Nevers Dam once linked Minnesota and Wisconsin from the point of land directly across the river to this site. Named for Wisconsin farmer Charles Nevers, whose land was bought for the dam's headquarters and maintenance buildings, it was built by the St. Croix Dam and Boom Company beginning in September 1889 and completed in June 1890. Four steam-powered pile drivers drove more than 7,000 pilings into the river bottom for the foundation, while much of the remaining work, including drilling holes and pounding six railroad-car loads of two-foot spikes into them, was done by hand, with electric lights keeping construction going 24 hours a day. Considered the largest pile-driven dam in the world, it controlled water levels and the downstream flow of logs with fifteen gates: twelve 16 by 24-foot Tainter gates, two larger Lang gates, and the 80 by 20-foot Bear Trap, designed by Robert Lang, which could flush eight million board feet of logs, a two-week supply for the Stillwater mills, in two hours when the sawmills were ready. During the dam's lifetime, enough lumber passed this spot to build 920,000 homes across the Midwest. An earthen dike built of gravel, rock, and soil dug from the bluff face stretched 600 feet from the bluff to the river to prevent the river from going around the end of the dam.