Marseilles Lock and Dam - Marseilles, IL - Waterway Locks, Planes and Lifts on Waymarking.com

Marseilles Lock, located at mile 244.6, is one of several on the Illinois River, allowing water traffic to travel as far as Lake Michigan or the Mississippi River.

The dimensions of the lock are 600 feet long by 110 feet wide, standard Panama Lock size. Though adequate at the time, today, many barges have to be broken up to pass through. The channel is currently kept at a nine foot depth.

Though the dam is located near the city of Marseilles, just upstream of the highway bridge, the lock is located over two miles west, downstream of the dam. It is here that the river is broken into two channels, one to the lock and the other to the great rapids that the lock bypasses. There is a third, man-made channel that goes to a former hydroelectric plant on the Marseilles side of the river.

In the city, you can see a depression in the land that parallels the railroad another block away. This is the remnant of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which was the original channel that carried waterway cargo to Chicago. The canal was finally discontinued in 1933 with the opening of the Illinois Waterway. My how things have changed!

To access the lock, enter Illini State Park at the base of the bridge on the south end. Circle under the bridge and travel about 2 miles until you reach the end of the road and the parking lot to the U.S. Army Corps facility.

The web site below is to the Wikipedia site on the Illinois Waterway, which includes Marseilles Lock.

Other web sites found:

Source:
(visit link)

Illini State Park on Stateparks.com
(visit link)

Canal Corridor Association (History of I&M Canal)
(visit link)

Waterway Name: Illinois River Waterway Connected Points: Chicago River (which connects to Lake Michigan) to the Mississippi River above St. Louis. Type: Lock Date Opened: 01/01/1933 Elevation Difference (meters): 8.00 Site Status: Operational Web Site: [Web Link] Date Closed (if applicable): Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   07/21/2010 Marwood5 visited it