Water Pressure

As you come to the end of the canyons when heading South from Gateway, you come across this rather interesting engineering project. If you look at the wall that rises above the river, you see a series of dark spots. This is actually the support structures for an old water way that was used to assist the miners many years ago. The text from a sign follows:

In need of water to work the Delores Canyon gold claims, the Montrose Placer Mining Company built a thirteen-Mile canal and flume to deliver water from the San Miguel River. The last five miles of the flume clung to the wall of the canyon itself, running along the cliff face below you. Constructed between 1888 and 1891, the four-foot-deep, five-foot-four-inch-wide “hanging flume” carried 23,640,000 gallons of water in a twenty-four hour period. Its construction dazzled mining pros with its sheer ingenuity. The placer claim, unfortunately, dazzled no one; after three years of indifferent yields the company folded, abandoning the flume to the ravages of weather and time. Now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, this engineering marvel symbolizes the twists of fate so often encountered in the pursuit of Rocky Mountain gold.