Rivers · Mississippi River
Mississippi River barge traffic: 30,242 barges through 28 locks
Barge counts fall lock by lock going north, and Lock and Dam 25 holds the longest waits.
Mississippi River barge traffic moved 30,242 barges through the river's federal locks between 4 September and 4 October 2026. The 29 locks run from Chain of Rocks at mile 185.5 to St. Anthony Falls at mile 853.9. 28 of them recorded 6,795 lockages. The St. Anthony Falls upper lock recorded none.
Barges thin out upstream
Chain of Rocks Lock and Dam 27 was the busiest, with 533 lockages and 3,223 barges. Mel Price, 15 miles upstream, passed 2,843. From there the barge count falls almost lock by lock: 1,366 at Lock and Dam 25, 927 at Lock and Dam 10, 713 at Lock and Dam 2 and 7 at Lock and Dam 1.
Lockage counts include boats with no barges, so they do not follow the same curve. Lock and Dam 3 had 414 lockages, second only to Chain of Rocks, but passed 711 barges.
Where tows wait
Commercial tows on the river waited 4,413 hours in total, about 184 days. The median wait was under an hour at 26 of the 28 active locks. Lock and Dam 25 had the longest: a median of 3.3 hours, and one tow in ten waited more than 14.9 hours. Its 888 waiting hours are the most on the river, ahead of Chain of Rocks' 774 with a third of the lockages. Chain of Rocks had the other median above an hour, at 1.4 hours.
| Lock | Mile | Lockages | Median wait |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chain of Rocks Lock and Dam 27 | 185.5 | 533 | 1.4 h |
| Mel Price Lock and Dam | 200.8 | 376 | 53 min |
| Lock and Dam 25 | 241.4 | 179 | 3.3 h |
| Lock and Dam 24 | 273.4 | 181 | 23 min |
| Lock and Dam 22 | 301.2 | 178 | 44 min |
| Lock and Dam 21 | 324.9 | 219 | 34 min |
| Lock and Dam 20 | 343.2 | 179 | 18 min |
| Lock 19 | 364.3 | 207 | 36 min |
| Lock and Dam 18 | 410.5 | 179 | 17 min |
| Lock and Dam 17 | 437.1 | 176 | 1 min |
| Lock and Dam 16 | 457.2 | 225 | 15 min |
| Lock and Dam 15 | 482.9 | 177 | 57 min |
| Lock and Dam 14 | 493.0 | 311 | 39 min |
| Lock and Dam 13 | 522.5 | 226 | 20 min |
| Lock and Dam 12 | 556.7 | 225 | 0 min |
| Lock and Dam 11 | 583.0 | 215 | 29 min |
| Lock and Dam 10 | 615.1 | 239 | 29 min |
| Lock and Dam 9 | 647.9 | 243 | 10 min |
| Lock and Dam 8 | 679.2 | 229 | 28 min |
| Lock and Dam 7 | 702.5 | 277 | 20 min |
| Lock and Dam 6 | 714.3 | 266 | 17 min |
| Lock and Dam 5A | 728.5 | 276 | 12 min |
| Lock and Dam 5 | 738.1 | 297 | 15 min |
| Lock and Dam 4 | 752.8 | 335 | 10 min |
| Lock and Dam 3 | 796.9 | 414 | 11 min |
| Lock and Dam 2 | 815.2 | 242 | 10 min |
| Lock and Dam 1 | 847.6 | 110 | 5 min |
| St Anthony Falls - Lower Lock | 853.3 | 81 | 9 min |
| St Anthony Falls - Upper Lock | 853.9 | 0 | None recorded |
Daily traffic
Our daily counts for this river begin on 4 September. The river handled 415 lockages on 5 September, 466 on 6 September and 348 on 7 September. After that it ran between 161 and 312 a day. Saturdays ran highest: 312 on 12 September, 262 on 26 September and 256 on 3 October.
Waits in the final days are understated. A tow still waiting when we collected the data has no lockage yet, so it is missing from the counts. Each lock's live page, linked in the table, shows the current queue.
Related
Sources: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lock Performance Monitoring System, archived by Lock Wait; chamber dimensions and opening year from the BTS National Transportation Atlas; operators from the USACE Waterborne Transportation Lines (2022) and FCC ship licences. Wait is measured from arrival to start of lockage. How every number is defined.