Hanging Flume, Historic mining flume in Dolores Canyon, Colorado.
The Hanging Flume is a historic wooden water channel fixed to the near-vertical walls of Dolores Canyon in western Colorado. Metal brackets driven into the rock hold the wooden sections above the river, so the channel runs for several miles with no ground beneath it.
The flume was built between 1889 and 1891 to carry water to gold placer mining operations downstream in the canyon. The gold ran out shortly after 1900, and the structure was abandoned before it had been in use for more than a few years.
The name Hanging Flume describes exactly what you see: a wooden channel that hangs on the cliff face with nothing below it. From the road, the surviving sections look almost weightless against the rock, which makes the structure hard to believe even when you are looking straight at it.
The surviving sections are visible from pullouts along Colorado Route 141 northwest of Uravan, and you can get a clear look without leaving your car. Binoculars help pick out the brackets in the rock face, and the contrast between the wood and stone tends to be sharpest in morning or late afternoon light.
The flume was never fully completed, and parts of the route were missing even before the project was abandoned, meaning the system likely never carried water along its entire length. What remains today is the surviving portion of something that never actually worked as intended.
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