Bosher Dam
| Bosher Dam | |
|---|---|
| Location | Henrico County, Virginia |
| Purpose | Navigation, Water Supply |
| Status | In use |
| Opening date | 1840 |
| Owner(s) | City of Richmond, Virginia |
| Operator(s) | City of Richmond, Virginia |
| Dam and spillways | |
| Type of dam | Concrete gravity |
| Impounds | James River |
| Height | 10 ft (3.0 m) |
| Power station | |
| Operator(s) | City of Richmond, Virginia |
Bosher Dam is a historic but unnatural feature in the James River just west of Richmond, Virginia. A lowhead dam, also called a weir, is what paddlers ruefully call a "drowning machine," this 12-foot-high stone structure interrupts the natural flow of Virginia's largest self-contained river by spanning the waterway between suburban Tuckahoe in Henrico County and the western part of Richmond just west of the Edward E. Willey Bridge.
The structure dates to 1835 at the location of an earlier dam designed to catch fish between slats. The current iteration was part of construction of the James River and Kanawha Canal, a major 19th Century transportation project whose emphasis in 1835 was getting boat traffic around the Falls of the James, the boulder-strewn whitewater that blocked river transport for at least ten miles around Richmond. The dam may have provided power for nearby gristmills and provided sufficient water depth to the Canal flowing on what eventually became a 22-mile pathway as it weaves above the north shore of the James around the Falls.
In recent years, hundreds of lowhead dams have been removed from American rivers in an effort to restore the traditional spawning grounds of native fish with notable nearby dam removals occurring in Charlottesville and in Fredericksburg.
Such fish as shad, herring, and striped bass—which make their migratory spawning runs between March and early June—had been blocked by Bosher, which made migration impossible for at least 300 miles upstream in the James, the Rivanna River, and other tributaries. While the dam still functions to get water into the Canal, which has become more of a historic feature than a means of transportation, it has also created conditions to make this section of the James suitable for powerboating with waterskiing and other activities typically available only on lakes and larger waterways. Perhaps the rise of powerboating explains why, rather than breach or demolish the dam, as has been the recent custom in other communities, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries decided instead to build an extensive fish ladder aside the dam. Opened in 1999, the fish ladder allows the migratory fish around the dam via a 17-inch-wide pathway.
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Wikipedia