In 1900, George Bayless, owner of Bayless Paper, built a paper mill in the Freeman Run Valley. By 1909, the company realized that occasional dry seasons required a more reliable water source. After finding a small earthen dam to be inadequate, the T. Chalkey Hatton firm was commissioned to build a large concrete gravity dam across the valley. The dam was high, long and cost $86,000 to construct. It was designed to be thirty feet thick, but was built only twenty feet thick. Because it was deemed too expensive, an underground vertical concrete slab, which had been designed to prevent water seeping under the dam through the soil the dam sat on, was not built, on Bayless's orders. At the time, there were no state regulations or requirements in Pennsylvania about the building of dams.