Nevers Dam

Nevers Dam. 1889–1954. , Nevers Dam, 1898., Nevers Dam once linked Minnesota and Wisconsin from the point of land directly across the river to the place where you are standing. The dam was named after Charles Nevers, a Wisconsin farmer whose land was bought for the dam's headquarters and maintenance buildings., The "Bear Trap" (open), two Lang gates, and one Tainter gate at the Wisconsin end of the dam., The Bear Trap , Eight million board feet of logs, a two-week supply for the mills at Stillwater, could be flushed through this gate in two hours. During the dam's lifetime, lumber for buildings all across the Midwest passed this spot, enough to build 920,000 homes., Construction of the Dam , Construction by the St. Croix Dam and Boom Company began in September 1889 and was completed in June 1890. Four steam-powered pile drivers drove more than 7,000 pilings into the river bottom for the dam's foundation. Much of the remaining work, including drilling holes and pounding six railroad-car loads of two-foot spikes into them, was done by hand. Electric lights, new to the area at that time, were used to keep construction going 24 hours a day., Nevers Dam was considered to be the largest pile-driven dam in the world. Water levels and the flow of logs downstream were controlled by fifteen gates., Twelve 16 by 24-foot Tainter gates and two larger Lang gates, named after the engineers who designed them, controlled water levels. The last gate, the 80 by 20-foot "Bear Trap," designed by Robert Lang, controlled and directed the flow of logs downstream when the sawmills were ready for them., To prevent the river from going around the end of the dam, the earthen dike which runs back towards the bluff to the west was built using gravel, rock, and soil dug from the bluff face. This massive structure stretches 600 feet from the bluff to the river.