The remnants of an irrigation flume are seen in the forest near the Robins Range Road in east Kamloops.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Brian Craig

Brian Craig of Castlegar was camping east of Kamloops last month when he stumbled upon the remnants of an old wooden flume and trestle and hiked down a steep path to take photos.

The remains of the flume Craig found near Robins Range Road and Campbell Range Road are one of many abandoned wood, metal, and concrete flumes hidden in the backcountry in the BC Interior.

“I’d come across a flume video and went to find it while my wife was in the RV scrapbooking,” he said. “I drove down dirt roads until I saw a culvert, trying to see a way to get down to the creek. I kept driving until I saw a trestle and an old flume. It was a ways down a path to get to it.”

According to an article written by late BC land surveyor, Robert Allen, many flumes were used for watering hay fields until modern sprinkling systems took over. Many small lakes in the interior had dams built on them to store water to use in the summer, with some releasing water through flumes to irrigate ranches and farms.

Historically used to divert water for irrigation, run sawmills or in some cases in mining operations, these flumes can be found in all stages of decay throughout the Kamloops area and Okanagan Valley.

The remnants of a metal and wood irrigation flume remain in a forested area of Kamloops.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Brian Craig

“The water flowed down the flume towards a road from a small lake about 800 metres to the west,” Allen documented about the remnants Craig recently found.

Allen also wrote about seeing the Orchard Irrigation Flume in 1985, a well-known, long-abandoned flume in the Walhachin community between Kamloops and Cache Creek.

“A number of gentleman English farmers arrived in the early 20th Century with the promises of wonderful soil where apples would grow by the bushel full. Well, their dream didn’t turn out as they had hoped and when the First World War broke out, most of them left to serve their home country and most never returned,” he wrote. 

This photo shows the remains of a flume built in the Walhachin community to irrigate orchards over a century ago.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Alan Forseth

Somewhere in his many travels, Allen found the remains of the Brennan Creek Log Flume west of Adams Lake in the Shuswap. 

"It was a very wet and soggy day and the area where the flume started was all grown over and it was hard to get a good photo — I was wet, my camera was wet and I wasn’t looking forward to the trek back out to the truck."

In his blog Shuswap Passion, well-known Shuswap historian Jim Cooperman said logging was always the driving factor for the community of Brennan Creek and by 1910 the Adams Lake River Lumber company was employing hundreds of men in several camps in the area. Warehouses and docks were built and in 1918, and a ten-kilometre long log flume was constructed to bring timber down from the upper valley. The logs were boomed at the lake and towed down to the river by the H.R. Hellen sternwheeler until operations shut down in 1925.

Cooperman confirmed to iNFOnews.ca the Brennan Creek log flume was badly burned in the East Bush Creek Wildfire this summer, 2023, including the trellis bridges. 

READ MORE: How do Thompson-Okanagan wildlife survive every winter?

Bits and pieces of a metal and wood irrigation flume can be seen on The Grey Canal trail system in Vernon.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Sheri Ross

The Grey Canal Trail System is made up of seven different trail sections in the Vernon area that follow the historic Grey Canal. According to the Ribbons of Green Trails Society, the canal was once a 50-km irrigation channel used to water orchards and agricultural lands. Built between 1906 and 1914, the irrigation flume was in operation until 1970. The system was gravity fed and carried water from Lavington, Coldstream, Vernon, and Swan Lake to Okanagan Lake.  The trails can be walked, hiked, biked or snowshoed and sections can be found in Bella Vista, Turtle Mountain Boulevard, along the hills above the east side of Swan Lake and in east Vernon to name a few.

READ MORE: Keeping the Nsyilxc?n' language alive in the Okanagan

Quail Flume Trail can be accessed off the UBCO campus parking lot in Kelowna. The trail joins the Quail Ridge community with the UBC Campus. Along the Flume Trail, hikers can learn the history of the flume that carried water to the local farms a century ago.

These concrete irrigation flumes can be found on the Cartwright Mountain trail system in Summerland.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Robin Fiorese

Remnants of an irrigation flume can be found above Hardy Falls in Peachland on the Fur Brigade Trail. 

In Summerland, parts of concrete flumes can be found on the Flume Line trail on Cartwright Mountain.

What abandoned flumes have you seen while exploring the backcountry in BC's Interior? Send photos and information to news@infonews.ca or let everyone know in the comments below. 

This historic photo shows a stretch of the Brennan Creek log flume near Adams Lake taken by Frank Fraser.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Jim Cooperman

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