The Marlette Lake Water System was created to provide water for the silver mining boom in Virginia City, Nevada. These structures are now listed as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers, and are also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The listed area included two

contributing buildings In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distric ...

and 12

contributing structures In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distric ...

on . It has also been known historically as the Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company Water System. and The mines required large amounts of water and timber to supply the houses and mines in Virginia City and Gold Hill. To feed these mines, the dam at Carson Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company's Marlette Lake was increased, and Hobart Reservoir was created, and a number of

flume A flume is a human-made channel for water, in the form of an open declined gravity chute whose walls are raised above the surrounding terrain, in contrast to a trench or ditch. Flumes are not to be confused with aqueducts, which are built to ...

s and pipelines were built to transport water down to Virginia City. This included a 3,994-foot-long tunnel through the watershed basin divide, and an ingenious inverted

siphon A siphon (from grc, σίφων, síphōn, "pipe, tube", also spelled nonetymologically syphon) is any of a wide variety of devices that involve the flow of liquids through tubes. In a narrower sense, the word refers particularly to a tube in a ...

pipe to get water through Washoe Valley. The Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company Marlette flume location is now a trail for

mountain biking Mountain biking is a sport of riding bicycles off-road, often over rough terrain, usually using specially designed mountain bikes. Mountain bikes share similarities with other bikes but incorporate features designed to enhance durability and p ...

and

hiking Hiking is a long, vigorous walk, usually on trails or footpaths in the countryside. Walking for pleasure developed in Europe during the eighteenth century.AMATO, JOSEPH A. "Mind over Foot: Romantic Walking and Rambling." In ''On Foot: A His ...

. The collection portion of the water system is now located inside Lake Tahoe-Nevada State Park.

History and Significance

Civil engineer Hermann Schussler was hired in 1871 as a consultant by the Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company to design a pipeline to carry water from the east slope of the Carson Range to a ridge above the town of Gold Hill, approximately 7 miles. The maximum head at the low point of the siphon was approximately 1,870 feet, or 810 psi. This pressure, which was the highest head pipeline in the world when the project was completed in 1873, was double the next highest head pipeline, the Cherokee Mining Company inverted siphon in California. Virginia City was the bigges
high-grade silver
an
gold ore
producer of the United States in the mid-1800s. Natural springs supplied water to the camps at the beginning of the

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

activities. For addressing the need for more water because of the population growth, th
Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company
was established. Water was primarily drawn from tunnels that had been driven into the mountains by prospectors. The water was stored in wooden tanks, and later was sent to the towns through pipes. As demand for the water increased, additional sources of water were needed. The Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company determined that they needed to bring water from the eastern Sierra Nevada and hired Hermann Schussler design a system. The 7 miles of pipeline were constructed in 6 weeks, a significant accomplishment in a time before powered construction equipment.

Description

The ultimate Marlette Lake Water System, completed in 1887, involved a

pipeline Pipeline may refer to: Electronics, computers and computing * Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on ** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...

that was 21.5 miles long. It also involved a 45.7 mile long flume, an inclined tunnel 3,994 feet long, and storage reservoir with a capacity of over 6,200 acre feet. This water system could deliver around 6 million gallons of water per day (GPD). The initial stage of the project included the construction of a diversion dam o
Hobart Creek
a wooden flume from the dam to an inlet tank which was 4.6 miles long, and the 7 miles of twelve-inch riveted wrought iron pipeline, the inverted siphon. Another flume from the Hobart Diversion Reservoir and a second inverted siphon were completed in 1875 by the water company. An incline tunnel through the Sierra was completed in 1877 by the company. The tunnel was 4,000 feet long.

References

Lake Tahoe-Nevada State Park website

External links

American Society of Civil Engineers - Marlette Lake Water SystemUnited States Geologic Survey (USGS)
professional paper series- The story of the water supply for the Comstock.
Marlette Flume Trail
Infrastructure completed in 1873 Lake Tahoe History of Storey County, Nevada Buildings and structures in Storey County, Nevada National Register of Historic Places in Carson City, Nevada Water supply infrastructure on the National Register of Historic Places Industrial buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Nevada Reservoirs in Nevada Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Nevada 1873 establishments in Nevada {{CarsonCityNV-geo-stub

History and Significance

Description

See also

References

External links