Mississippi Lock 19, Keokuk
Barge tows locking through one of the longest locks on the Mississippi, a live webcam at Keokuk: trains too.
About this view
A live webcam on Lock and Dam 19 at Keokuk, where the Mississippi drops through one of the longest locks on the river: a chamber 1,200 feet long, built to pass a full fifteen-barge tow in one lift. The dam beside it stretches nearly a mile across the water and dates from 1913.
Tows are the show: a towboat pushing a raft of barges the size of a city block, easing into the chamber with a few feet to spare, then the slow drain or fill and the gates swinging open. Between them come pleasure boats, and freight trains along the bank, which the camera catches too.
Traffic runs through the navigation season, roughly March to December (UTC−6, −5 in summer); the river freezes the locks shut in a hard winter. When the powerhouse opened in 1913 it was the largest hydroelectric plant in the world, and the whole site is now a historic district.
