It’s All Water Over the Dam
From Time to Thyme
By Paula Dunn
A couple of weeks ago, Cynthia Baker emailed to ask if I’d ever written a column about the creation of Morse Reservoir.
Not exactly. I’ve covered aspects of the reservoir’s history before, but I’ve never devoted an entire column to it.
To be honest, I’ve been a little hesitant to dig too deeply into the subject because throughout my life I’d heard some rather bitter complaints about the way the Indianapolis Water Company dealt with the farmers who’d owned that land.
Oh, what the heck. What happened, happened.
The Water Company had learned as far back as 1923 that Indianapolis was eventually going to need additional sources of water for its growing population and they made plans to meet that need.
They started buying land for Geist in the late 1920s. Construction began in 1941, but some hitches popped up along the way. A few Fall Creek Township landowners objected to the price they were offered for their acreage and the company had to take them to court, threatening them with condemnation.
When the company decided to go ahead with a second reservoir on Cicero Creek in 1949, they didn’t want to repeat that experience, so they got a real estate agent to buy the land for them on the sly — all the while they repeatedly denied rumors they intended to build another reservoir.
At the end of 1950, they finally came clean and announced plans to erect an $8 million reservoir on Cicero Creek.
In July of 1953, construction began on the new facility, dubbed “Morse Reservoir” in honor of Indianapolis Water Company president Howard S. Morse.
Geist and Morse contain about the same amount of water, but there are some differences. Geist covers a little more land. Morse is slightly deeper and has a larger dam and spillway. (A detailed chart of statistics comparing the reservoirs appears in the Aug. 18, 1955 Noblesville Daily Ledger.)
One thing Morse has that Geist doesn’t is a levee to keep flood waters from backing up in the basin area and spilling out into White River. (If you’ve ever eaten at Wolfie’s restaurant, you’ve driven over that levee.)
Construction on Morse was completed in August, 1955, and water was allowed to begin filling it that December. The final cost was $6,500,000 — about three times the amount spent on Geist.
At that time, the Water Company held a contest asking people to guess when water would finally start flowing over the dam. The person who came closest to the date and time was to win $56. Progressively smaller amounts went to the next 55 entries.
An Indianapolis man won by being less than a half hour off the exact time of 7:28 p.m., February 25th. 1956.
The following July, the reservoir was officially dedicated in a ceremony that featured Indiana Governor George N. Craig, Howard S. Morse and Thomas W. Moses, the new company president. (Morse had stepped down earlier in the year to become the chairman of the company’s board of directors.)
The highlight of the proceedings was the unveiling of a plaque affixed to a large rock at the east end of the dam that dedicated the reservoir to Morse “in recognition of his significant contribution to the growth of Indianapolis and the surrounding area.”
Originally, there was to be no development along the shores of Morse and Geist, but in 1960 the water company created a subsidiary called Shorewood to sell the surplus land the company owned around both reservoirs.
We all know what came of that. By 1971, the land around Morse Reservoir that farmers had sold for about $350 an acre was valued at around $5,000 an acre.
You can probably understand why some bitterness toward the Water Company lingers in this county.
But, that’s water over the dam.
Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at [email protected]