The McElmo Creek Flume, located off Highway 160 just near the Montezuma County Fairgrounds, was assessed Monday and Tuesday to determine its condition, which will be followed by a more detailed analysis to determine what to do next.
Ron Anthony of Fort Collins based Anthony & Associates Inc., whose speciality is projects made with wood, was in Cortez on Monday to conduct an assessment of the McElmo Creek Flume.
Montezuma County received a grant from the Colorado State Historic Fund to evaluate the preservation options for the historic flume. The flume was listed on the Colorado Preservation Most Endangered Places List in 2011 and was recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The report resulting from this assessment will describe options for rehabilitation or restoration of the flume.
Cortez Historic Preservation Board President Linda Towle said the flume is on land owned by Montezuma County and she approached the Board of County Commissioners to ask if she could contact Anthony to come out to assess the flumes condition.
The funds the county used to pay Anthony for his work came from revenue from three state-owned casinos in the Denver area. Ten percent of these funds were earmarked for preservation projects.
Anthonys company received a $10,000 contract from the county for assessing the wooden project built in the 1880s to divert water from the Dolores River to irrigate 200,000 acres of crop land in the region.
Kim Dugan, an architect who works with Anthony, was at the flume on Tuesday to gauge the condition of the wood used for the project, as well as trying to identify the species of the wood used to determine what parts of the flume may have been replaced at one time.
Towle explained that in 1921 Montezuma Valley Irrigation purchased a few flumes from the state of Washington and it may have started adding on to the existing flume because it was less expensive to do the work themselves than hire another group to do it.
When the irrigation company was formed in 1920, the system included more than 100 wooden flumes and 150 miles of canals.
Today, of the 104 constructed flumes, only the McElmo Creek Flume remains standing, though its condition has deteriorated over the years.
Les Nunn worked for the Montezuma Valley Irrigation for nearly 30 year, retiring in 2006, said it would be nice to restore the old flume.
Id like to see it because its part of the early history of the irrigation company. It was quite an experience working there, he said via telephone Wednesday.
He said the flume system was named by number and that area was called No. 6.
Towle said she remembers the flume being in use as recently as 1992 before McPhee Reservoir replaced all of the canals and flumes that were being used for irrigation purposes.
Dugan said they will need to analyze the data to get a good reading on the condition of the McElmo Creek Flume, but did say it appears most of the wood is in good condition, though there are parts where the wood has deteriorated badly.
Dugan drilled 7.5 inches into pieces of wood on Tuesday to get a reading that resembled an EKG, though this was an EKG of wood, Towle explained.
In explaining the readings, Dugan said a stable reading with little increases or decreases usually is a sign the wood is in good condition.
A flatline, though, signaled the wood is either in extremely bad shape or the deterioration had gotten so bad that the wood there had dissolved.
When it flatlines we have a problem, Dugan said.
Dugan said Anthony & Associates will put together a report on its findings, and Towle said the report will be presented to the Montezuma County Commission in the fall.
Towle said Anthony will detail options and the costs for each. The options include doing nothing, stabilizing it, or restoring a portion of it, or do a full-blown rehabilitation project.
Towle admitted that whatever is decided, it will come down to the available funding. She said that there is the possibility of applying for matching grant funding.
Reach Michael Maresh at michaelm@cortezjournal.com
