In the News

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which  in the 1930s constructed and has since overseen Lock and Dam 12 here in Bellevue (part of the Rock Island District), is marking its 250th anniversary this summer

 

According to the Army Corps of Engineers Mississippi Valley Division, it was June 16, 1775, more than a year before the United States would became an official country, when the second Continental Congress appointed George Washington the commander in chief of the Continental Army. That same day, Congress authorized the creation of the post of Army Chief engineer—and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was born.

 

The work the engineers did back then building fortifications, surveying terrain and clearing road proved so valuable that four years later, Congress resolved: “That the engineers in the service of the United States shall be formed into a corps, and styled the ‘corps of engineers’ and shall take rank and enjoy the same rights, honours, and privileges, with the other troops…That a commandant of the corps of engineers shall be appointed by Congress, to whom their orders, and those of the Commander in Chief, shall be addressed…”

 

The future of the Corps was even more firmly assured in 1802, when President Thomas Jefferson established the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the first U.S. school of engineering. Until 1866, the superintendent of West Point was an engineer officer. One of West Point’s missions was to train generations of military engineers to participate in both military and civilian engineering projects on behalf of the nation.

 

Over the years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would play an active role in the development and/or completion of many sites in the nation’s capital, including the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, Rock Creek Park, and the Library of Congress.

 

It has also maintained a national role in the development of coastal fortifications, lighthouses, and waterways, in the improvement of rivers and harbors, and in the design, building, and maintenance of structures such as bridges, canals, levees, locks, and hydroelectric dams and roads.

 

To relieve unemployment during the Great Depression, the U.S. Government engaged the Corps of Engineers in planning, constructing, and maintaining a vast flood control network of levees along the Mississippi River and its tributaries.

 

The dams and locks of the related Upper Mississippi River Nine-Foot Channel Project (like Lock and Dam 12 in Bellevue) mitigated economic problems and brought a fully navigable interior river system to the Midwest.

 

Civil Works added as a mission

It was the General Survey Act of 1824, legislation that authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct surveys for roads and canals and fund (through the related Rivers and Harbors Act) navigational improvements on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. These laws ushered in a new era of civil works legislation that shaped the Corps into what it is today.

 

Vicksburg as a Corps base

The USACE established its first permanent engineer office in Vicksburg in 1873; the Mississippi River Commission established its district offices in 1882, with an office in Vicksburg. In 1929, the Mississippi Valley Division moved to town, as did the Waterways Experiment Station (known today as ERDC) under the leadership of the President of the Mississippi River Commission.

 

The division manages all six Corps districts that serve the Mississippi River valley, much of the work focused on the globally significant waterway through which much of the world’s bird life migrates and exports flow.

 

“For 250 years, the Corps of Engineers has been working to safely deliver quality projects on schedule and within budget,” said Lt. Gen.William H.“Butch” Graham, 56th Chief of Engineers and commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “I’m extremely proud of the 40,000 committed USACE teammates who wake up every day to solve some of the nation’s toughest challenges.”

 

U.S. Army Corps constructed Lock and Dam 12 (1934-1939)

It’s been a physical feature of Bellevue for eight decades, but most people who live here probably don’t think much about it as they drive down Riverview, as it has been part of the local landscape for generations.

 

The fact is, however, that Lock and Dam 12 in Bellevue is not only an integral part of the Mississippi River navigation system, it is an important part of both Bellevue’s general history, as well as its economic history.

 

It was more than 90 years ago that Lock and Dam 12 was under construction by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Started in 1934, it was completed and opened in 1939, just as World War II was breaking out in Europe.

 

According to former Lockmaster John J. Mueller, who retired in 2023 not much has changed at the lock and dam over those 80 years. He said that besides the use of computers for information on what is coming up and down the river, everything concerning the actual infrastructure of the facility is the same.

 

The lock and dam system on the Upper Mississippi was constructed to ensure a four-foot navigation channel (later 9 feet) for steamships and commercial tows. It was one of over a dozen locks in the Rock Island District, and was the fourth to go online.

 

According to the May 16, 1939 Bellevue Herald, a record amount of gasoline and fuel oil was locked through the first week Lock and Dam 12 was operational.

 

“Record tows of gasoline and fuel oil passed through the local lock last week to give the locks at the newly-raised Bellevue pool a good tryout. The process of locking the huge tows through, however, was accomplished without a hitch,” the article states. “The St. Louis Socony with 6,480 tons on six barges passed here last Tuesday night, the largest cargo ever shipped on the Upper Mississippi River. The total in gallons was 2,160,000. The Kansas City Socony, a sister ship was close behind with 4,814 tons or 1,604,666 gallons. Both boats are powered with 1,200 horse power Diesel engines and are the most powerful crafts on the river.”

 

Other articles in the Bellevue Herald in 1939 touted the large employment during the construction of the massive federal facility. It was stated that over 1,200 men were employed here during the peak of construction.

 

Overall, the construction of Lock and Dam 12 made Bellevue a busy and thriving small town at the time, while many other towns and cities struggled through the Depression conditions across the country.

 

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” implemented nationally to help ease the employment woes of this Depression era, was the catalyst for the Lock and Dam project on the Upper Mississippi, which greatly aided the local economy.

 

It was a project of the Public Works Administration (WPA), part of that New Deal. The WPA was a large-scale public works construction agency, which was created by the National Recovery Industrial Act of 1933.

 

The agency, which spent over $9 billion over a 10-year period built large scale infrastructure projects, such as bridges, hospitals and schools, and of course, Lock and Dam 12 in Bellevue, which cost nearly $6 million ($106 million in today’s dollars).

 

Lock and Dam 12 is 556.7 miles above the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. The complex stretches across the river at a point where the bluffs on the Iowa side are very close to the river; a complex of islands and sloughs extends nearly three-quarters of the way across the river from the Illinois side.

 

Bellevue State Park occupies the high ground on the Iowa side, while the urbanized area of Bellevue extends to the government-owned property on the flat land below the bluff.

 

The Lost Mound Unit of Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge occupies the islands, slough, and small flat bottom areas on the Illinois side.

 

The movable dam consists of seven submersible tainter gates (20-feet high and 64-feet long) and three submersible roller gates (20-feet high and 100-feet long). The dam system also includes two, non-overflow, earth and sand-filled dikes; two transitional dikes; and a concrete-covered ogee spillway, submersible earth and sand-filled dike. The foundation is set in sand, gravel, and silt.

 

The lock dimensions are 110-feet wide by 600-feet long with additional provisions for an auxiliary lock. The normal upper pool elevation is 592 feet, approximately 15 feet above the tail waters below the dam at low water. The maximum lift is 9 feet with an average lift of 6 feet.

 

It takes approximately 10 minutes to fill or empty the lock chamber. It takes about 8 hours for water to travel from Lock and Dam 11, in Dubuque, Iowa, to Lock and Dam 12.

 

During the peak of construction, a maximum of 1,217 men were employed at one time, many of them living right on the job site. For every one job on the Lock and Dam, it is estimated two more jobs were indirectly created in the local area.

 

The workers on the site used steam-powered cranes, while cement was mixed in two (2-cubic-yard) mixers that ran non-stop. Wood, limestone and local construction materials were used on most of the project.

 

Beside strong maintenance and a few remodel jobs (and a few near-floods) over the decades, the 80-year old facility looks and operates pretty much as it did when it went into operation in 1939. The gears, metal and concrete, as well as the main office itself is all original.

 

The existing 9-foot Channel Navigation Project was constructed in the 1930s and extends down the Upper Mississippi River from Minneapolis-St. Paul to its confluence with the Ohio River and up the Illinois Waterway to the Thomas J. O’Brien Lock in Chicago. It includes 37 Locks and approximately 1,200 miles of navigable waterway in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

 

The system’s 600-foot locks do not accommodate some of today’s modern tows without splitting and passing through the lock in two operations. This procedure requires uncoupling barges at midpoint which can triple locking times.

 

More than 580 manufacturing facilities, terminals, and docks ship and receive tonnage in the Upper Mississippi River basin.

 

In 2019, the entire Upper Mississippi River locking system moved more than 160 million tons of commercial cargo worth roughly $28.5 billion. Grains (corn and soybeans) dominate traffic on the system. Other commodities, mainly cement and concrete products, comprise the second largest group. A modern 15-barge tow transports the equivalent of 870 large semi-trucks (22,500 cargo tons, 787,500 bushels, or 6,804,000 gallons).

 

Annually, the project generates an estimated $1 billion of transportation cost savings compared with the operation and maintenance costs of approximately $115 million.

 

You can see operations at Bellevue's Lock and Dam 12 by entering a public observation area from the municipal parking lot just below.