Millers Ferry Lock & Dam began with 17 sticks of dynamite in April 1963

Millers Ferry Lock & Dam in Wilcox County, Alabama.

This coming Monday – April 17 – will mark 60 years since the ground-breaking ceremonies in 1963 for the Millers Ferry Lock & Dam.

Located on the Alabama River, northwest of Camden, this lock and hydroelectric dam was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Construction began after the April 17, 1963 ground breaking and was finished in 1974. The Millers Ferry Powerhouse began operations in 1970 and was upgraded in 1996.

The ground-breaking ceremony for the project was a banner day in Wilcox County history. Speakers at the event included Gov. George Wallace, Senator Lister Hill and Powell Pierpoint, who was the general counsel for the Department of the Army. About 3,000 people were on hand for the event and listened as Wallace told the crowd that “the dream of seeing industrial and farm products flow from the Coosa-Alabama Rivers is a bright and promising future.”

Other prominent officials taking part in the event included former Senator Miller Bonner; Robert F. Henry, president of the Coosa-Alabama River Association; Col. Daniel A. Raymond, the Mobile District Engineer with the Corps of Engineers; George Cleere, Executive Vice-President of the River Improvement Association; and a Congressional delegation that included Carl Elliott, John Davis, Armistead I. Selden Jr., Albert Rains and George Grant.

Once all the speeches over, Col. Raymond pushed a lever that detonated 17 sticks of dynamite. The remaining crater officially marked the site for the lock and dam. Newspaper accounts noted that this explosion marked the start of one of two or three of the greatest projects ever launched in the United States for the development of natural resources and was predicted to help move more than two million tons of commerce on rivers through Alabama.

Following the ground-breaking explosion, the crowd of 3,000 enjoyed what had to have been one of the largest meals ever served in Wilcox County. Wilcox County Agent Frank Barnett, Cecil Gaston, Connel Dean, Pete Jones, Percy Gates and a Mr. Couch were responsible for preparing a “huge barbecue.” This big meal included 198 hams and shoulders, weighing about 2,200 pounds. They also went through 500 pounds of chickens, 250 pounds of pork and 150 pounds of beef to make Brunswick stew for the event.

April 17 fell on a Wednesday, but cooking for the event began on the previous Tuesday afternoon and went on all night with local jail inmates assisting with the cooking. During the meal, a large number of women from all over the county assisted in 20 different serving lines at one time. Newspaper accounts said that the entire crowd of 3,000 was served in less than an hour.

In the end, the construction of the lock and dam had a big impact on Wilcox County. Not only does it generate electricity, the dam also created the William “Bill” Dannelly Reservoir, which covers 27 square miles and features about 500 miles of shoreline. Most readers today probably don’t remember how the Millers Ferry area looked prior to the dam’s construction, but there are probably still a few people who were present at the historic ground breaking 60 years ago on April 17, 1963.