Cannelton, Indiana

Cannelton, Indiana


Cannelton

The kids and I went and spent the day with my great aunt and uncle a couple weeks ago, we had all sorts of fun driving around seeing different places. We went through Cannelton, Indiana on our drive. Up until that day I had never seen a boat go through a lock from start to finish. It was pretty neat.


The Ohio river serves as the state line and divides Kentucky and Indiana. Barges and boats of all types travel up and down the river. Back in the mid 1800's boats were only able to travel so far up the river before coming to a shallow or waterfalls, so in order for boats to travel all the way up the river they began putting locks and dams in back in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Now they have 21 lock and dams spread out across about a 1000 miles along the Ohio River.


This is the Cannelton Dam, the large lock shown in the photo below is just where the sign that says "100" is.


This is a boat moving several barges down river. They just pulled into the lock here and are about to be closed in....


The gates to the lock are closing the boat and barges in.


Gates almost closed at the rear of the boat.


The boat is shut into the lock and is being lowered so it can continue down river. The lock here in Cannelton rises and lowers 25 feet.


Lowering...


Lowering...


Lowering...


Now their opening up the lower gates to let the boat and barges out and continue on down river. There is another lock on the lower right for smaller pleasure boats. The big boat lock is 110 feet by 1,200 feet long, and the smaller lock is 110 feet by 600 feet long.


This is the boat slowly moving out of the lock and on down river.


And here the boat and barges are, out of the lock and on their way to the next lock.

Neat huh?