Note the Stone Arch Bridge in the background.
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| Street View, Oct 2018 |
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| John A. Weeks III "It has a 24-foot head....The lock is 56 feet wide by 400 feet long, which is about two-thirds the size of a typical Mississippi River lock." This photo "was taken from the 10th Avenue Bridge. This photo is only possible with the collapse of the I-35W bridge, which would normally block the view of the lock & dam. Note the nice view of the Stone Arch Bridge and the 3rd Avenue Bridge in the background. The lock and this section of the Mississippi River was closed from August 1, 2007 to October 5, 2007 following the I-35W bridge disaster." [Note the collapsed bridge in the left foreground.] |
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| John A. Weeks III "The photo above is a view of the Lower Saint Anthony Falls Lock & Dam after the new I-35W bridge was completed. This photo was taken from the Northern Pacific Bridge #9 due to the observation area on the 10th Avenue Bridge having been closed after the new I-35W bridge was completed." |
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| USACE "Dam consists of concrete spillway 275' long with four Tainter gates. Abutment connecting to short earth embankment owned by Xcel Energy Company" [The debris from the old I-35 bridge has been removed, and they are starting the construction of the replacement bridge.] |
John explained that they studied installing a "linear turbine" next to the lock. It looks like the conclusion of the study was positive.
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| Satellite |
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| Minnesota Field Guide posted Saint Anthony Falls is the only natural major waterfall on the entire Mississippi River, and it's the whole reason Minneapolis exists where it does. French missionary Father Louis Hennepin named the falls in 1680, and settlers kept flocking to see its beauty between the 1700s and 1800s. But beauty wasn't really the draw for long. Zebulon Pike struck a deal with Dakota representatives in 1805 to acquire the land for a military fort at Bdote, and soldiers from that fort built the first sawmill and gristmill on the falls in the 1820s. The real transformation happened once private industry took over. By the 1850s the falls were fully harnessed for commercial lumber and flour milling, and the settlement grew into a city that led the world in flour production for nearly fifty years starting in 1880. Between 1880 and 1930, Minneapolis stood as one of the world's key flour-milling hubs, all powered by a waterfall that mill owners kept aggressively re-engineering to squeeze out more energy. That engineering came with real risk. The falls sat on a hard limestone cap over a soft sandstone base, easy to tunnel through but geologically unstable once water got involved, and mill owners built canals and tunnels through the 1850s to feed water to their operations and drain waste back out. The instability caught up with them fast. In October 1869, a tunnel beneath Hennepin Island began collapsing, and volunteers scrambled to save equipment from the mills before the hole swallowed everything. City leaders eventually agreed the falls needed a wooden apron built over them, slowing the water flow to keep the eroding sandstone from disappearing entirely. Even that wasn't the end of it: the Army Corps of Engineers spent three straight years fighting the river starting in 1870, plugging holes and lining tunnels with concrete while water kept finding new paths under the limestone, eventually building a massive underground wall that, remarkably, is still in place today, still stabilizing the falls beneath the limestone cap. As transportation and industry shifted away from the river through the 20th century, the milling district declined, and the area sat neglected for decades. Minneapolis eventually turned that same stretch into what it is now, a walkable historic district built directly on top of its own industrial ruins. A 1.8-mile interpretive trail now loops around the falls, passing the historic Stone Arch Bridge and both the Upper and Lower St. Anthony Falls Dams, and the old Washburn A Mill has been converted into the Mill City Museum. What started as a sacred site, then became an industrial engine violent enough to nearly collapse its own foundation, is now the calmest, most walkable stretch of downtown Minneapolis, still marking the exact spot where the city was born. |
This is what the river looked like upstream before the dam was built.
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| Brian Marsh posted via Dennis DeBruler |
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| ParkConnection via Dennis DeBruler |
They are now thinking about removing the three dams in Minneapolis. So the above two views may become more common.
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| USACE_disposition "The St. Paul District is currently studying the disposition of the three locks and dams located within the city of Minneapolis. The purpose of these disposition studies is to determine whether there is federal interest in continuing to own and operate the locks and dams. If there is no longer a federal interest, the Corps of Engineers is then directed to identify a viable disposal alternative, meaning the locks and dams would be transferred out of federal ownership to a local, state or federal agency." |
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| Friends of the Mississippi River If the USACE no longer wants them, should they be removed? |
A rendering of the river if this dam were removed.
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| fmr_rederings via fmr_could_not_find_date |
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