Stratton Lock and Dam
dam in McHenry, Illinois, USA
The Stratton Lock and Dam (known until 1991 as the McHenry Dam, officially named the William G. Stratton - Thomas A. Bolger Lock and Dam) is a dam in Nunda Township, McHenry County, Illinois. It is named after former Governor William Stratton and Representative Thomas A. Bolger. The dam is the only dam on the Fox River (Illinois, US) that is served by a lock system.
Construction
The first dam at the site was a wooden dam built in 1907. This dam deteriorated and was replaced by a steel sheet piling design sometime before 1915. A lock was constructed at the same time. The lock and dam were conveyed to the Illinois DNR in 1923-24. Significant damage to the structure occurred during flooding in November 1937 and July 1938. Due to this damage, the State of Illinois Department of Public Works and Buildings, Division of Waterways, built the present dam and control structure in 1939. The present lock was constructed in 1958-1960 and opened for use on June 1, 1960.
“Stratton Lock and Dam” enters the record as dam in McHenry, Illinois, USA. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Stratton, Lock and McHenry can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6801566. Authority coordinates are 42.310, -88.252. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1991, 1907, 1915 and 1923.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stratton Lock and Dam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.