Deerfield River is a river that runs for from southern Vermont through northwestern Massachusetts to the Connecticut River. The Deerfield River was historically influential in the settlement of western Franklin County, Massachusetts, and its namesake town. It is the Connecticut River's second-longest tributary in Massachusetts, shorter than Metropolitan Springfield's Westfield River. The river's confluence with the Connecticut is in Greenfield, Massachusetts, downstream of Turners Falls (). The Deerfield is one of the most heavily dammed rivers in the country with, on average, a dam almost every for its entire length. In Shelburne Falls, the glacial potholes and the Bridge of Flowers are popular tourist attractions around the river. Geography The great descent of the river of nearly 1,100 feet over 50 miles furnished water power at many places. Several streams nearly as large as the main river enter the Deerfield River from the north. Among its tributaries is the Green River. Dams There are 10 dams on the Deerfield, owned by three different electric utilities: Great River Hydro LLC purchased from the TransCanada Corporation in 2017 the Somerset, Searsburg, Harriman, Sherman, Deerfield #2, #3, #4 and #5 hydroelectric generating stations and dams; Brookfield Power owns the Bear Swamp Pump Storage project and Fife Brook dam; Nautilus Power LLC of Charlotte, North Carolina, owns the relatively small Gardner Falls Dam, which dates from 1904. The various hydroelectric facilities were purchased from National Energy & Gas Transmission, Inc. (NEGT) subsidiary USGen New England, Inc. at the conclusion of NEGT's Chapter 11 bankruptcy and liquidation of the assets of the USGen subsidiary in 2005. In 1994, an agreement on relicensing the various dams with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Massachusetts and Vermont state authorities that regulate water quality led to comprehensive coordinated water release and power generation schedules to enable more recreational use of the river, with minimum water flow measures to mitigate the dam impact on riverine habitat. A dam was proposed for the Stillwater section of the river in Deerfield in the mid to late twentieth century. Local opposition helped to defeat the proposal. History The hydroelectric development of the Deerfield River began in 1910 when the New England Power Company was formed to acquire water rights on the Deerfield and construct dams. The largest dam, Harriman, was built in the early 1920s and has an unusual overflow structure known as the "Glory Hole." This structure is a