Around 1800, when Calvin Arnold of Randolph, Vermont, arrived in the Vermont-Quebec border region, it was a land of large forests, lakes, and free-running streams where Native Americans, many of them Abenaki, lived, hunted, fished, and traveled along the waterways, and some of their descendants still live in Vermont today. Arnold saw the sharply dropping falls near the river’s approach to Lake Memphremagog as a source of natural energy for river-dependent industries, while historical indicators suggest the falls were also important to the Abenaki, likely as a seasonal fishing spot. These cascades became known as Arnolds Falls, and shortly after his arrival Arnold built a dam there, the first of several along this stretch of river over the next 150 years. The Arnolds Falls area flourished through much of the 1800s; in 1824 Arnold and his family built a small brick house about 100 yards from the top of the falls, and industries along the falls and nearby river included a pulp mill, saw mill, gristmill, clover mill, woolen mill, tannery, and nail forge. By the late 1800s, however, the industrial center was shifting downstream toward the shores of Lake Memphremagog and factories along the falls began to disappear. In 1890-91, Charles Prouty, a prominent industrialist and Newport native, organized the Newport Electric Light Company, which built a timber-crib dam and hydroelectric powerhouse downstream of Arnolds Falls near the current Newport generating station to supply local electricity; this original hydroelectric development was among the earliest in Vermont. As local demand for electricity grew, the hydroelectric system expanded in the first half of the 20th century with a new concrete dam in 1912 beside the timber-crib dam and the completion in 1918 of the 713-foot-long Prouty Dam, now known as the Clyde Pond Dam, which forms Clyde Pond and is the only intact dam left in this section of river.