While this site is about sea-run brook trout, it is also about the larger conversation about dam removal, habitat restoration and the preservation of natural biodiversity. For without free running streams, sea-run brook trout would have simply disappeared into history – much like the dozen or so anadromous and catadromous fishes nearly have.

Come take a walk with me…

Larkin Rd is just a short minute or two from Exit 81 at Rt 95 – the Byfield / Central Street Exit. If you go past the Rusty Can, you’re in the right place.

By the time I started visiting this particular site, the abandoned buildings had been demolished. All that was left was a cement pad at the millrace where the mill once stood.

Years later a child was rescued after falling down one of the dark holes that might have led to some of the machinery below.

What’s a walk without a little history lesson?

The Larkin Rd “Snuff Mill” Dam was one of the six named here. Just upriver, one still stands, nearly ready to spin into full operation. It was used to grind tobacco, grown nearby, into snuff.

Rivers are what make mills spin and do work like grinding corn, milling flour, spinning cotton. Rivers make them spin, but dams — and the impoundments (ponds) created behind them — are what makes mills profitable.

Impoundments also can damage and destroy native fish habitat by raising water temperatures.

This is what the impoundment looked like in 2022.

Here’s a short video knitting most of this together – below – taken in June of 2026

In the video I use the expression “the thalweg emerges” – and for those interested, a thalweg is the line of lowest elevation along a valley or riverbed, marking both the deepest channel and the path of fastest water flow. It is a vital concept in geography, hydrology, and international law as a thalweg is often what defines a boundary.

Soo… what is all this about?

Dam removal is all about re-connecting a river to its natural flow.

The deeper desire is to restore habitat to enable native fish to migrate and reproduce naturally as they once did before industrialization. Dam owners (the good ones) tried to mitigate the damage they brought when they built dams by building “fishways” (aka herring run) to enable migratory herring to swim right around the dams.

Just one problem – they never really worked well – and without maintenance, they fail.

This one looks pretty good here but I never saw a single herring in this fishway.

This fishway, one of several going upriver, is either now destroyed or simply buried deep beneath a pathway open to the public.

Note the broken concrete and holes in the fishway — and the copious poison ivy.

We can’t forget the lampreys!

Lampreys spawning in the Parker River prove the connection to the Atlantic Ocean is working. They migrate upriver from the Atlantic Ocean to spawn. Their nest building is starkly illustrated by bright gravel. They move and clean the gravel to make nests for their eggs. Small rocks get moved upriver, out of the way, often leaving a bank of gravel from years of nesting in a single place. This is a rare sighting in a special place.

Even more special: the river herring – Alewives and Bluebacks in the fishway at Central Street – the dam just below Larkin Rd. These can now migrate up past Larkin Rd.

Even more special – a sea-run brook trout captured by Mass Department of Marine Fisheries at the Central St fishway.

This fish, one of very few ever seen, is likely from brook trout stocked by Trout Unlimited the previous year.

Despite numerous reports that these fish are commonly caught in the area, eDNA samples taken in 2020 came back negative for brook trout at that fishway.

This page is dedicated to David Mountain, author of the booklet “Mills of Byfield” PDF below.

I met David once, just before he passed. We talked about dam removal, of course.

There is a stone bench near one of these mill sites dedicated to David and his love for these mills.

See if you can find it.

Thank you David Mountain.