About: Yamhill River lock and dam

An Entity of Type: infrastructure, from Named Graph: http://dbpedia.org, within Data Space: dbpedia.org

The Yamhill River lock and dam was completed in 1900. It was built near Lafayette, Oregon, to allow better river transport on the Yamhill River from Dayton, to McMinnville, Oregon. While the Corps of Engineers had recommended against construction of the lock, it was built anyway, largely as a result of political effort by the backers of the project. For almost forty years prior to the lock construction there had been efforts made to construct a lock and dam on the Yamhill River.

thumbnail
Property Value
dbo:Infrastructure/length
  • 0.0381 (dbd:kilometre)
dbo:abstract
  • The Yamhill River lock and dam was completed in 1900. It was built near Lafayette, Oregon, to allow better river transport on the Yamhill River from Dayton, to McMinnville, Oregon. While the Corps of Engineers had recommended against construction of the lock, it was built anyway, largely as a result of political effort by the backers of the project. For almost forty years prior to the lock construction there had been efforts made to construct a lock and dam on the Yamhill River. The lock was a single-lift chamber 210 feet (64 m) long and 40 feet (12 m) wide, located on the west side of the river. The dam extended from the east bank of the river to the eastern lock wall, and when the lock gates were shut, acted to back up the Yamhill river and raise the water level sufficiently to allow ready steamboat navigation to McMinnville during the summer dry season. During the winter the lock and dam were more of an obstruction than a navigational aid, as they were frequently overtopped by freshets and floods, sometimes as high as or higher than twenty feet above the lock walls. The lock ceased to be used in any significant way soon after it was built. There was an upsurge in use of the river during the 1930s and 1940s primary for transport of logs. The lock continued in operation until the 1950s when the U.S. government concluded that the little amount of traffic on the river no longer justified their expense. The lock and dam were then turned over to Yamhill County. The county lacked the funds to maintain or restore the lock, and the dam, having been viewed as a barrier to spawning salmon, was eventually destroyed with use of explosives. The lock walls remain to this day. The lock keeper's residence, built at the same time, and now in private hands, also remains. A county park is nearby from which the lock structure can be viewed. Some other remains of the work, such as pilings, are also visible at low water. While not particularly remarkable as an engineering project, the lock was one of only three lock and dam projects commenced in Oregon and indeed in all of the Pacific Coast states by the United States government during the 19th century. The lock and dam are also representative of the results of local pressure for expenditure of funds from the national government for works of a local nature. A substantial portion of the project remains visible to this day, and has been said to be "one of the last tangible remnants in the Upper Willamette Valley of a time when river navigation played an important role in transporting freight and passengers." The lock is sometimes referred to as the Lafayette Lock. The Lafayette Locks Park, maintained by Yamhill County, Oregon now occupies the site of the old lock and dam. (en)
dbo:buildingStartDate
  • 1898
dbo:buildingStartYear
  • 1898-01-01 (xsd:gYear)
dbo:demolitionYear
  • 1965-01-01 (xsd:gYear)
dbo:description
  • Timber-crib stone-filled (en)
dbo:length
  • 38.100000 (xsd:double)
dbo:location
dbo:openingDate
  • 1900-09-22 (xsd:date)
dbo:openingYear
  • 1900-01-01 (xsd:gYear)
dbo:operator
dbo:part
dbo:purpose
  • navigation
dbo:river
dbo:status
  • D
dbo:thumbnail
dbo:wikiPageExternalLink
dbo:wikiPageID
  • 46764556 (xsd:integer)
dbo:wikiPageLength
  • 89489 (xsd:nonNegativeInteger)
dbo:wikiPageRevisionID
  • 1109845675 (xsd:integer)
dbo:wikiPageWikiLink
dbp:bgcolor
  • #c6dbf7 (en)
dbp:constructionBegan
  • 1898 (xsd:integer)
dbp:cost
  • 72164.83 (dbd:usDollar)
dbp:country
  • USA (en)
dbp:damCrosses
dbp:damType
dbp:demolished
  • circa 1965 (en)
dbp:extra
  • 0001-06-21 (xsd:gMonthDay)
dbp:imageCaption
  • 0001-09-24 (xsd:gMonthDay)
dbp:imageSize
  • 300 (xsd:integer)
dbp:location
dbp:locationMap
  • Oregon (en)
dbp:name
  • Yamhill River Lock and Dam (en)
dbp:opening
  • 1900-09-22 (xsd:date)
dbp:operator
  • 24 (xsd:integer)
dbp:purpose
  • navigation (en)
dbp:quote
  • It was a pleasant lock where the tender could grow gray in solitude, undisturbed in his meditations, because only an occasional steamboat came along to wake him up. At the beginning there was practically no traffic on the Yamhill, and what there was steadily declined until, in 1921, only lone ton of freight went through the locks, traveling in solitary grandeur. In addition, about 2,100 tons of rafted logs went down the river, along with 26 passengers that year. (en)
  • We call the attention of business men and citizens of McMlnnvllle, that the editor of the Herald, at tho time the damn, damned Yamhill locks were constructed, advocated the construction of an electric line from that city to Dayton, and predicted that the locks would give no relief In traffic to the people of McMlnnvllle. Which has proved correct. Not that the government engineers under whose supervision the locks were constructed did not do good work; we heard those say, who ought to know, that the work was first class. Now, gentlemen, while you are waiting for that boat to run up to your city, and the S. P. Co. to build that extension from LaFayette to our city, "got In' with your sleeves rolled up. and assist In building an electric line from your city to Newberg, via LaFayette and Dayton to Salem. It will pay. (en)
dbp:source
  • 1903-06-25 (xsd:date)
  • Salem, Oregon (en)
  • —Randall V. Mills, Sternwheelers Up Columbia, p. 146. (en)
  • —The Daily Journal (en)
dbp:spillwayCount
  • one (en)
dbp:spillwayType
dbp:status
  • D (en)
dbp:width
  • 20 (xsd:integer)
dbp:wikiPageUsesTemplate
dct:subject
georss:point
  • 45.230555555555554 -123.10416666666667
rdf:type
rdfs:comment
  • The Yamhill River lock and dam was completed in 1900. It was built near Lafayette, Oregon, to allow better river transport on the Yamhill River from Dayton, to McMinnville, Oregon. While the Corps of Engineers had recommended against construction of the lock, it was built anyway, largely as a result of political effort by the backers of the project. For almost forty years prior to the lock construction there had been efforts made to construct a lock and dam on the Yamhill River. (en)
rdfs:label
  • Yamhill River lock and dam (en)
owl:sameAs
geo:geometry
  • POINT(-123.10416412354 45.230556488037)
geo:lat
  • 45.230556 (xsd:float)
geo:long
  • -123.104164 (xsd:float)
prov:wasDerivedFrom
foaf:depiction
foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf
foaf:name
  • Yamhill River Lock and Dam (en)
is dbo:wikiPageRedirects of
is dbo:wikiPageWikiLink of
is foaf:primaryTopic of
Powered by OpenLink Virtuoso    This material is Open Knowledge     W3C Semantic Web Technology     This material is Open Knowledge    Valid XHTML + RDFa
This content was extracted from Wikipedia and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License