Marathon Pundit: (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.