Even the folks who put all this into action probably couldn’t have envisioned just how well things would turn out.
Stoever’s Dam was built in the 1820s to supply water to the Union Canal. The canal didn’t last long at all, though: economics, unpredictable and often uncooperative weather, and ultimately railroads did it in, in short order. So the Eastern Real Estate Co. and later still Bethlehem Steel took possession of it and the surrounding land.
In time, however, Lebanon city acquired the property and dedicated what is now Stoever’s Dam Park in 1973…