Berrys Pond

I recently visited Berry's Pond which was built around 1910 to help power the textile mill at Startex... the little mill town where I grew up which in on the Middle Tyger River. Berry's Pond is on the South Tyger River. They both produced power to supply the mill at Startex . I do remember when they were still using the powerplant in the mill at Startex... it could only run a few hours and then they had to let the reservoir refill. When I was very young my dad took me down to where the generator was at Startex... it was on a Sunday and the mill was not running. I never really saw it in person after that even though they used up until the late 60's.

There is a surprising amount of the power generation hardware still on site at the old power plant... both armatures minus their copper windings are still there.

There were two generators at the power plant with two different style water wheels. The one here had a single inlet with two exits with with turbines in both exits. In the background you can see the shaft coming through the wall from another style waterwheel.

This is the generators at Berry's Pond back in the day.

The second waterwheel is contained inside the pipe outside of the building and only a single exit out the bottom.


The power plant is about a half mile downstream from the dam and was fed by a raceway that ran alongside the river.