Keokuk, Iowa sits right where the Des Moines Rapids used to choke the Mississippi River. Steamboats hated this stretch. They had to unload cargo, haul it overland, and reload it just to bypass the shallow, jagged limestone. Then came Hugh L. Cooper. He proposed a massive concrete dam and powerhouse to tame the rapids and generate electricity. When completed in 1913, this monster of engineering stood as the largest low-head hydroelectric plant on earth. It stretched nearly nine-tenths of a mile across the river. It didn't just power local homes, either. Copper cables carried 99,000 horsepower of electricity all the way to St. Louis streetcars, 140 miles south. That was a big deal. High-voltage transmission over that distance had never been done on this scale.
But the original 1913 lock was too slow for modern shipping. It choked river traffic. So, in 1957, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a new lock. It measures 1,200 feet long and 110 feet wide. Massive. It can swallow a 15-barge tow in one bite, lifting those heavy steel hulls 38 feet in under ten minutes. No more breaking up the tows and wasting half a day. Today, Lock and Dam 19 is still working hard, unlike many historic sites that just sit there gathering dust. It remains a vital cog in the upper Mississippi shipping artery. Plus, the 1913 powerhouse still spins out electricity, using some of the same refurbished turbines that spun when Woodrow Wilson was president.
What Makes Lock and Dam No. 19 Historic District Special:
