Monday, April 28, 2014

(Photos and video) The soon-to-be-removed Chick Evans Golf Course Dam

Of the doomed low-head dams I've been writing about lately, only one is in Morton Grove, Illinois where I live. And it is the one where I saw two years ago--on New Year's Day--why these dams are despised by canoeists and kayakers.


This is the Chick Evans Golf Course Dam on the North Branch of the Chicago River. Above it is a footbridge, the reservoir created by the dam divides the course. I photographed the dam from Beckwith Road.


Another view of the dam. The golf course is owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County.


As I mentioned in my earlier posts, low-head dams have been called drowning machines by critics. The football in that picture was caught in the backwash of the dam. It kept spinning...and spinning. People get captured in a similar fashion underwater in what is known as a hydraulic boil.


On the right is the Beckwith Road bridge.


What you see here is a boater's version of rush hour traffic on Chicago's Kennedy Expressway. I took this photograph during the 2012 New Year's Day Canoe Paddle, also known as Happy Canoe Year, which was founded by Ralph Frese. "Mr. Canoe" passed away later that year.

I shot some video that day too.


Here's to Mr. Canoe!


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1 comment:

Along the Gradyent said...

50 years ago before that dam was built the area behind it was mostly a twisty putrid, stinking unnavigable mudflat covered with arrowhead leaves. The reason being is that back up from the Beckwith bridge flooded the area whenever there is the least bit of rain.

4:36 PM

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