Facts
- Overview
- Flood Gate and Tunnel
- Location
- Cairo, Alexander County, Illinois
- Status
- Doesn't appear to be in use any longer
- History
- Built on the plan of Gatum Dam on the Panama Canal and cost a little more than $11,000 dollars.
- Builder
- - Stupp Brothers Bridge & Iron Co. of St. Louis, Missouri
- Design
- Tunnel completed in 1903, while the gate was finished in 1914. The gate itself weighs 80 tons, is 60 ft. wide, 24 ft. high and 5 ft. thick. The counterweights used to raise and lower the gate weigh almost as much as the gate itself, so that it will only require the effort of 2 men at each windless, one windless on each side of the gate, to raise the gate when it has been lowered. The cables used in the "crabs" in raising and lowering the gate are about 2 inches in thickness.
Source: http://www.michaelminn.net/america/Cairo_Gate/ - Inventory number
- BH 38036 (Bridgehunter.com ID)