Discovering Alabama From Its Watery Byway

By CHRISTOPHER PERCY COLLIER
Published: May 16, 2008

THE Robert F. Henry Dam near Montgomery, Ala., is a sprawling wall of reinforced concrete with 11 spillway gates that holds back approximately 234,200 acre feet of water, creating the lake called Jones Bluff Reservoir. Its lock, a massive concrete-lined chamber 655 feet by 84 feet, was built to raise and lower bulky barges hauling tons of wood and grain some 200 miles downriver to Mobile Bay.

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