A splash dam made of logs on Otter Run in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania in summer: the chute is being repaired.
The same splash dam in operation; the chute gate is open and there are logs in the pond behind the dam.
A splash dam was a temporary wooden dam used to raise the water level in streams to float logs downstream to sawmills.[1] By impounding water and allowing it to be released on the log drive's schedule, these dams allowed many more logs to be brought to market than the natural flow of the stream allowed. Water releases from multiple splash dams on tributaries were also often combined to maximize the number of logs floated throughout a given watershed.