Bailey's Dam

During the Civil War, while Union officers faced the possible loss of boats trapped in the river, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey, a West Point graduate serving with the Fourth Wisconsin Cavalry and as Acting Engineer of the 19th Army Corps, proposed raising the water level by building several short dams from both banks at the lower rapids. Born in Ashtabula County, Ohio, in 1827, raised in Illinois, and later settled in Wisconsin, Bailey had learned practical engineering methods for constructing dams, mills, and bridges from frontier lumbermen, and his abilities had already been recognized at Port Hudson when he built wing dams across Thompson Creek to free two trapped steamers. Although Union command and engineers at first rejected his plan, General William B. Franklin supported it, and Porter and Banks eventually accepted it, with work beginning on April 29. The dams, built above the lower rapids near Alexandria, consisted of three sections totaling 760 feet: a tree dam from the Pineville side reaching about two-thirds across the river, a crib dam from the Alexandria side made of wooden cribs filled with stone, iron, and brick debris, and a central dam of four sunken navy coal barges filled with bricks and iron rails that would be rammed by the lead gunboat or blown up to create an opening for the fleet to pass over the falls on the released water. Nearly 3,000 men from 24 regiments, aided by 200 wagons and 1000 horses, mules, and oxen, worked around the clock in six-hour shifts, with experienced lumbermen from units including the 29th Maine, 110th and 161st New York, the Pioneer Corps of the 13th Army Corps, and Wisconsin troops cutting trees on the Pineville side, while the 97th and 99th Colored Infantry, composed mostly of freed slaves, built the crib dams on the Alexandria side. The tree dam was formed from layered logs sloping upward on the downstream side, with trimmed branches and a covering of brick and stone, while the crib dam used heavy timbers notched tightly at the corners and filled with brick, iron, stone, and other debris gathered from Alexandria and the surrounding countryside.

Pineville, Louisiana · United States