A Dam Dumb Idea

Photo courtesy of Nathan Bechtold

A failed project from the outset, the first-ever dam on the Osage River was built 130 years ago, and it’s still causing problems.

Introduction by Nathan Bechtold; article republished with permission from Damming the Osage

Not every notion to “build something” is a good one. Such was the case for the very first dam constructed on the Osage River, known as Lock & Dam #1. The vision was to make the Osage more navigable for commerce, but the result was an expensive structure that collapsed the first time it was tested, never really had the hoped-for effect, and now — almost a century and a half later — poses a navigational hazard and impediment to aquatic species. The following excerpts detailing the project are republished (with permission) from the remarkable and hard-to-find book Damming the Osage, by Leland and Crystal Payton of Lens and Pen Press.

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In an impassioned plea for improved transportation, the May 19, 1848, Liberty Weekly Tribune chided unprogressive Missourians. It cites the “almost incredible increase in population and wealth” of New York due to her “great canal, stretching like a silver link from the Hudson to the lakes . . . . If we cannot slack-water all our streams, requiring such improvement, let us commence with the most important one, the Osage.” A decade earlier, the Missouri Board of Internal Improvement suggested a lock-and-dam solution for the Osage to create slack-water navigation. This would be the ultimate solution to the ninety-eight shallow shoals the report identified between Osceola and the Missouri River. Locks and dams are costly and complex engineering solutions employed on projects like the Suez and Panama canals, but hardly justified to deliver salt and nails to Warsaw, Missouri, then return with raw lumber and barrels of pork.