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The crucial role of locks and lockmasters

1899 view of lockhouse and lock number 1. (Photo provided from the Marietta College Special Collections Digital Records)

What’s missing in this 1899 photo taken from the Putnam Street Bridge? The Post Office. It was built a few years later in the barren-looking open space in the foreground of the photo. The lockmaster house stands in the center, having just been completed at a cost of $3,500 on land donated by Marietta. To the right is the Phoenix Mill and the railroad bridge. The walls of the newly built Lock No. 1 are also visible. It had been recently relocated from the west side of the river as that lock had deteriorated. This is one of many Thomas Dwight Biscoe photos. You can view them on-line at Marietta College Special Collections Digital files.

The lockmasters operated the locks so boats could pass through. They were on call 24/7. Lockmaster was then a civil service position. Only qualified former steamboat men were hired. They lived in the house shown in the photo. Another house was built in 1905 on Fort Street in Harmar for the assistant lock master. It was swept away in the 1913 flood and replaced in 1914.

Locks and dams make a river more navigable by creating a what amounts to series of lakes with consistent depth and current. The lock system allows boats to move from one “lake” to the next by gradually lifting or lowering the boat 10 to 15 feet to the next level, like an elevator.

An Atlas Obscura blog post in 2018 explains the lockmaster duties of Tim Curtis at Muskingum River Lock 10 at Zanesville. As boaters approach the lock, “He attaches a crank to an old mechanism, and then uses it to manually open the first doors of the lock to let the boat in. Once the boat is in place, he shuts the door behind it and begins the process of lowering or raising the water (depending on whether the boat is going upriver or down) in the lock chamber via a valve on each door. They’re opened by crank, too, and water then flows in or out, depending on which way the boat is going. Once the lock chamber is level with the water on the other side of the lock, he opens the other set of doors and the boat can progress.”

“Operating the lock is an art, Curtis says, and requires some finesse. If you go too fast, boats can bounce around and be pulled off the cables that hold them steady. If the boat is too close to the (lock) door, it can be pulled into the whirlpool created by the valve and sucked into the door. But after years of working the river, Curtis can intuit adjustments so the water flows calmly and evenly, and boaters hardly notice what’s happening.”

Lock and Dam No. 1 at Marietta was part of the Muskingum River navigation system completed in 1841. It opened the river to steamboat traffic which was major economic boost to river communities. Most of the Muskingum River locks and dams remain seasonally operational today, 184 years after being built – amazing! Lock and Dam No. 1 at Marietta was removed in 1968 when a new Ohio River dam raised the water level.

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