Fresh Water and Sewage Treatment
Early technology to treat waste
MAP 12
One of the more mysterious park features is located along the creekside path between the boat house and the spring upstream. While some might think it is a grotto - built into a rock with doorway framing it - it serves a different purpose. It is another part of the system carrying fresh water to the “Big House” on the bluff above and elsewhere on Camel’s Hump Farms.
One of Archibald Johnston’s many accomplishments in his single term of mayor of Bethlehem was to improve public sanitation by extending the fresh water and sewage systems. As with the burning pit (MAP 16), Johnston recognized that emptying raw sewage into the Monocacy immediately upstream of the boat house (MAP 6) where his family rowed would be at best unsightly and at worst unhealthy.
The family’s waste water passed from drains in the house to a leaching field below the cold frames on the gentle slope away from the house toward the “galloping field” shown on the 1929 map.