100th Anniversary

        Back in 1913 the Keokuk Dam and Power Plant was complete.  It was the first of its kind to span the Mississippi River.  If you follow the dam, power plant, and lock system, it spans 2 1/2 miles.  The first part of our tour was riding a trolley across the dam. The dam complete with 119 spillways is to the right of the power plant. 

          They borrowed two trolley's from Western Illinois Threshers to give visitors a ride.  The last time anyone had this opportunity was back in 1993 when the flood prevented people from driving across the Keokuk-Hamilton bridge.  They brought in a trolley then to give workers a safe way to get to work for over three weeks. 

        My nephew had the best time looking at all the water.

        The cranes, which are hard to see in the photo, have gathered to catch all the fish that make it threw the dam.  We were able to see one catch a fish.  All the other birds gathered around to steal his catch.  It took him awhile to swallow the fish whole, but he was able to keep it to himself.  

         Now you can see the water spilling out of the dam spillway.  The upper river elevation is maintained at a constant elevation while the lower river level varies with water flow. The average difference is 35 feet. Each spillway can pass 30,000 gallons of water per second.

        The Mississippi River is above flood levels for the third time this summer, but the only time all the dam spillways were open was back in the flood of 1993.  Can you imagine how much water was flowing then. 

        Here you can see the other trolley going across the dam.  It is going under the mounted system they use to lower and raise the spillway gates. 

       They brought one of the gates inside the power plant for us to see the size of them.  It's 32 feet long and 11 feet high and weighs 14 tons.

 

               Next on our tour was a walking tour of the plant. First, we walked past the old lock system, which was only able to hold one barge at a time. The dry lock is where they could put barges to work on them.  They would float them in and then drain all the water out.  

         Now you can see the workers house between the lock and dry lock. 

         The lock had two gates.  One on the upper side and one on the lower side.  When a barge came from the upper Mississippi, they would open the upper gate, allow the barge in, close it, let the water out, and open the lower gate to let the barge out.  

 Water first comes into the plant on the left side.  

       Water enters under the outside skimmer wall through arches in the foundation. This design blocks floating debris from entering the Turbine Intake Area.  Once inside water passes through trash screens, which keeps logs from reaching turbines.

Water enters a concrete passageway, goes through the turbines, and out the east wall.

        This gate is lifted allowing the water to flow in.   There are four gates for each turbine. Each gate is 40 feet tall and weighs 5 tons. 

       This is one of the old transformer located in the plant.  Generated power is increased from 13,800 volts to 69,000 volts by these transformers for transmission to substations in Illinois and Iowa.

        Here is a newer transformer.  Wow, those are huge!  The plant had two old transformers and three or four newer transformers. 

Here is a look at the east side of the plant. 

        There are fifteen generators.  Water spins each turbine at 62.1 RPM. Each 10,000 horsepower turbine is connected with a generator like this one to produce 10,000kW of electricity. 

     What a great way to spend a cool Sunday afternoon!