These dams powered  grist mills, lumber mills and  the like for small towns in the watershed. Late in the 19th century larger mills came to be built. By  1850 all Maine rivers were blocked at their head of tide by a dam.  (cjhall thesis) over 9 watersheds loss Across the nine watersheds, I found maximum annual production losses ranging from 1 to 29 million alewives/year during 300 years, 1600 to 1900. Over the same period, I estimated a state-wide total maximum production loss of 6.5 billion alewives. Today, annual alewife counts on three watersheds with restoration efforts are at 2 – 6% of my maximum annual virgin production estimates. p3 cj hall “Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine— When the white man crossed the Atlantic probably there was no stream from Cape Sable to Cape Cod but saw its annual run of alewives unless they were barred by impassable falls near the mouth. And while its numbers have declined during the past two centuries and its range has been restricted, both by actual extirpation from certain streams by overfishing, by the pollution of the river waters by manufacturing wastes, and by the erection of dams that it cannot pass, the alewife is a familiar fish still, all along and around our coast^[76] and yields an abundant catch in many of our streams. Alewives are taken commonly about Yarmouth, Nova Scotia; in the Annapolis Basin; in Minas Channel; and farther still, up the Bay. Alewives still run in most of the streams tributary to the Bay of Fundy, many in the St. John. A few are taken in the weirs in Passamaquoddy Bay; while young ones have been taken around Campobello Island; as deep as 50 fathoms. They enter the large river systems all along the coasts of Maine and New Hampshire, likewise many small streams, the requirements being that these shall lead to ponds or have deadwaters of sufficient extent along their courses, and no dams or falls that the alewives can not surmount. At Boothbay Harbor, for instance, a considerable number of alewives annually run, or did run, up to spawn in Campbell’s Pond, a small body of water that is dammed off from the harbor, and reached by a fishway only 15 feet long. This is the shortest alewife stream of which we know. In 1896, when the alewife fishery was the subject of inquiry by the Bureau of Fisheries,^[77] catches [page 105] large enough to be worth special notice were reported from the mouths of the St. Croix, Dennys, Machias, Medomak, Penobscot, St. George, Pemaquid, Damariscotta, and Kennebec Rivers; from Casco Bay; and from sundry other shore localities in Maine; from the Piscataqua River system in New Hampshire; from the mouth of the Merrimac, and from Cape Cod Bay. Few alewives enter the Merrimac, now, so polluted is it, and so obstructed by dams.^[78] And Belding found them running in only about 9 or 10 streams on the Gulf of Maine coast of Massachusetts in 1920, out of 27 streams there that had formerly supported considerable alewife fisheries.^[79]

c.j. hall