Historic Resource Evaluation Project - Tuolumne Utilities District

Water conveyance features are ubiquitous in the California gold country, but perhaps
none are more intact than those constructed for mining purposes in Tuolumne and
adjacent Calaveras County. These features of earth-bermed ditches, take outs, flumes,
drainage crossovers, spill gates, cross gates, sandtraps, reservoirs, holding ponds and
more are remarkable dendritic remnants of the early development of these foothill
counties. In engineering terms, canals were the primary conduits of water, carrying water
to laterals and ditches, but in some instances laterals would carry water to ditches and in
other instances canals carried water directly to ditches. Historically, however, this is a
definition of canals, laterals, and ditches that would be difficult to determine from the
names of water conduits in Tuolumne County. Therefore, the historic names of the
systems have been utilized in this report.
Since the initial study for Tuolumne County (Peak & Associates 1987), intensive studies
conducted for the Caltrans East Sonora Bypass Project, private and public development
projects, and this study have uncovered additional information, requiring that the names
and histories of the ditches and their components be revised. Also, the ditches had
different names at different periods in time, or for different uses or destinations, further
confusing the issue. A Ditch Optimization Study was conducted in 2002 over a period of
a few weeks. This survey was wide-ranging, covering a corridor varying in width along
each ditch (Davis-King 2003). (There is no documentation for the Section 4 or Phoenix
ditches from this work, and some segments of a few others were not surveyed.)
Evaluations of the TUD System and Its Elements
When a water conveyance system is evaluated as an eligible district or as
an individually eligible property with multiple components, contributing
and noncontributing elements must be identified. Contributing structures,
buildings, objects, and sites are those elements associated with the
property’s period and area of significance which also possess an adequate
level of integrity. Noncontributing elements were either not present
during the historic period, or they were not part of the property’s
documented significance, or they have lost integrity and no longer reflect
historic character. When considered as a historic district, a water
conveyance system must contain a high proportion of contributors to
noncontributors (JRP and Caltrans 2000:96).
As stated by noted Swiss architect Jacques Herzog (2011):
There is no particular point in history. History is a process. We believe
every time and every contribution has its importance, versus something
that freezes one moment in time.
Therefore, the following descriptions, histories, and evaluations have been compiled from
the available archival resources and surveys of thirteen individual ditches. The systems
and their features are described and evaluated for the National Register of Historic Places
(NRHP) below.
Foothill Resources, Ltd. 4.3 TUD Ditch Sustainability Project
Francis Heritage, LLC
Historic Resource Evaluation Report