First and only time I've ever been inside a dam was about 6 years ago; here at Cannelton Dam on the Ohio River, just east of Cannelton, Indiana. I like to ride/drive along the state roads in southern IN; very pretty and curvy/hilly. I typically stop at the Cannelton dam as they have locks, and you can often watch big barges go up or down river passing through the locks from the observation tower.
One day I was about to climb the stairs to the tower, and a guy holler's over at me from the locks ...
Worker: "
Hey - you wanna come see the dam?"
Me: "
Uhhhhh ... Sure !"
So he has me walk across the closed lock, and sign in on a visitor sheet; the dams/locks are operated by the Army Corps of Engineers. I get a full tour of the operations, the locks, the dam, etc. Takes about 2 hours; he shows me all the inner workings. I've heard about these structures, but it's quite interesting to be 50' below river bottom, inside the walkways, and hear the droning of the hyro-generators whirring above your head. Exhilarating and frightening all at the same time. We walked all the way across to the KY side and back, under the river. WOW ! I got to see some of the maintenance guys working on lubricating the massive bearings for the locks, etc. I asked why he invited me over. "
Well, you got lucky today. They accidentally scheduled one too many people, and so they have to pay us by contract since we all showed up, and I'm the senior guy so I get to float between jobs today." IOW, just by fluke of me being in that parking lot at the exact moment he saw me walking up the stairs, and he had nothing better to do but waste my tax dollars (kidding; sort of ...), I got the experience of a lifetime!
The observation tower (second photo; red circle) is still accessible from the outside, but you can no longer go inside the tower itself. It used to be that they had a really neat river diorama and informational posters inside the viewing tower. Sadly, after 911, that was closed to the public. But you can still walk the stairs and exterior deck of the tower. One thing I had learned from previous trips to this location is that the amount of "fall" (elevation drop) along the IN portion of the Ohio River is significant. As I recall there are 5 dams along the IN section of the river alone, and Indiana has the first and second most drop of the dam sections in the entire river.
