For more than 250 years, a man-made dam at Finesville harnessed the Musconetcong River, shaping settlement in the region and linking the village to its origins as an industrial community powered by the river. Around 1751 Samuel Morris built the first log dam at this site to power a new iron forge on the Hunterdon County side of the river, and by 1780 Chelsea Forge included a forge, a saw mill, two dwelling houses, a tavern, and assorted buildings. In April 1789, land agent James Parker found the dam badly in need of repair but considered the mills potentially very valuable because of the water supply from living springs. The Fine family then bought the property, repaired the dam, and over the next 60 years used it to power new grist, oil, plaster, and woolen mills on both sides of the river. Finesville grew around these industries with support businesses, worker housing, and eventually a church and schoolhouse. In the second half of the 19th century, the Taylor Stiles Company bought the mills and buildings and used river power to make knives, bringing a final building boom in which the number of houses nearly doubled over five years. In the early 20th century, the mill on the north side of the river became first a fraternal lodge and later a private home. In 1950 a new concrete dam was built to power a paper mill on the south side, but by 1990 neither the mills nor the dam were being used for industrial purposes. Finesville later remained a small village retaining most of its 19th century buildings as part of the 195-acre Finesville-Siegletown Historic District listed in the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. The 1950 concrete and rock dam was removed in 2011 as part of the Musconetcong River Restoration Project, the fourth of several proposed dam removals on the river, to reconnect the river, restore natural flow, reestablish migratory fish passage to historic spawning areas, enhance the local stream ecosystem, and improve water quality within the Musconetcong Watershed.