more reliable transportation artery. Lieutenants William Turnbull and Napoleon B. Buford of the Army Engineers mapped the river as far upstream as Boonesborough in 1828 and recommended federal funding for construction of an experimental dam at Frankfort to determine the "practicability and expediency" of navigation improvements on the Kentucky and similar inland streams. The federal government then sought to restrict its waterways transportation projects to rivers serving the commerce of several states, however, and no federal assistance for the Kentucky River project was forthcoming until 1880.³

During the early 1830s, Kentucky like many other states became interested in transportation projects, then known as "internal improvements," to provide avenues to market for its agricultural, forest, and mineral resources. The Kentucky River at that time supported a substantial steamboat trade on its lower sections during favorable water stages, a growing traffic in log rafts, and significant shipments in flatboats of salt from manufacturers on the South Fork, iron products from furnaces on the Red River, and coal from mines at Three Forks and at Troublesome Creek and Hazard on the North Fork. To plan a project to improve navigation, thereby enhancing opportunities for the development of Kentucky's resources, the state employed Major R. Phillip Baker in 1835 as state engineer. Baker had been trained in waterways surveying and engineering by Major Stephen H. Long of the Army Engineers, had supervised a navigation project on the Tennessee River, and had directed canal construction for the State of Alabama.⁴

Conducting his survey during the dry autumn of 1835, Major Baker determined the flow of the Kentucky was sufficient to maintain a six-foot depth for navigation with enough flow remaining to supply power for mills. Estimating the river fell about 228 feet in the 255 miles between the Three Forks and its mouth, Baker advised the Kentucky Board of Internal Improvement that by constructing fifteen locks and dams, each capable of lifting a steamboat at least fifteen feet, a minimum channel depth of six feet could be supplied for navigation year round nearly to the Three Forks. Though not certain that the tolls collected from the traffic would be sufficient to defray the costs of construction and maintenance, he believed the regional economic development resulting from project construction would amply reimburse the state for its investment, and he pointed out:

In its present condition, even with the most favorable tide, the river affords but a precarious and hazardous navigation, and in consequence, nearly the whole of the transportation required by this extensive district of country is driven to the expensive and tardy resort of road wagonage. Hence, many articles, and the natural resources of the country, and such as would be produced if easy and cheap communications were offered for their carriage, are either entirely neglected or are produced to a very limited extent. This is especially true in relation to the various resources presented by the mines and forests of the mountain districts, which articles are of the first necessity to the inhabitants of the older settled parts of the State, but which will not bear the cost of land transportation.⁵

Major Baker selected the sites for four locks and dams downstream of Frankfort, locating bedrock foundations for all except Lock and Dam 1 nearest the Ohio; he left selection of lock sites upstream of Frankfort for further study. After studying the dimensions and capacities of steamboats then in use, he recommended the locks be 38 feet wide and 170 feet long inside their chambers, sufficiently large to