"Water is the life-blood of the mines. When its current is diminished, or even delayed, every thing languishes. With its return, all things revive." - Hutchings California Magazine, May 1859.

Flumes were the artificial water ditches that moved the precious liquid to more useful places; places where water powered nozzles blasted away cliffs of gravel, where water washed through sluice boxes to expose nuggets, or drove the machinery of underground mines and sawmills.

The V Flume Company, located 13 miles northeast of Nevada City, built a flume in 1874 to carry lumber to a yard at Town Talk. The flume cost $38,000 to build and could carry 100,000 feet of lumber or 100 cords of wood down its artificial stream each day.

To work efficiently, accelerating the water to a useful speed, a flume needed a fall of between five and 20 feet per mile.

Made of inch-and-a-half thick boards a flume usually was 40 inches wide by 20 inches deep. The average flume life was six years and each of those years an eighth of the original cost was spent repairing the wooden structures. Flumes were built where no common ditch could be dug. There were places where there was not an inch of earth from which to scrape a dirt ditch. Men hung on ropes down the sides of steep ravines, hammering together the flumes.

"To hear of the construction of a hundred miles of mining ditch conveys but a feeble conception of the magnitude of the enterprise or the difficulties to be overcome," Hutchings California Magazine told its readers.

As flume water became more and more essential to sawmills the mills appeared at Grass Valley, Bridgeport, Rough and Ready, and Washington. Lumber was becoming the new gold. Two and a half miles from Nevada City Martin Luther Marsh built his Crystal Springs sawmill. A fire in 1871 destroyed the mill and 400,000 feet of lumber. Marsh's main lumber yard and office were located on Boulder Street, where Nevada City today has its equipment yard. Marsh rebuilt his sawmill and continued to become rich from the "new gold."

One of the most spectacular flumes built during the Gold Rush was the Magenta Flume, a hundred and twenty-six feet high and fourteen hundred feet long. It spanned the gap between Cherry Hill and Eureka South, now known as Graniteville.

Because of the gradual slope one former flume has become a popular wheelchair access trail. Independence Trail, off Hwy 49 just North of Nevada City, provides wheelchair accessibility for 1.5 miles in each direction from the trailhead, following the path of the Excelsior Canal. This remarkable trail provides wheelchair access to several miles of the Yuba River canyon. The former flume's gradual descents are wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair with room to spare. The flume originally carried water from the Yuba River 25 miles down to the diggins at Smartsville. Today it provides views of waterfalls, scenic vistas, and a gentle switchback descent to a lovely mountain stream.

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Copyright Don Baumgart, 2009