Thought Provoking Facts About A CT Treasure: Candlewood Lake

Mike Allen is I-95's Former News Director and a contributor to the I-95 Morning Show with Ethan, Lou & Dave.

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When Mike joins the show he presents "The Place You Live" segment, a fascinating deep dive into the communities we call home. We were lucky enough to have him join us on Tuesday (6/6/23) and talk more about everyone's favorite local playground: Candlewood Lake.

Mike Allen, Photo Credit: Lou Milano

This is some of what Mike Allen shared with us.

Candlewood Lake Serves a Purpose Beyond Recreation

Mike Allen:

"People tend to forget it's a big hydroelectric project, it generates electricity and people forget about that. "

There is more about the hydroelectric capabilities of the lake in the clips below.

Ethan Carey

It's Huge

Mike Allen:

"It's the largest man made Lake in CT and people always point out, yeah but Bantam Lake in Litchfield, that's the largest natural lake and that is true so we got that out of the way."

He added statistics about Candlewood's scope that include:

11 miles long
2 miles wide
30 feet deep average
85 feet is the deepest point down by the damn in New Milford.
46 billion gallons of water.
8 square miles of surface area.
5500 acres of surface space
61 miles of shoreline
1600 Residences on the lake
6000 resident vessels

Ethan Carey

How It Was Made

Mike Allen:

"It was all tobacco farms before it was built, they cleared it out in the 1920's. Only half of U.S. houses at electricity at that time."

Allen Added these amazing stats:

500 lumberjacks from Main and Canada were brought here to do the work and they cleared 4500 acres, mainly by hand.

Allen gave us plenty more to chew on during this segment. He shared a whole lot more about the history and science behind Candlewood Lake, listen below.

You can listen to "The Place You Live" on the Ethan, Lou & Large Dave Show podcast on Apple and Spotify.

Mike has a whole lot more to share and you can absorb it all by checking out his podcast "Amazing Tales from Off and On Connecticut's Beaten Path." The podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts, including Apple and Spotify.

Mike did two segments on Tuesday, the first was about the Old CT Path, hear what he had to say below.

Shelton Rec Center is the Site of a Decommissioned U.S. Missile Defense Base

The recreation center on Mohegan Road in Shelton, CT is all fun and games now but was once the site of some serious business. Shelton is not the only town in CT with a frightening Cold War past, Ansonia and Fairfield boast similar remains.

Visual Guide of Mark Twain's Redding + Hartford , CT Homes and Years

Mark Twain lived in CT for nearly 20 years, he owned homes in Hartford and Redding. Twain even purchased a second Redding home for his daughter. During his CT years he wrote classics like; "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court."

Each week on the Ethan and Lou Radio Show we are joined in the studio by Mike Allen for a segment we call: "The Place You Live." Mike brings his research findings with him and shares another amazing local story, this week, it was all about Mark Twain's ties to the Constitution State. This is a visual guide of Mark Twain's footprint on Connecticut.

The Danbury Flood of 1869 is a Local Disaster Lost to Time

Most everyone in Danbury knows about, or has heard of the catastrophic Hat City flood of 1955 where 87 people died. On the other hand, most people we've talked to don't know about the history of the flood of 1869. In "The Place You Live" segment that aired on August 31, 2021, I-95's former News Director Mike Allen shared his research on the failure of the Upper Kohanza dam in Danbury and what it meant for the people in Downtown Danbury that day.

Aurora Photography

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