St. Paul has just finished work on its newest park – Meeker Island – commemorating the first lock and dam on the Mississippi River in the city’s Desnoyer Park neighborhood.
The site, and the first steps toward a radical transformation of the river, had been all but forgotten for almost a century.
That changed when a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers historian rediscovered the site’s history and in 1995 wrote about it in Minnesota History, the journal published by the Minnesota Historical Society.
Restoration began in 2005.
The original 1907 structure, though it was the first lock and dam built on the Mississippi, was designated “Lock and Dam No. 2” more than a century ago, a nod to the Army Corps of Engineers’ intentions to build two dams in the river gorge between the mouth of the Minnesota River and St. Anthony Falls.
But after eight years of construction and just five years of operation, they literally blew the project out of the water and started over on a single, bigger Lock and Dam No. 1. Today it’s known more commonly as the “Ford dam,” after the automaker’s St. Paul plant that overlooks it.
The Ford dam submerged nearly all the dynamited ruins of the Meeker Island structure, though the intact lock walls have been more visible lately, when the river was lowered to accommodate the recovery of victims in the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. The remnants of Meeker Island itself have since been dredged away.
Corps of Engineers historian John Anfinson detailed the political struggle at the time over the dam. Minneapolis wanted a monopoly on Twin Cities waterpower, but St. Paul hoped a new technology, hydroelectricity, would spark industry on its side of the river.
“It was quite an intercity rivalry,” Anfinson – now with the National Park Service – says of the battle.
Minneapolis won the first round. It got a first dam that would bring boats to its river port, but it was too small for industrial use. St. Paul eventually won out and persuaded Henry Ford to build a hydroelectric station and an automotive plant in Highland Park.
Upstream, the vestige trails and terraces at the Meeker dam site eventually became a haven for dumping, drinking and illicit sex, neighbors complained. Spurred by Anfinson’s history, they pushed to spruce up the site and give the public easier access, hoping the historical attention would end a local nuisance.
The Legislature, pushed by DFL Sen. Dick Cohen, put forward $380,000 of bonding money to start the restoration in 2005.
It’s too early to tell whether the improvements, including a new paved path, will work: Although landscaping finished only last week, some of the park’s fixtures are already paling with graffiti.
But the site’s place in Mississippi River history won’t fade again.
“This has really been a process of reclaiming this stretch of the river for everybody, not just for people who want to be down there alone for whatever purposes,” said Jim Marti, president of the Merriam Park Community Council, the organization of residents in the area.
Tim Nelson can be reached at email@example.com or 651-292-1159.