretchers, and the central pier is about 6 by 20 feet and 20 feet high. Channels cut in the stone held the timber braces of the trough. The pier and the east abutment were deeded to the Billerica Historical Society in 1922. The aqueduct is part of the Middlesex Canal listed on the National Register in 1972 (and again in 2009), and the American Society of Civil Engineers dedicated a plaque here on August 5, 1967.

In 1975 the town received a $25,000 federal block grant to preserve the aqueduct, and in October 1977 it contracted with the E. C. Blanchard Co. of Lynn, which restored the central pier and moved a trunk sewer 50 feet west of the west abutment; the work was finished in 1978. Ten years later the town reported that the western approach to the aqueduct had been "razed by a local developer."

References

1. MACRIS BIL.909
2. Annual Report 1975: $25,000 block grant for the Shawsheen Aqueduct
3. Annual Report 1977: contract with E. C. Blanchard Co. to restore the aqueduct pier
4. Annual Report 1978: aqueduct restoration finished
5. National Register nomination, Middlesex Canal (1972)
6. Wilmington Patch: Then and Now, the Shawsheen River Aqueduct
7. Middlesex Canal (Wikipedia)