Low water at Triadelphia Reservoir exposes hidden history

OLNEY, Md. — A curious local drone pilot has been posting videos to Twitter after discovering what appears to be the ruins of a lost Valley community on the bottom of Triadelphia Reservoir.

The reservoir has been dramatically drawn down by the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, as the agency conducts a 2-year sediment control project near Brighton Dam. As a result, experts say hidden history has been exposed by the exceptionally low water.

“As I flew over the one area, that's when I realized there was a good foundation and it was an older structure,” said drone pilot Tim Pruss of Olney, Maryland as he described some of the shots he has of the valley ruins.

“I don't know if it was part of a mill or if it was someone's house,” said Pruss’ wife Yvette, who is a teacher following her husband's aerial adventures.

The couple is rediscovering the remnants of a valley community dating back to colonial times including the factory mill town of Triadelphia founded in 1806, which gave the reservoir its name, according to Dr. Stephen Curtis.

Curtis is a theoretical physicist who took the time to write a detailed history of the valley after a previous drawdown of the lake in 2017.

“It gives you an idea of what things were here in the early colonial period,” Curtis said as he watched Pruss fly a drone mission over one site.

All of it was flooded when the Brighton Dam was built during World War II.

“It's fun to think about what their lives were back then.”

Remus Lyles, 93, says he remembers working and playing in the valley before it was flooded. He joined WSSC in 1961 and worked there until retiring in 1990.

Curtis says Lyles’ long life has given him a rare perspective of the area from both before and after the valley was flooded.

“Oh, it was all farms down there,” Lyles told Curtis during a visit to the Lyles home about two miles from the Brighton Dam.

“I worked down there as a boy riding the horses and hauling in hay.”

Lyles is a descendant of enslaved people brought to a Howard County farm 300 years ago.

“That dam took a lot of black peoples’ land,” Lyles recalled when neighbors’ farms were condemned for the reservoir in the 1940s.

Lyles said he believes many enslaved people are buried in the valley but he doesn’t know where the graves might be. Pruss is curious about some stones he has spotted from his drones, but to date, it is unknown if they might mark grave sites.

Lyles’ memory fills in other more contemporary details of the valley, including the family names of those who farmed the valley before it was flooded, the location of historic old roads, and memories of toiling next to German POWs held at Fort Meade during WWII who worked on valley farms and help build the dam.

“They drafted almost all the young men around here so some of the farmers had nobody to work on the farm,” Lyles explained.

He said he was employed to drive to Ellicott City to meet busloads of POWs and pick up workers for local farmers. Lyles said the POWs were paid $1 per day for their labor and returned to Ft. Meade every night.

One farmer was a German immigrant who spoke more fluently to the prisoners than he did to his neighbors, Lyles laughed.

WSSC is projected to finish its sediment control work and reflood the area as early as the summer of 2024, according to spokesperson Lyn Riggins.

Riggins said the utility is not encouraging artifact hunting while the reservoir is drawn down.

She says much of the area is posted for trespassing due to safety concerns surrounding construction activity, and natural hazards like mud flats, which can trap unwary explorers.

Riggins added there is a current water contact advisory at Triadelphia because the hot weather has fueled an outbreak of toxic blue-green algae.