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Post by dave on Dec 29, 2019 9:20:31 GMT -6
I remember growing up my Dad would say I don't care if you are a ditch digger just be the best ditch digger there is. It didn't sink in. After all who digs ditches? Now I realize that when he was a kid they were probably still digging ditches by hand. These pictures are of the Oxman ditch. It runs west to east for well over a mile on our property. And it goes several miles each side of our property. About 5 feet deep and about 12 to 15 feet wide at the top. Dug by hand over 100 years ago to take irrigation water to some fields down stream. These men were not afraid to work. It washed out some time in the mid 1920's and never worked after that. The second picture the Oxman ditch is the one mid slope. The one at the base of the slope is the Banks ditch. It still carries water today. It was also dug by hand. My irrigation rights date back to 1873 so we know when that ditch was dug.
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Post by greybeard on Dec 29, 2019 10:50:23 GMT -6
146 yrs ago...yep, that would maybe have been even before mule drawn dirt slips and scrapers.
History, in real time.
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Post by chuckie on Dec 29, 2019 14:25:56 GMT -6
Dave, that is pretty interesting to know. I often think about the lives of people when things were all done by hand and animal. Such a different life in the age of computers and smart phones.
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Post by dave on Dec 30, 2019 7:58:03 GMT -6
146 yrs ago...yep, that would maybe have been even before mule drawn dirt slips and scrapers. History, in real time. Probably 90% of the ditch on my property they couldn't have used the scrapers. It is either too steep of a side hill or way too many rocks (boulders). Even the Banks ditch, which still works to this day, I think was dug by hand. It is on the flat at the edge of the valley but there is not shortage of rock showing in the ditch or the down hill side dike.
There were lots of ditches dug in this part of the world during that era. The ones that I have found the history on says they were mainly dug with pick and shovel by Chinese laborers. There were ones dug for irrigation and lots dug for the gold mining efforts.
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