Kentucky River Development in 1917, the Steamboat Commerce It Was Designed to Support Came to an Abrupt End
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ENGINEERING THE KENTUCKY RIVER: THE COMMONWEALTH’S WATERWAY Leland R. Johnson and Charles E. Parrish 1999 All illustrations unless otherwise noted are from collections of the Louisville Engineer District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Library of Congress Cataloging Johnson, Leland R. Engineering the Kentucky River: The Commonwealth’s Waterway / Leland R. Johnson and Charles E. Parrish. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. River engineering -- Kentucky -- Kentucky River -- History. 2 Inland navigations -- Kentucky --Kentucky River -- History. I. Parrish, Charles E., 1942- II. Title. TC425.K43 J65 1999 627’.12’097693--dc21 Book design/layout by Debi Schoenbaechler, Louisville Engineer District. Print production supervised by David Duggins, Louisville Engineer District. This book is set in Palatino typeface, printed on white 70# Sappi Lustro Dull Text stock, with cover of laminated white 120# Sappi Lustro Gloss Cover stock. This publication is available from Louisville District, P.O. Box 59, Louisville, KY, 40201-0059. Additional information about the activities of the Louisville District available on the internet at http://www.lrl.usace.army.mil Printed in the United States of America Foreword The Kentucky River laces through the Commonwealth’s history like a vari- colored thread. For untold centuries this river scoured, cut, and opened a channel through seemingly impenetrable barriers of stone to drain a third of the State of Kentucky. Over the centuries there gathered along its banks a galaxy of human occupants, ranging from those Paleolithic wanderers who left abundant artifactual evidence of their passage to the arrival of Euro-American peoples. The Kentucky profoundly influenced all of them as, paradoxically, a gathering and a divisive range line in every stage of human history. The cardinal, indeed the central, chapter in its history was the struggle to open the river as a transportation outlet for shipping products of the fertile land it drains. Leland R. Johnson and Charles E. Parrish have diligently and thoroughly ferreted out details of the various efforts to make it serve transportation needs. They present graphic accounts of commerce on the river, even listing cargo manifests of boats plying the stream and tracing the steamboat and towboat tonnages of Kentucky products traveling it for sale at domestic and foreign markets. The authors have resurrected from the morgue of Kentucky documentary sources the pertinent records of Kentucky’s convoluted campaign to build internal improvements—macadam roads, railroads, and slackwatered rivers. They relate gubernatorial, legislative, and business interests in these pioneer transportation projects, focusing on the efforts to build locks and dams on the Kentucky River. The movement to create slackwater pools for navigation on the Kentucky River challenged boatmen, engineers, and public officials at every step. Locking the Kentucky behind fourteen dams and locks required prodigious engineering skills and daring, heavy capital investments, and a generous share of luck. The story the authors relate of engineering on the Kentucky is, in microcosm, the story of waterways engineering throughout the United States, even on the great Mississippi River itself. Their account of the place of the Kentucky River in the history of the Commonwealth adds distinctive new perspectives on how pioneers met the baffling problems of opening efficient transportation channels. An explicitly written and solid piece of research, no clearer explication of how this willful stream has influenced the history of the state and nation has been written. It’s a tremendously interesting and insightful addition to the history of Kentucky’s transportation network, especially the locking and damming of its central river. It would have been wonderful if this study had been available to me back in 1939 when I wrote my history of the stream. One thing is certain. The Kentucky River ripples on in menacing flood tides and strangulating droughts, virtually defying human efforts to bridle it and make it responsive to human will. This study becomes an important source for understanding not only the challenges met on the river in the past, but also those that Kentuckians face now and will encounter in the future Thomas D. Clark i ii Engineering The Kentucky River: The Commonwealth’s Waterway PREFACE Rising on the western slope of the Appalachians, slashing through towering palisades across central Kentucky and emerging from the hills at Frankfort, the Commonwealth’s capital, the Kentucky River flows 256 miles from its Three Forks sources to enter the Ohio River midway between Cincinnati and Louisville. Among all Ohio River tributaries, it stands foremost in scenic beauty. Indeed, the Commonwealth’s ecotourism boosters have compared the Kentucky’s environmental charms to Arizona’s spectacular Grand Canyon or Europe’s magnificent Rhine River. Like the Grand Canyon and the Rhine, the Kentucky River has also been developed through engineering to serve human needs, and this is the story of its engineering development. Native American Indians navigated the Kentucky River in prehistoric times, and during centuries since explorer Thomas Walker canoed it in 1750 the Kentucky has floated every conceivable type of watercraft up and down its turbulent waters. Providing access from the Ohio River to the central Bluegrass and rich Appalachian resources, the river transported Euro-American explorers and settlers into the region, then took their frontier produce and manufactures to markets aboard unpowered flatboats, keelboats, and sailing ships. Pioneer marine engineering facilitated use of the Kentucky for transportation and stimulated interest in changing the river’s natural regimen to better serve the Commonwealth’s need for access to markets. The design engineering of steamboats during the early nineteenth century inspired dreams of developing the Kentucky River as a link to prosperous Ohio and Mississippi River commerce, and in 1836 the Commonwealth began building locks and dams on the Kentucky to provide reliable year-round navigation from its mouth to its sources at the Three Forks. By transporting the Bluegrass’s agricultural produce and the mineral and forest resources of the Appalachians, the Commonwealth expected its river improvement project to foster the state’s commercial prosperity. When these dreams collapsed in 1842, only five of the state’s locks and dams planned on the Kentucky were completed and less than half the river’s length had slackwater navigation available. By collecting tolls from passing boats, however, the Commonwealth funded the operation of its locks and dams until the dams collapsed and failed in 1876. Visions of the commercial prosperity that might develop if more locks and dams were constructed on the river gripped the imagination of Kentuckians, and in 1880 they persuaded Congress to pursue their vision. At the direction of Congress, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers restored the slackwater navigation on the lower Kentucky by 1883, then built additional locks and dams to extend the slackwater farther upstream. During thirty years of hard labor, the Corps built nine more locks and dams, increasing the total number to fourteen and at last reaching the river’s sources, the Three Forks, in 1917. This developed the river’s entire course, transforming it from a wild, unfettered stream into a fully engineered waterway, ready to serve steamboat commerce throughout the years. Concurrently with completion of the Kentucky River development in 1917, the steamboat commerce it was designed to support came to an abrupt end. As a result, the locks and dams development was derisively labeled a white elephant, the “famous porkbarrel.” During the following half century, brave efforts to make the river serve emerging towboat and barge commerce proceeded with but meager success. At the same time, engineering development of the river continued for purposes in addition to navigation. Its hydroelectric power potential was developed in part, projects were completed to reduce damages iii from its floods, and its uses for recreation and water supply became important. By the waning years of the twentieth century, however, the Commonwealth and the Corps of Engineers confronted wrenching economic and environmental decisions on the future of the Kentucky’s obsolete yet historic slackwater navigation development. This required unique planning and innovative management that may set the parameters for Kentucky River development during the twenty-first century. This Kentucky River development history focuses on the projects engineered by the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the Corps of Engineers to foster river navigation. Although frustrated in the end by other evolving transportation modes, the Kentucky River’s locks and dams project was a pioneering effort at water resource development, an engineering marvel of its time. Monumental studies of the Kentucky River by Mary Verhoeff, Thomas D. Clark, and J. Winston Coleman distinctly outlined the project’s history, together with its social and commercial effects in the valley, but this is the first study to provide a detailed review of its rationale, engineering, construction, and operation. Understanding the Kentucky River development is fundamental to comprehending the historical development of the Commonwealth itself, because this “dark and bloody” river, this artery of civilization, after all, lent its name to the Commonwealth and to we who proudly call ourselves