The Barton Dam in January

Well I decided on one of my twelve months projects and it is going to be the Argo Dam and the surrounding area. It is pretty nice and the dam itself looks pretty cool because it has the old look to it.

The dam itself is located on Huron River Drive to the Northwest of Ann Arbor and you can get to it by taking Main Street to the north and turning left just before you have to get on M-14. It is the second entrance for the Barton Park (the first part of the park is pretty nice too, there may be some scope creep and I may try to include that).

The first dam was built on the site in 1830 to power flour and woolen mills. In 1905 that dam burnt down and was replaced by an electrical dam. In 1914 it was bought by the company that would be later known as Detroit Edison, at the time of purchase it was called the Edison Illuminating Company of Michigan. In 1963, it was sold to the city of Ann Arbor after the power generating capacity was decommissioned in 1959. In 1972, the dam was reconstructed.

There is some level of debate on what to do with the dam.

This is a footpath bridge leading to the rest of the park, it was pretty cold out and as you can see it was snowing pretty hard so I didn't venture too far.

This is looking down the Huron River. I kind of liked the look of the river and the trees on the left. As you can see the river isn't frozen over.

This is the generating building.

This is a shot of the dam. I should have taken a shot of the river on the other side because it was completely frozen over. I kind of like the look of dams or waterfalls in the winter because the ice makes neat patterns.

A shot looking across the damn.

A shot looking down the dam. You can see that it's not quite sealed off because there is a little water flowing.

Looking at one part of the dam. I'm not sure if it shows up in this picture but there was a greenish/blue tint to the ice.

Another shot looking at the damn. I think the greenish tint shows up better here.

Looking down the dam at the building. Again, the snow was pretty heavy.


Sort of an overall shot of the dam and the building. Sadly, I don't have a wide enough angle lens to get the whole thing.

My mom has done series of pebble drawings and I kind of like them. So whenever I get a chance to something similar with my camera, I do. The white streaks are bits of snow.

Another shot at a higher shutter speed.

I liked the look of the red against the whitish sky.

More pebbles.

This one is going to be a little different from my 12 month projects last year because I'm going to do some walking around the park and make it more of a series about the park itself. The dam will be featured though.