| Additional Information: | The F in the photo codes is for Fox Canal Survey. The dam completed here southwest of the Berlin Lock by the federal government in 1894 consisted of timber cribs filled with stone. The extant cut-stone abutments apparently date from that construction.
Prior to the State of Wisconsin assuming ownership of the Berlin Lock and Dam site in 1962, a 1958 work plan called for repointing and backfilling the abutments.
The only remaining visible part of the dam are the abutments.
Unlike some dam sites on the Lower Fox River, the construction here is in rural-like setting (on the southern edge of Berlin) with no adjacent or nearby industrial or commercial properties.
The Berlin Dam was built as part of the Fox-Wisconsin Improvement Project from Green Bay to Prairie du Chien. The project included extensive dredging and the construction of locks, dams and lock tender houses plus a canal at Portage along the waterway.
The first dam at the Berlin Lock site was bulit by the federal government across the Upper Fox River in 1877. It was a temporary dam built of alternate layers of loose brush and stone, the latter obtained from a quarry near Berlin. The dam had a timber crest and cost $1,285 to build.
This first dam was replaced by the U.S. in 1893-1894 with a timber-crib dam at a cost of $14,747. |
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| Bibliographic References: | (A) Corps of Engineers, Annual Report for Fox-Wisconsin Project, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1884, 1917, 1925, 1952.
(B) Document Package Entitled "Transfer of Upper Fox River to State of Wisconsin," containing map, letters, reports, etc., from Corps of Engineers, 1958-1959.
(C) Corps of Engineers, map entitled Lake Winnebago, Upper Fox and Wolf Rivers, Wisconsin, 1916-1921; revised 1928, 1933, 1949.
(D) Samuel Mermin, The Fox-Wisconsin Rivers Improvement, pp. 1-100, 135, 162 passim.
(E) Richard N. Current, the History of Wisconsin, 2:19-21.
(F) Robert C. Nesbit, The History of Wisconsin, 3:88, 136-137.
(G) Corps of Engineers, land tract map for Berlin Lock and Dam, 1958. |
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