| Additional Information: | Photo code #1: FCS 14/32
#650: Former lock, canal.
This dam consists of loose stone boulders; when it was installed is not clear. The old Governor Bend Dam has been removed. None of the old dam abutments are visible.
Unlike some dam sites on the Lower Fox River, the Governor Bend Dam is in a rural setting with no adjacent or nearby industrial or commercial properties.
The Governor Bend Dam was built on the Upper Fox River 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 to improve navigation on the waterway.
The original dam at Governor Bend was said to have been built in 1865 and renovated in ca. 1880, including the replacement of abutments. It was classified as a timber crib dam. A fishway to allow fish passage was installed in the structure in 1898.
References to the dam by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1870s and early 1880s were titled "Governor's Bend," but in 1885 the name changed in the agency's annual Fox River reports to "Governor Bend." No "Bend" has ever served as a governor of Wisconsin territory or state. The book The Trail of the Serpent indicates "Governor's Bend" is the correct title. |
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| Bibliographic References: | A. Corps of Engineers, Annual Report for Fox-Wisconsin Project, 1873, 1877, 1880, 1884, 1899, 1917, 1952.
B. Corps of Engineers, map entitled Lake Winnebago, Upper Fox and Wolf Rivers, Wisconsin, 1916-1921; revised 1928, 1933, 1949.
C. Samuel Mermin, The Fox Wisconsin Rivers Improvement, pp. 1-100, 135, 162 passim.
D. Richard N. Current, The History of Wisconsin, 3:88, 136-137.
F. Corps of Engineers, land tract map for Governor Ben Lock and Dam, 1958.
G. Robert E. Gard and Elaine Reetz. The Trail of the Serpent, p. 53. |
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