This is one of the ten locks on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, a manmade channel stretching 234 miles from the Tennessee River east of Corinth to the convergence of the Black Warrior and Tombigbee rivers near Demopolis, Alabama. Constructing the waterway required twelve years and the removal of more earth than had been displaced to build the Panama Canal. The idea to connect the Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers first arose in the nineteenth century as entrepreneurs sought to facilitate steamboat traffic. A century later, President Richard Nixon made canal funding part of his “Southern Strategy” for reelection, and the Corps of Engineers began work in 1972. The lock and dam is named for Mississippi’s longest-serving U.S. senator. In addition to the concrete lock with steel gates, which accommodates a 27-foot water-level change and the concrete dam, which impounds the 8,900-acre Columbus Lake, there are multiple adjacent recreation areas.