Property Record
END OF OLD AGENCY HOUSE RD
Architecture and History Inventory
| Historic Name: | Fort Winnebago Lock |
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| Other Name: | |
| Contributing: | Yes |
| Reference Number: | 56692 |
| Location (Address): | END OF OLD AGENCY HOUSE RD |
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| County: | Columbia |
| City: | Portage |
| Township/Village: | |
| Unincorporated Community: | |
| Town: | |
| Range: | |
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| Year Built: | 1859 |
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| Additions: | 1874 1900 1879 1889 1936 |
| Survey Date: | 1990 |
| Historic Use: | dam/lock |
| Architectural Style: | NA (unknown or not a building) |
| Structural System: | |
| Wall Material: | Cut Stone |
| Architect: | |
| Other Buildings On Site: | |
| Demolished?: | No |
| Demolished Date: |
| National/State Register Listing Name: | Not listed |
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| National Register Listing Date: | |
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| Additional Information: | The original 1859 Fort Winnebago Lock apparently was made of stone-filled timber cribs and, if not originally, in time measured 35' wide and 160' long between miter sills. It was rebuilt/renovated or underwent major repair on at least five occasions. Available U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Records indicate that the existing lock remnants ta the site at their earliest may date to an 1889-90 rebuilding of the lock. "Thorough repairs" of the lock were undertaken in 1874 and apparently finished the next year; repairs took place again in 1879-80. Although details are not clear, the lock was rebuilt in 1889-90 at a cost of $12,088. It was extensively repaired after a spring 1900 flood, at which time the lock walls were described as about 7' thick and 14' high and made at least in part of dry-stone masonry faced with pine-wood planking. The lock lifted boats 5.85' from the Fox River to the Portage Canal proper. In 1936 the United States completed renovation work for $21,515. The structure was classified as a composite lock, with dry-stone masonry walls lined with wood planking. The lift for the wood-floored lock was now put at 6.4'. Cut stone and onccrete parts of the old lock walls remains at the Fort Winnebago site toady. A wooden footbridge has been built over the lock, and wooden landings installed on both sides of the waste weir to allow the portaging of small recreational boats. Part of the lock chamber is filled with timber and stone. No buildings are extant here. But the lock site at one time contained a lock tender's house (construction date unclear) and a tool house and/or service building (ca. 1903). No dam as such was ever built on the Portage Canal at Fort Winnebago, althoug early Corps of Engineers records cite a "Fort Winnebago Dam." The reference, however, likely was to a site of a waste weir (FCS 52/33) built about 900 feet southwest of the lock on a short channel linking the Fox River with the Portage Canal upstream of teh navigational connection between the two. The Fort Winnebago Lock was the eighth lock upstream from Oshkosh on the Upper Fox System. According to a 1901 Annual Report of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it was originally built in 1859, when the Fox and Wisconsin Improvement Project. It was located in a rural area at the north of the Portage Canal near the canal's confluence with the Fox River. Named for the old Wisconsin fort once located nearby, the lock continued in seasonal operation until closed by the federal government on July 7, 1951. The other eight locks on the Upper Fox system also were closed that year. In 1962, ownership of the property was transferred from the federal government to the state for use by the Wisconsin Conservation Department. Before the transfer could occur, a 1958 work plan called for converting the lock into what engineers call a waste weir. The lower lock gates, wing walls, and all machinery, equipment and hardware were removed. Lock walls were lowered to water level and uneeded wall material dumped into the lock chamber. Part of the upper lock gates were removed and the remaining section secured in a closed position to serve as part of a waste weir. The lock chamber immediately below the upper gates was filled with stone. The Fort Winnebago Lock was one of nine locks constructed on the Upper Fox River/Portage Canal between Oshkosh and Portage for the Fox-Wisconsin Improvement Project. The project was advanced by private interests from 1829 to 1848 and 1853 to 1872, by the state of Wisconsin from 1848 to 1853, and by the federal government from 1872. The Wisconsin River part of the project was officially abandoned after the 1886 navigational season, and the Upper Fox section was turned over to the state in 1962. |
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| Bibliographic References: | (A) Corps of Engineers, Annual Report for Fox-Wisconsin Project, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1879, 1899, 1901, 1903, 1917, 1937, 1952, 1961. (B) Document Package Entiled "Transfer of Upper Fox River to State of Wisconsin," containing map, letters, reports, etc., from Corps of Engineers, 1958-1959. (C) Corps of Engineers, map entitled Lake Winnebago, Upper Fox and Wolf RIvers, Wisconsin, 1916-1921; revised 1928, 1933, 1949. (D) Samuel Mermin, The Fox-Wisconsin Rivers Improvement, pp. 1-100, 135, 162 passim. (E) Richard N. Current, The History of Wisconsin, 2:19-21. (F) Robert C. Nesbit, The History of Wisconsin, 3:88, 136-37. (G) State Planning Division of Wisconsin, "The Upper Fox River," report to Gov. Kohler, July 14, 1952. (H) Photograph, 1913, of Fort Winnebago Lock Tender's House, as reported 1991 by Frederica Kleist, vice-president of Portage Canal Society, Inc. |
| Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory, State Historic Preservation Office, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin |