That checks out, Ross. I must’ve read it there first, and had the conversation with my dad after. During the early-20th century a lot of these dams went in, to control flooding, provide irrigation and drinking water, and generate electricity. So the Gone Away Lake scenario played out in many communities at that time.

Do you have a list of all twelve families that summered at Tarrigo? I can only find 9 mentioned in the books;

Tuckertown, Payton, Chater, Brace-Gideon, Humboldt, Vogelhardt, Thompson, Delaney and Castle.

The houses that Mrs Cheever and Mr Payton currently live in have to have belonged to one of the three I can’t find. I love overanalyzing things like this.

I am finishing up a monograph on Enright and Goneaway. Last year, I, too, worked with the Enright materials at the Kerlan Collection, but somehow I missed the ms. You quote. What a nice find!

Actually, in Gone Away Lake, when they first meet, Aunt Minnehaha tells Portia and Julian that they believe the dwindling of the lake began in 1903 when the dam was built at Corinth. By 1906, there was nothing left but mud. In real life, there is a dam at Corinth NY.

I also remember him telling me that such things were common, and that often there were in fact vacation properties left far from the shore they were meant to front, leading to a ghost-town effect.

Ironically, the same thing is happening again today, only now it’s houses and communities built on reservoirs, that with the movement to remove dams and restore habitat, suddenly find themselves high and dry on less-than prime real estate.

Anyway, that was one discovery I made about this all-time favourite book in the re-reading. I was sure Ms. Enright mentioned a dam somewhere.

Thanks for the post! I’m kind of on a “re-visit the favourite childhood reads” kick these days, and greatly enjoying the surfing I get in afterward. (Something no-one on earth imagined when I first read them.)