Mississippi River 9-Foot Channel, Lock & Dam No. 1, In Mississippi River at Mississippi Boulevard, below Ford Parkway Bridge, Saint Paul, Ramsey County, MN

Significance: Lock and Dam No. 1 is significant because it symbolizes important local and national events and trends, and because it possesses a rare and unique design. In 1894, Congress authorized two locks and dams for the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and St. Paul due to a rivalry between the two cities and because, at that time, two dams made sense to meet navigation requirements. National developments in hydropower technology and in the country's attitude toward its natural resources arrested the navigation project in full stride. Only the power of these developments on national and local levels explains whey Congress ordered one of the new locks and dams destroyed and the other revamped. Those same issues created a decade-long debate so divisive that it immobilized the national government in terms of establishing its role in hydropower development. Lock and Dam No. 1 represents this debate, as Congress granted the Corps authority to build the hydropower station base but not the plant and as six years would pass before the Ford Motor Company built its plant on this base. Because Congress revamped the original navigation project to include a high dam and hydropower, the Corps selected an Ambursen dam for Dam No. 1 and modified it in ways that make it a uncommon structure. In separably intertwined, politics, economics and technological developments explain how Dam No. 1 came to be and why it has a unique design.
Survey number: HAER MN-62