Intake/settling flume portal for the historic Cañon City Water Pipeline.

Concrete headworks and sediment-settling box built between 1908 and 1912. The "10-foot-square cross section" was designed to accommodate and secure a 30-inch wood-stave pipeline made of redwood planks wrapped in iron straps. The pipeline relied strictly on a gravity to carry water Cañon City.

It ends abruptly on a boulder in mid-air because the rest of the line is gone. In 1924, a massive boulder fell from the canyon walls and entirely obliterated a 75-foot section of the pipeline right at this location. The pipeline was eventually repaired with steel sections elsewhere, but when the entire wooden system was officially retired and decommissioned decades later, the bulk of the connecting wood-stave pipe rotted away or was cleared out. This left the heavy, reinforced concrete intake portal completely stranded on the rocks next to the river..

Capture Date=9/18/2026
Folder Name=2026-09a Colorado
File Name=A7R5b-#05130
Exposure=1/4000 sec at f/8.0 ISO 6400
Lens=E 28-200mm F2.8-5.6 A071 at 102 mm
Country=United States
State=Colorado
City=Royal Gorge Route Railroad
Location=