According to the article "Goliath Met David on the Banks of the Butternut Creek," by Leigh C. Eckmair, for much of the 20th century, the Village of Gilbertsville lived under threat of destruction by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ flood control project.

A dam of the Upper Susquehanna Rivershed Project was to be built on the lower Butternut Creek at a spot called Cope's Corners.

Residents had been watching in horror over the years as communities in the nearby Catskills had become victims of similar projects and had vowed not to let it happen to their small village.

The dam project, originally proposed prior to World War I, met with very strong local opposition every time it was reintroduced.

Delayed due to World War I and the Great Depression, the project was reintroduced in 1935 following a flood which did millions of dollars of damage to communities in eight southern tier counties in upstate New York.

These studies called attention to the fact that a number of well known architects of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had been responsible for the design, building and renovation of many attractive village structures.

From that effort came the suggestion that several structures in the center of the village be nominated to the new Department of the Interior's National Register of Historic Places.

The Committee for the Historic Preservation of Gilbertsville was formed to work with the N.Y. State Office of Parks and Recreation and to prepare nominations, documentation and photographs.

The combination of all these efforts was rewarded when deauthorization of funding for the complete Upper Susquehanna River Shed Project was proposed to Congress in 1979, and the threat of the construction of the dams was removed.

Mott Company of New York City, which stood atop the Butternut Valley Grange was sold for $205,000 to Raymond and Susan Egan of Princeton, New Jersey.