The final days of Lock 5 at Brownsville
Today’s article is the sixth in a seven-part series telling the story of the three different locks and dams that have served the Brownsville area over the past century. This reprinted series by Glenn Tunney originally appeared in the Herald-Standard in August and September 2001. Last week we recreated a passage through the locks at Brownsville aboard the paddlewheel boat Sailor. It was a journey duplicated by thousands of towboats, barges and other watercraft over the 57 years that Locks and Dam No. 5 was in service. The locks and dam at Brownsville are gone now, victims of the same relentless march of progress that befell their predecessor at Denbo back in 1909. Why was the Brownsville facility replaced, and when did it happen? Today we will harken back to the closing and demolition of Locks and Dam No. 5 at Brownsville.
The plan to eliminate Locks and Dam No. 5 was on the drawing board at the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers as early as 1953. In that year, the chief of engineers recommended in his annual report that two locks and dams in this area be replaced. Locks and Dam No. 5 at Brownsville, opened in 1909, and Locks and Dam No. 6 at Rice’s Landing, opened in 1915, were judged to be inadequate and in need of replacement.
Five years passed. By 1958 the plan to upgrade the navigation system on the middle stretch of the Monongahela River had become more specific. The chief of engineers proposed construction of a new gated dam at Locks and Dam No. 4 (Charleroi). This would raise Pool 4 by six feet. Pool 4 was the section of river between the Brownsville locks and Charleroi. This would mean that the river along the Brownsville wharf and the West Brownsville swimming beaches would rise six feet.
In conjunction with the raising of Pool 4, the Chief of Engineers recommended replacing the two dams at Brownsville and Rice’s Landing with one dam to be constructed at river mile 61.3 near the town of Maxwell. This plan was approved. Planning and design for the new $30 million Maxwell complex began in January 1959, and construction started in December 1960. The Maxwell locks opened to navigation in November 1964, and the dam was completed in October 1965. The nearly simultaneous completion of the new gated dam at Charleroi resulted in the closing of Locks and Dam No. 5 at Brownsville. The Corps of Engineers then turned to the task of demolishing the obsolete Brownsville facility.
A Brownsville Telegraph photograph published on June 8, 1967 showed preparations that were under way to destroy the dam at Brownsville. “Shown above,” the photo’s caption read, “is a dredging boat of Dravo Corp. of Neville Island, which is clearing a channel from Lock No. 5 here to the Maxwell lock in preparation for removal of Lock 5. The local lock will be closed to navigation on July 10, and a demolition crew will blow a pass through the dam section to allow boat passage. The dredging boat has been working day and night here and will proceed up river clearing certain high points for proper navigation.”
Before the dam could be breached however, it was necessary to raise the river level below the dam (Pool 4) and lower the river level above the dam (Pool 5). By July 10, 1967, the Telegraph reported that “Pool No. 4 has already been raised more than four feet. The river level in Pool 4 will be raised two more feet and the level in Pool 5 will be lowered the same distance.”
That same evening the last boat ever to pass through Lock No. 5 at Brownsville did so. The Chartiers, a U. S. Army Corps of Engineers towboat, made its way north through Lock No. 5 at 9:25 p.m. on July 10, 1967. Later that week would come the first step in removal of Locks and Dam No. 5, the dynamiting of the center section of the dam. Once the central channel was cleared, the locks would no longer be needed as a passageway.
On July 13, 1967, the Telegraph reported, “The ‘big blow’ will come this afternoon. Sometime today between noon and four p.m., a 50-foot section of the dam will be blown up. Officials from the Corps of Engineers office in Pittsburgh announced that the “big blast” will come when equalization of the water level between Pool 4 and Pool 5 is reached.
“Two hundred forty six holes in the dam are filled with explosives and will be set off at one time. However, there won’t be the big explosion that many folks around here anticipate. When the blast comes, according to the engineers and officials of the Dravo Corp. in charge of the project, there will be a dull underground explosion, the dam section will appear to lift up a foot or two and then settle down in fragments.”
The blast came off without a hitch, and following the opening of the initial breach in the center of the dam, work continued to widen the opening enough to allow navigation through it. By July 24, 1967, it was possible for boats to travel through the gap.
“History was made on the Monongahela River at 8:14 a.m. today,” proclaimed the Telegraph, “when the motor vessel Shannopin went up the river through the center channel at Lock No. 5, the site of the former dam. The Shannopin led a parade of seven riverboats, which followed each other at four-minute intervals. Following the Shannopin were the Martin, the Lillian G., Jess B. Guttman, C. F. Hood, James E. Lose and the B. F. Fairless.”
The last remnants of the dam were finally cleared away later that month. On July 27, 1967, a Telegraph photographer captured the final blast with the photo’s caption reading, “There goes the dam! Shown is the last explosion, and with it went the last vestige of the dam across the Monongahela River at Lock No. 5. With the demolition of the dam completed, crews of the Dravo Construction Co. are turning their attention to dismantling the locks themselves as dredging of the river channel on the dam site continues.”
The dam and most of Lock No. 5 were removed by the end of the summer of 1967, but some parts of the locks remain today. The land wall is still easily seen along the Brownsville side of the river, and the esplanade is also still there. An esplanade is a paved or gravel-covered area placed on fill between the land wall and the riverbank, providing a work area for the locktenders and maintenance personnel. Esplanades often had kiosks near the lock gates to shelter the operators and equipment, and one intact concrete control shelter for the lower gates at the down river end of the Lock No. 5 esplanade still exists. The poured concrete foundation of the former warehouse that once stood on the esplanade is also visible.
In 1999, PHMC surveyor Scott D. Heberling of Heberling Associates Inc. evaluated the site of Lock 5 at Brownsville to determine its eligibility for placement on the National Register of Historic Places. The site, Heberling wrote, is “abandoned, with esplanade and landwall intact but overgrown and deteriorating. The lockkeepers’ houses are privately owned and well maintained.”
According to the PHMC report, the two locktenders’ houses at 602 and 610 Water St. were sold as surplus government property after the abandonment of Locks and Dam No. 5. At the time the PHMC report was filed, both homes were used as single-family rental units.
“They are in excellent condition,” stated PHMC’s researchers, “and possess strong integrity.” By that statement PHMC was asserting that the houses should be included within the boundaries of the site that is nominated for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.
Drivers and pedestrians who cross the old intercounty bridge from West Brownsville to Brownsville today may notice, if they glance upriver to their right, that the river bank along the Brownsville side is lined by a solid concrete wall, painted in some spots with fading diagonal stripes. Those who are too young to remember may not realize that they are looking at all that remains of an impressive early twentieth century engineering feat, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Locks and Dam No. 5 at Brownsville.
Next week our series will conclude with a closer look at the facility that has replaced both Locks and Dam No. 5 at Brownsville and Locks and Dam No. 6 at Rice’s Landing — the Maxwell Locks and Dam.
Comments about these articles may be sent to Editor Mark O’Keefe, 8 – 18 E. Church St., Uniontown, PA or e-mailed to mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com