The beautiful Mississippi River Valley sets the stage for an exceptional boating experience.

In the 1930s, the United States Army Corps of Engineers built a series of locks and dams on the Mississippi River to maintain a navigational channel of at least nine feet in depth. Eleven such lock and dam facilities are located on the Mississippi north of the Minnesota-Iowa border. These locks and dams present a special hazard to recreational boaters who are unfamiliar with them.

To help improve the navigability of the Mississippi River by controlling the direction of channel flow, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has placed hundreds of wing dams. A wing dam is an elongated pile of rocks or concrete which is usually submerged. Because wing dams often lie just below the water surface, they cannot be visually detected and pose a great danger to the unwary boater.