Portage Canal Lock at Wisconsin River, Wisconsin

This is the last (westernmost) lock on the two-mile long canal that connected the Fox River to the Wisconsin River. The canal opened in 1876, built by the Army Corps of Engineers, and it enabled commercial barge traffic between Green Bay, on Lake Michigan, and the interior of the country, via the Wisconsin, which drains into the Mississippi River. The  canal is one of a few sites that surmounted this major continental divide, between the St. Lawrence River Watershed, which drains into the North Atlantic, and the Mississippi River Watershed, which drains into the Gulf of Mexico. The canal operated until 1951. The lock at the west end of the canal, located at the town of Portage (so named as prior the canal, goods had to be portaged between the two rivers) is now welded shut.