Historic footage captures 1961 collapse

ROGERSVILLE — A forgotten piece of motion picture history recently surfaced from a retired U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operations manager for the Tennessee River.

Jim Davis, who served in the Nashville (Tennessee) District from 1968 to 2014, discovered an old Kodachrome movie in his family’s possession containing unseen footage of the wall collapse at Wheeler Lock in 1961.

The rediscovered film has been digitized and offers a powerful and poignant look back at a historic and fatal event on the Tennessee River, which impacted navigation traffic and how engineers would approach future infrastructure construction projects.

So how did Davis get his hands on the roll of 8-millimeter film of the wall collapse at Wheeler Lock that happened June 2, 1961, long before he even worked for USACE?

His cousin, Larry, worked right down the street at a nearby gas station and happened to own a movie camera. Somehow, he captured this film during the aftermath, likely June 3, at Wheeler Lock.

When the movie labeled “Wheeler Dam” recently surfaced, Davis gave it to his grandson Justin Gray, who is now the lockmaster at, none other than, Wheeler Lock. He shared it with the USACE Nashville District Public Affairs Office, which worked to have it digitized.

The film roll revealed snippets of family footage, not being released, followed by vivid imagery of the lock, which is now publicly available to view, courtesy of the Davis family.

Gray said Wheeler Lock’s Logbook entry for June 2, 1961, indicates Lock Operators Horris Hamner and Harvey Crymes were on duty and about to complete a lockage with Motor Vessel Andrew B., when the land wall side of the navigation lock and lower miter gates collapsed around 9:20 p.m. Wheeler’s lock chamber was full and upper miter gates open at the time of this unfortunate event.

The logbook entry noted the motor vessel “Andrew B.” had 16 loaded barges heading upbound at around the 400-foot mark of the upper long wall as the wall collapsed. The flow of water moving from the lake through the lock tried to pull the vessel back into the chamber; however, the vessel fought the water current and remained in the upper approach.

Gray said a fleet on the upstream side of Wheeler Lock at the time of the collapse would eventually set the emergency needle dam closure under extreme flow.

“Once the needle dam was in place, the upper miter gates were closed on the upper end,” Gray said. “They were very fortunate that a fleet was upstream of the lock — I assume helping with the new lock construction. That helped set the individual needles.”

According to a TVA memo from G.P. Palo, chief engineer, it took almost four days until the needle dam could be fully placed to close off the upstream end of the lock. The reservoir was lowered almost seven feet to facilitate the placing of the needle dam and to reduce the head on the remaining structures, he wrote.

TVA’s report on the Wheeler Lock failure written in November 1961 concluded that a thin seam of clay located within a shale band in the bedrock caused the failure. The north wall of the lock shifted northward and broke apart.

The seam of clay had not been detected during the lock’s construction by USACE in the 1930s, or during explorations by TVA for the new, larger lock under construction in 1961 parallel to the existing lock.

“Structural instability events, such as the Wheeler Lock incident, highlight the importance of subsurface investigation during the design phase of projects; however,eventhemostcomprehensive investigation could miss a geologic anomaly in the foundation rock,” said Adam Walker, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nashville District’s deputy chief of Engineering and Construction Division.

“Engineers and geologist learn from past projects to revise design assumptions and construction methods in order to reduce the risks inherent to large scale civil works construction.”

When the lock walls collapsed, two TVA employees and one deckhand on a boat tied off on the lower end of the lock tragically lost their lives. The collapse halted shipment of all cargo and navigation at Wheeler Lock, including a historic shipment of a 75-ton Saturn rocket booster destined for space travel.

TVA built a roadway around the dam, connecting upstream and downstream sections of the river. The rocket booster built at the Marshal Space Flight Center in Huntsville enroute to Cape Canaveral in Florida on NASA’s Barge Palaemon, had to be offloaded Aug. 5, 1961, above Wheeler Dam. Crews then transported and reloaded it below the dam on the Barge Compromise.

The collapsed navigation lock, now the auxiliary lock, would be repaired. TVA finished construction of the larger main lock, which began operating May 8, 1963.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues to maintain and operate the Wheeler Locks at Tennessee River mile 274.9, about 30 miles from Decatur.

The auxiliary lock is 60-feet wide by 360-feet long. The main lock is 110-feet wide by 600-feet long. These locks lift and lower vessels between Wheeler and Wilson reservoirs.