A short 'history' of the Upper Miss lock system

The DMR Canal Dry Dock and Canal Shop at Keokuk

In 1889 the Corps opened a drydock and workshop in one of the old locks. Not only did they work on government boats, but they also repaired private ones as time permitted.

Picture 1 The Power Plant building is complete and the Streckfus steamer SAINT PAUL is upbound. I believe that is the SIDNEY, also a Streckfus boat, entering the lock. Note the workshop building in the old canal/lock area.
Picture 2 The Corps snagboat DAVID TIPTON is in the drydock. This was originally the COL. A. MACKENZIE. David Tipton was her pilot. He died at the wheel in Lake Pepin and the boat was renamed in his honor. Capt. Tipton is buried in Chippiannock Cemetery in Rock Island. His tombstone has a pilotwheel on it and there is an anchor on his grave.
Picture 3 Here the privately owned DIXIE is on the drydock in 1915.

Construction of the current L&D system

Here are 3 pictures showing the construction of L&D 15 at Rock Island.
Picture 1 was taken in August 1933. That's Davenport in the background.
Picture 2 taken December 1933. This is the only dam which is made up completely of rollers. I believe it is the second longest roller dam in the world - there is one in Russia that is longer. The rest of the L&D system used a combination of roller and tainter gates, with one exception that has all tainter gates.
Picture 3 was taken in January 1934 and shows the progress on the dam.

More L&D 15 photos

Picture 1 The view from the Clock Tower Building of the completed L&D 15. The bridge is the Government Bridge, built in 1896 and the only swing span to be able to turn 360 degrees.
Picture 2 Looking upriver at the locks. The boat is entering the auxiliary chamber. The main lock is 600 x 110 and the auxiliary is 360 x110. More on that later.
Picture 3 An aerial view of the complex.

L&D 10, 11 construction

Picture 1 Looking downriver at 10 at Guttenberg Iowa in 1934
Picture 2 Looking upriver at 10
Picture 3 Looking downriver at 11 at Dubuque Iowa. That's the old Eagle Point Bridge in the background. Taken in 1934

L&D 26 Alton Illinois

The old setup was similiar to that here in Rock Island: there were 2 locks and there was a railroad swingspan bridge at the lower end of the locks.
Picture 1 Taken from the DQ sundeck 1981 as we left the main lock downbound. Note the open drawspan of the rr bridge and the US Highway 67 bridge in the distance. All this is just a memory now...
Picture 2 The construction of the new L&D 26 in 1981, with a DQ running light in view.
Picture 3 The view of that area now, taken from atop the new lock, looking upriver.

More Mel Price photos

They have a fine museum and learning center at Mel Price (26) Locks and Dam, and tours of the locks are given. Its worth a visit. These pix were taken a couple of years ago as the Midwest Buffs toured the facility.
Picture 1 The museum and the lock tower. We walked across the lock at about the height of the name sign.
Picture 2 The well-traveled model of the Corps snagboat HORATIO G. WRIGHT
Picture 3 Just because I had one space left, here's one of my favorite old boat, the CAPITOL, in the 1913 era lock at Keokuk.

Odds and ends to wrap this up....

The old lock at LeClaire is still used on weekends for recreational boats. You have to walk across it to get to the current lock. That whole Lock 14 area is interesting - besides the locks, you have a picnic area on Smith Island and above the lock is a Corps repairyard. At any time you can see various Corps small workboats, cranes, and a lock gate or two on a barge undergoing repairs. LeClaire is just 10 miles above the Quad Cities and is the home of the TWILIGHT overnight cruises and the LONE STAR/Buffalo Bill museum.
The old canal in Moline which was the lower end of the RI Rapids canal, is used by recreational boaters to tie up, often for the weekend. If you are riding the bikepath on Arsenal Island, climb up the levee and look over - you'll see a flotilla of cruisers tied up there. Above the I 74 bridge, the remnants of the lock wall are often not visible, and I've seen a couple of boats wipe out as they zipped over the wall to come get a closeup of the DQ.
All of the locks were built with at least the beginning of an auxiliary chamber, but only 15 at Rock Island, 26 at Alton, and 27 at Chain of Rocks have usable auxiliaries. The new ones at 26 and 27 are 600 x110; the one at 15 is 360 x 110, and the old one at 26 was 300 x110. The DQ could easily use our auxiliary, although the pilots oftened stalled for the main lock due to the stronger outdraft on the auxiliary. But the old one at Alton was another story. To use that, the stage had to be hoisted up as vertically as possible to squeeze in there. Our auxiliary at 15 was closed for over 6 years as there was no money to make the needed repairs. But it was reopened last month and is used mainly by recreational boats, harbor tows, and the CELEBRATION BELLE. It sure is good to be in my yard and hear the two whistles of the auxiliary tooting again...
When I rode the DQ, I threw out the souvenir doubloons at the locks. Kids would look for me from year to year. Our biggest crowds would be at 13 by Clinton/Fulton, 8 at Genoa Wisconsin; and 4 at Alma Wisconsin. The kids at Genoa were particularly vicious in their quest for the coins, so one trip I deliberately tossed the coins into an area that was been watered by the rotating sprinkler. One Sunday morning we were in the Alma lock. I could see the entrance to a church in town and just as a family was climbing the stairs, the DQ's calliope started up. That family turned and looked, and came down to the lock rather than go into the church...
Then there's the lockhopping tradition, but we'll save that for another time.

WOW Judy. How about printing this up into a little booklet? You could sell them to support the River Museum and social events at RI!

Maybe someday

Thanks. I'd need to go through it and clean it up - I just wrote as I typed this AM, and I've thought of more already - but serving breakfast to the neighborhood kids at church is calling me at the moment.... I'll add some more personal remembrances later today.

Lock dogs and houses

There are several locks which are out in the middle of nowhere, and at a couple of them the lockmen kept dogs - 5 or 5A, I get them confused, and 13. The last dog on the UMR lock system was at 13 I believe. He would come out and head right to the galley door of every boat. The last time I saw him, he was quite aged and infirm and the lockman said they were not allowed to have any more dogs after he passed.
Another thing long gone from the lock scene is the tidy white with green trim lockmaster's house. There were usually two of these on the site, square two story homes. Sometime in the 1980s or so, they were either torn down or a few were sold and moved into town. They added to the scenic nature of the lock area.

There's a dog at #25, maybe others, too. I'll post as we head up that way.

Keep this stuff coming, Judy -- I eat it up!

Winfield #25

Ah yes, L&D 25 out in the boonies, technically at Winfield Mo., an obvious place for a dog for a lookout. That was one of the two locks I'd miss on my DQ trips, after staying up late to go through old #26. I'd usually wake up to the lock whistle signalling our departure readiness, always about 7 AM as I recall. The other lock I'd miss was 5, and I can't remember why. Verify my memory, please, but back in our day, didn't the First Mate(you) handle the afterwatch lockings, especially during the midnight-6AM watch? It was only in later years that the company required the Master to make every lock, right?

For those of you readers who aren't familiar with the UMR system, our locks are 10-46 miles apart, averaging about 25, which meant a locking every three hours or so on one of the QUEENS. It was no wonder a nameless Captain from the beautiful Ohio territory always happened to be on vacation for the UMR trips!

Master Mates

"... didn't the First Mate(you) handle the afterwatch lockings, especially during the midnight-6AM watch? It was only in later years that the company required the Master to make every lock, right?"

You got that right. I could never understand the reasoning of having the Master make all the locks. For those who don't know, you may think that's better, somehow, but it makes me think that the policy, supposedly started by a certain Master for whatever reasoning, deprives the mates of valuable experience they should be learning as a natural progression in their steamboating education.

When I returned to the DELTA QUEEN, in 1970, Big Cap asked me if I wanted to return to the engine room or "go on deck." I chose the deck as I knew where I wanted to go; so Wagner made me his Second Mate and I immediately began my own education toward gaining my Inland Mate and Master's tickets. After a few weeks, the Skipper had me standing by him on the Bridge Wing as he made the locks, and when he was satisfied I was ready to "solo", he stayed inside the pilothouse as I called out the distances, bells, and orders to the crew below.

Cap was preparing me for a big change in the works when, in April, Captain Hawley followed Roddy Hammett over to the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE and left the DELTA QUEEN mate-less. Harry Louden and other old-time pilots filled-in as Mate until the day Captain Wagner moved me over to the night watch where I fulfilled the Mate's duties without a license, but with Harry, and others, "carrying the license" as I did the work.

That June, when I barely had enough time to sit for my license (just three days over the minimum required time), I drove to Louisville and tested under Jake Jacobs, passed, and returned to the DELTA QUEEN as the legitimate Inland Mate.

So Judy, your answer is YES.

Oh, yes. The Captain might do the after watch locks in the afternoon, if he were up, but after midnight was the Mate, Pilot and deck crew. This was even the case with President Carter and family aboard in 1979. When Ted Davisson was Mate, he liked to do it from the main deck, leaning out over the side and shouting distances up thru the speaker system to Capt. Ware! I preferred the bridge, myself.

If you did enough locks with the same crew, they could almost be made without saying a word. Same thing for late night landings. On the locks with floating pins, a pilot, engineer, and deck hand could easily handle the job. Having to raise the captain from the dead at 2:00 or 3:00am for such a routine thing was assinine. It was just more of that deep sea stuff that we had to put up with.

Locking on the DQ

Picture 1 - let's see, Mate Reynolds preferred to work from the wingbridge, Mate Davisson preferred to be on the main deck, and it looks like Mate Palmore preferred more direct contact with the pilot - no, wait, the caption says she's in a spitball fight with Cappy Louden, not locking through!
Picture 2 - at L&D 10 in August 1978 that is Capt. Jim Blum shaking Iowa Senator John Culver's hand, after Culver's family 'lockhopped' from Dubuque to Guttenberg. The blond-haired boy is in a more dignified position these days - that's Chet Culver Governor of Iowa.
Picture 3 - Now this is the way we non-dignitaries lockhopped. That's Debbie Tschiggfrie boarding with the assistance of Dave's dad Joe and some unseen crew member aboard the boat. Funny, but that distance between the boat and the lock wall never seemed like much when boarding, but when having to disembark it seemed a mile wide!

Judy Patsch;17366 wrote: For those of you readers who aren't familiar with the UMR system, our locks are 10-46 miles apart, averaging about 25, which meant a locking every three hours or so on one of the QUEENS.

And, unless it was during the overnight watch, a calliope concert.

Sometimes it was good to be the banjo player.

Paul

Crew Calliope players

Luckily for the piano/calliope man, in the 70s and 80s that meant Vic Tooker or Dan Forman, the DQ was blessed with crew members who could regale the lock folk with a few tunes on the calliope so Dan or Vic weren't called out of regular duty. There were Captain Gabe Chengery, Watchmen David Tschiggfrie and Keith Norrington, Mates Lexie Palmore and Bob Reynolds, and even the banjo player Paul - Fred Dodd - who tickled the ivories from time to time. In a pinch, even a passenger like Ann Zeiger, played a few tunes. Probably the only two people aboard the boat that you could guarantee couldn't play a note were Capt. Jim Blum and myself.