Kaukauna Locks Historic District

About this property

The Kaukauna Locks Historic District is a lock and dam system in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, United States, that carried boat traffic around a rapids of the Fox River starting in the 1850s as part of the Fox–Wisconsin Waterway. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993 for its significance in engineering and transport. In early Wisconsin, before there were railroads or good wagon roads through the forests, there were rivers. Indians traveled on the rivers, explorers followed, and traders paddled their goods on them. Most significant, the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers nearly connected the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the middle of North America. By the 1840s people were thinking that this connection on the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, with only a short portage between the two, could be developed into a channel of commerce—a new Erie Canal—opening the Midwest to development, and profiting those along its path. But parts of the natural Fox River could be traversed only by canoe, and not many buffalo hides or wheat could be hauled in a canoe. The biggest rapids was at Kaukauna, where the river dropped 50 feet (15 m) in the course of 1 mile (1.6 km), requiring a long portage with even a canoe, and blocking a larger cargo vessel. In 1848 Congress arranged a land grant to finance the improvement of navigation on the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. In 1851 Wisconsin's Board of Public Works contracted for locks and a dam to be built around the rapids at Kaukauna, but by 1853 this wasn't done and the money was exhausted. The project was turned over to a private venture, the Fox River Improvement Company, and it got the land grant expanded. This organization made headway, and in 1856 a steamship managed to traverse up the Wisconsin and down the Fox to Green Bay. Still, the channels weren't deep enough to make shipping practical. The Company went bankrupt and the project foundered again. The canal itself was excavated in the 1850s and dredged repeatedly since. It is 7,000 feet (2,100 m) long and no more than 6 feet (1.8 m) deep. Its width varies from 100 to 250 feet (30 to 76 m), with the wide spots allowing vessels to pass each other. Near the top of the canal is the dam, 603 feet (184 m) long and rebuilt of concrete in 1931 and 1932. The pool created by the dam floods the canal to operate the locks. Each end of the dam has a 24-foot-long (7.3 m) spillway. The middle section has eight sluiceways, each with a Tainter gate. The gates are all operated by an electrical winch which slides on a track from gate to gate - known as the "crab."

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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