THE Fun for Everyone!
The pulse of Washington County
VOL. 03, NO. 38
Friday, July 3, 2015
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ST. CROIX VALLEY AREA
Hot wing dam!
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St. Croix River structures found historically significant
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ST. CROIX RIVER — The summer of 2007 was a dry time for the St. Croix Valley, and low water levels led to boaters noticing strange structures sticking out of the St. Croix River. Most of the 50-some logand-stone structures were at shallower parts of the river near Taylors Falls and Osceola, Wis., but others were found as far south as Afton. Word got back to the National Parks Service via the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, which investigated and found them to be “wing
dams” or channel diverters built in the late 1800s to make the water deeper back when commercial boat traffic was prolific. The unusual part is that few of the structures have survived elsewhere, according to the Riverway’s Cultural Resource and Interpretive Specialist Jean Schaeppi-Anderson. The finding is significant enough that this summer the National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center and Midwest Archeological Center are conducting dives to photograph and test the structures. Their will be compiled into a report that will likely be avail-
able online ad in print, and the sites will be nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. “Because this river did not really stay a commercial river, it hasn’t been updated,” noted Schaeppi-Anderson of the wing dams. “On the Mississippi, they’ve been replaced by concrete wing dams over the years, but ours were kind of forgotten.” Many have been preserved by their longtime submersion in relatively cold water, while ice and flooding have worn some away and others have been inadvertently damaged by boats and pedestrians.
The research is being funded by the National Parks Service via mitigation funding from the St. Croix River Crossing (Schaeppi-Anderson was unsure of the exact cost). She pointed out that no photos or documents seem to exist about about the wing dams’ original installation, but conclusions can be drawn by similar processes documented on the Mississippi River. “(Even that data) doesn’t specify completely what they’re doing,” she noted. “So a lot of this is going to remain kind of an unknown.”
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