Business View Civil and Municipal | Volume 2, Issue 6

43 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 2, ISSUE 6 TOWN OF MASSENA , NEW YORK lifestyles. It is the ideal base from which to explore all of the North Country. Situated on the banks of the Grasse and Raquette Rivers – two tributaries of the St. Lawrence – Massena became a prominent spa destination in the 1800s, charming visitors (including President Theodore Roosevelt) with the healing powers of its two local natural sulfur springs. Massena Springs, as it was known then, continued to thrive on the back of this curative water trend, and the town’s image as a health retreat persisted until the turn of the century, when the St. Lawrence Power Company, led by a team of five directors including local businessman Henry H. Warren built the first hydroelectric facility, connecting the Grasse River to the St. Lawrence by a power canal. This project was one of the largest of its kind for the time period. “Those two industries, along with the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa), who built their first plant powered by the St. Lawrence Power Company, drove our first industrial revolution back in the early 1900s,” explains Deputy Town Supervisor Sam Carbone. “Then, in 1958 the New York Power Authority completed construction the utility’s first hydro dam, which is shared between New York and Ontario. That sparked our second industrial revolution, which gave us the Chevrolet/General Motors plant, the Reynolds Metals aluminum foundry, and brought in all those other ancillary businesses needed to support those larger businesses.” In 2014, Alcoa shuttered the Massena East site. The property was subsequently leased to a company called Coinmint, a cryptocurrency prospecting firm. The site currently supplies their mining center, one of the world’s largest digital currency data processors making Massena a bitcoin mining mecca. Massena is home to the Robert Moses Power Dam. This is view of the dam, St. Lawrence River & Hawkins Point Visitor Center in Massena, NY