Water velocities were measured in the Des Plaines River from approximately river mile 286 to river mile 284 on October 19–21, 2015 using Teledyne Rio Grande 1200 kHz acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCP). The data were georeferenced with differential GPS receivers with submeter accuracy. These velocity data were collected in support of the US Army Corps of Engineers Great Lakes and Mississippi River Interbasin Study (GLMRIS), and were concurrent with a dye-tracing study. ADCP data were collected in the approach channel of the Brandon Road Lock and downstream in the main channel of the Des Plaines River to determine the spatial distribution of depth-averaged velocity in the river on October 19–21, 2015. The data have been depth­-averaged over the entire measured portion of the water column and temporally averaged over 5 second intervals to reduce noise. Data were processed using the Velocity Mapping Toolbox (Parsons and other, 2013). Any data assigned a value of "­9999" are invalid or missing and should not be used for analysis. The ADCP data collected on October 19 and 20, 2015 also included velocity measurements at cross sections in the Des Plaines River. These data were also processed with the Velocity Mapping Toolbox (Parsons and others, 2013) to obtain a mean velocity field for each cross section derived from one or more individual transects at each location. Parsons, D. R., Jackson, P. R., Czuba, J. A., Engel, F. L., Rhoads, B. L., Oberg, K. A., Best, J. L., Mueller, D. S., Johnson, K. K. and Riley, J. D. (2013), Velocity Mapping Toolbox (VMT): a processing and visualization suite for moving-vessel ADCP measurements. Earth Surf. Process. Landforms, 38: 1244–1260. doi: 10.1002/esp.3367