White Water at the Chain of Rocks St Louis BnW 7R2_DSC2256_10012017
by Greg Kluempers
Title
White Water at the Chain of Rocks St Louis BnW 7R2_DSC2256_10012017
Artist
Greg Kluempers
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
The old Chain of Rocks Bridge spans the Mississippi River on the north edge of St. Louis, Missouri. The eastern end of the bridge is on Chouteau Island, (part of Madison, Illinois), while the western end is on the Missouri shoreline. Its most notable feature is a 22-degree bend occurring at the middle of the crossing.
Originally a motor route, the bridge was for a time the route used by U.S. Route 66 (US 66) to cross over the Mississippi, but the bridge now carries only walking and biking trails over the river - and the New Chain of Rocks Bridge carries vehicular traffic to the north.
The old route to the bridge is now called Chain of Rocks Road and ends near Roman Road. Parking is available at the start of the now pedestrian route. The bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.
The bridge's name comes from a large shoal, or rocky rapids, called the Chain of Rocks, which made that stretch of the Mississippi extremely dangerous to navigate. Because of a low-water dam built by the Corps of Engineers in the 1960s, little of the Chain of Rocks is visible today except during extreme low water conditions. After 1940, only a single impediment prevented the maintenance of a safe and reliable 9-foot (2.7 m) navigation channel on the Mississippi River from St. Paul, Minnesota, to New Orleans.
This impediment, known as the Chain of Rocks Reach, was a 17-mile (27 km) series of rock ledges that began just north of St. Louis and was extremely difficult and dangerous to navigate. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a 8.4-mile-long (13.5 km) canal to bypass this treacherous reach. To ensure adequate depths in the pool below the old Lock and Dam 26, a non-movable, low water dam was constructed just downstream of the old bridge and a lock was installed at the south end of the canal. Known respectively as Dam No. 27, also called Chain of Rocks Dam, and Locks No. 27, or Chain of Rocks Lock.
Uploaded
October 2nd, 2017
Statistics
Viewed 608 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/16/2024 at 11:14 PM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet
Similar Images
Comments (1)
Allan Van Gasbeck
Congratulations! Your outstanding artwork has been chosen as a FEATURE in the “Gray Scale Outdoors” group on Fine Art America — You are invited to post your featured image to the featured image discussion thread as a permanent place to continue to get exposure even after the image is no longer on the Home Page.
Recently Viewed
