Hello everyone, I'm Ranger Dave and welcome to St Croix National Scenic Riverway. This odd looking structure just underneath the waterline behind me
is where we start our historic journey. This is the story of the St Croix River, an old forgotten highway.
For many years this structure and many others like it, lay underwater and unknown until the summer of 2007 when the river level became unusually low.
Boaters started noticing strange man-made structures of logs and stones along the riverbanks and protruding out of the water.
After some detailed investigations by the National Park Service, they concluded that these unique structures
were "Wing Dams and Channel Diverters" and built sometime in the late 1800's.
Documents state that most of these structures below Taylor Falls were constructed by the U.S Army Corps of Engineers.
As for the ones above Taylor Falls, researchers suggest it was more than likely people from the private sector as no documents have ever been found to state otherwise.
Their purpose on why they were built was to make the water deeper and control the flow of water for the logs floating from the northern logging camps to the sawmills downriver.
These structures were designed to help eliminate the countless amounts of log jams that occurred over the years since the logging industry first started.
As an added bonus, commercial boats took advantage of these deeper channels and started transporting people and goods up and down the river.
This all made sense after further investigations showed there was no railroads or reliable roads to transport goods back then except for, on the river.
Building a wing dam or channel diverter was no easy task. They required logs measuring 4" to 18" inches in diameter and almost 20' feet long.
Layered upon each other, these logs were driven into the riverbed at a 30-degree angle by sledge-hammer and brute force.
They were then anchored at the bottom by a layer of horizontal logs and kept in place by rocks.
Overtime, sand and silt flowing downriver filled in the gaps and held everything together.
Other wing dams and channel diverters that were found lacked any logs at all.
They were completely built out of thousands of rocks stacked upon each other with brush thrown in between.
To make this even more amazing, evidence shows that they were built in the cold of winter, just like it is today; cold,
and without the use of steam powered tools, just hard manual labor and determination.
By the time the logging industry officially ended in 1912,
railroads along the St Croix River had improved enough to the point that transporting goods on the river became a thing of the past.
The wing dams and channel diverters stayed in place for the time being and still served a purpose for boat traffic on the river.
As time went on, the wing dams and channel diverters were no longer maintained and eventually forgotten about until the summer of 2007 when they were rediscovered.
Wing dams and channel diverters on the St Croix River are historic structures that played a key role in the economic growth to the area.
They controlled the flow of logs to the sawmills and created a highway to easily transport goods to those who needed them.
Without these wing dams and channel diverters, the towns that sprung up along the river may have never survived.
I'm Ranger Dave and thank you for joining me on this historic journey of the St Croix River, an old forgotten highway.
Photograph credits to; National Park Service Submerged Resources Center and the Minnesota Historical Society