Mayo's Bar Lock and Dam

Mayo's Bar Lock and Dam is a river navigation structure on the Coosa River, roughly eight miles southwest of Rome, Georgia. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built it between 1911 and 1913, with work continuing to 1915. It was the northernmost point of a planned slack-water route toward the Gulf of Mexico. The poured-concrete lock measures 40 by 210 feet with a nine-foot lift, and the dam is a log-and-crosstie crib filled with locally quarried stone. It is the only intact survivor of six similar Coosa locks and dams and the oldest lock in Georgia. Steamboats used it from 1913 to 1941, first carrying farm products and later mostly passengers, though it came too late to save commercial river traffic. The surrounding county park also holds three prehistoric sites from the Early-Middle Archaic and Late Mississippian periods, plus a wharf site and an abandoned limestone quarry from construction. Together they make up the historic district.