The New Croton Dam is the jewel of the Hudson River village in which I grew up. Behind it lay 19 billion gallons of water for New York City, 30 miles to the south.
Before September 11, 2001, the bridge across the spillway was open to cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians. (I haven’t been there since 1991.)
A friend and I climbed the spillway under the bridge, and back down, when we learned that that was the only way off of it, around 1964 (it was dry then). Each “step” was about eight or nine feet high, consisting of three blocks with plenty of footholds. Still, climbing down was scariest as the steps were only about three to four feet wide. It took us all day.
The dam is the setting for a scene in an episode of NBC’s 2009 series, Kings.