, 1897-04-29
KIDNAPPING A RIVER,
A CURIOUS ENGINEERING FEAT
IN NORTHERN COLO
RADIO.
Waters Of a Mountain Stream Forced
to Climb Over the Range ard Go
Down Into a Valley Wherein 1t Mas
Before a Stranger.

to be no easier than to construct a per.
petual motion machine. The schoolboy
thai has 10 give his teacher a long nc.
count of where the drop of water thaj
falls on the west side OF a house goes
to, and the very different course taken
by a drop falling on the east side, assum'
ing the house to stand on the crest of an
important watershed, would have his
carefully conned lesson all spoiled by
such preposterous engineering.
If the Hypothetical house whose ridge,
pole divides the Hypothetical drops OF
water were located on the great Cont
mental Divide, some nine miles north
west of Longs peak, in Northern Colo
RADIO, the natural course for the drop on
the eastern incline would be into the
Cache la Poudre, into the South Platte,
and thence through the Platte, the Mis-
souri, and the Mississippi into the Gulf
of Mexico. The drop that fell On the
west side would naturally go into the
North Fork of the Grande, and thence
NhlouSi Az III aA4i VIZ SolSl ~
into the Gulf of California. But the
farmers and landowners on the eastern
slope of the range are not satisfied with
the number OF drops OF water that come
their way, and are proposing to fly in
the face Of nature by kidnapping the up
per waters of the Grande, inveigling
them over the Continental Divide, and
down the eastern slope to the alfalfa and
wheat lands in the valley OF the'Poudre.
II feasible it will be an excellent thing
to do. for in the valley OF the Grande
there is moro water han arabic land,
while in the valley OF the Cache la
Poudre and the South Platte there is
mere arabic land than water to irrigate
1t. Natures prootsheet seems TO need
revising and correcting. The only ques-
ton is, can it be done as planned?
The roof Of a house differs from a nat
ural watershed in hat its r~idge-pole is
horizontal. while the crest of Il water
shed is not. The crest Of the Continen-
tai Divide rises into peaks $4,000 feet
high and descends into passes as low as
10000 feet. 1t thus happens that. while
some Of the tributaries OF the Grande
have their rise at an elevation OF H.
900 feet or more, the Lulu Pass on the
Continental Divide is only 10000 feet
above sea level. 1t is thus clear that
II the river can be tapped at any eleva-
ton considerably above the height OF
the Lulu Pass the waters can be led
craftily along in side-hill bitches and
ultimately across the divide and down
the eastern slope OF the range. This is
what it is proposed to do, the surveys
have already been made, and the work
will probably be undertaken next sum
mer.
What it is planned to do with the wa
ters OF the Grande has already been done
with the waters of the Laramie river
which have been taken across the water
shed o. the Medicine Bow range and
turned into Chambers lake, from which
they pass down to the arabic lands OF
the Poudre valley. This enterprise is in
the same general district as the II now
proposed, and serves as a model.
The head waters of that branch or the
Laramie which has been diverted come
very near having their rise in a glacier.
They start in a canyon SO deep, so shad-
ed and located at such an altitude thai
the SHOWS OF one winter are hardly melt
ed out before those OF another come.
From the ridges on both sides the winds
sweep the SHOWS into this narrow gorge
until they lie 200 feet deep or more. Sol,
idHed by pressure and partial thaWine
the mass of SNOW becomes q mass vi
ice. and the sun has an all summers
work before him to convert that ice mass
into water. Water from such a source
is particularly valuable because 1t Is
what they call late water; 1t comes NJ
n time OF the year when many OF the
lowland streams are dry, and yet when
water is still needed to mature the crops
A flow OF one cubic foot per second nj
the time when water is most in demand
1t will be seen that the flow was well
worth capturing.
ro abduct the Laramie at this point
required a ditch five miles long, circline
about the two sides of the Medicine Bow
range, which it crosses at an altitude Oh
$500. For threeIffths Of the distance
the side hill along which the ditch was
led was SO nearly vertical that the ma
terial excavated could not be held to
form the lower bank OF the ditch with
out crib work. In surveying the route
the ordinary clinometers had to be dis.
carded, and the common surveyors
glowing rod, had to be extended to an
instrument 30 feet high. The way was
so broken and dificult and the timber
in places so dense that it often made
there, as 1t has, since on the Grande,
very hard days work for two men te
chain half a mile. Streams crossing thu
course of the canal had to be so provid'
ed for that they emptied themselves in
to IL when their reinforcement wal
needed, but flung themselves over o.
under 1t in t~orrential seasons when the,
would have otherwise destroyed 1t
Along some Of the line the forest is *
dense that no good picture Of the work
can be obtained by ordinary solar pho
Biography, and at places the incline i
90 steep that the man with a camera cal
A-at-- ~