maps – Page 9 – Hidden Hydrology

28 December 2016 31 December 2016

Lost Creeks of the Bay Area – Part I

Jason Kingart, city, creeks, ecology, history, maps, places, precedents, san francisco, streamsLeave a Comment

There are a number of cities with a vibrant mix of activities around hidden hydrology, some of which have been covered previously (see Resources). The stories of San Francisco’s hidden hydrology have existed for years, starting perhaps with an account by William Crittenden Sharpsteen of Vanished Waters from 1941, and continuing today with ways to offer hints to the current configuration of odd topographic features like ‘The Wiggle’. There are also references to discovering and possibly daylighting urban streams in San Francisco, even positing what other cities can learn from their relationship with it’s urban creeks.

One of my favorite organizations, SPUR, has an article from 2006 in their archives ‘Of Buried Creeks and Thwarted Plans‘ worth reading, which explores Burnham’s unrealized 1905 Plan for San Francisco which would have created open space in favor of freeways. “Perhaps one of the most remarkable features of the unrealized Burnham Plan would have made Islais Creek the central natural feature of a long linear park stretching from the upper reaches of Glen Canyon all the way to the bay; today the water runs in culverts buried under the bleak interstate freeway, one of the few that overcame citizens’ opposition in the 1950s and ’60s.” Across the Bay the situation is similar, with references to hidden waters of Temescal Creek and it’s potential daylighting, as well as similar efforts in Berkeley to daylight urban creeks.

The San Francisco Bay Area has a number of interesting projects and resources worthy of investigation and emulation, spanning from mapping, artistic interventions, and historical ecology, warranting a couple of posts to capture in total. Here’s a few of them.

Seep City is a project of the local Joel Pomerantz “a writer and natural history educator recognized for his work in waterway research, local journalism, public art and community service”, who also focuses on local urban explorations through the group THINKWALKS. The Seep City was funded by a Kickstarter from early 2015, and is squarely related to the hidden hydrology, as explained on the site. “When San Francisco was first becoming a city, it had many more waterways than now. Those were wet years. When dry years came the gullies became annoyances. People filled in the creeks and low areas with sand, debris and gravel. Marshes and sloughs were filled, too. The edges of the city were expanded into the Bay, making sailable water into salable lots. Today’s rain goes right into sewers, for the most part. Few absorbent soils are still exposed. Remarkably, surface creeks do still flow, here and there. And when you dig, you still find groundwater. If you search you’ll see springs, mostly small, seeping and trickling out onto our landscape.”

The project is explained in a bit more detail in “Mapping San Francisco’s Surprising Abundance of Springs and Streams” in Wired Magazine from 2015. In addition, an older essay in FoundSF entitled ‘San Francisco’s Clean Little Secret’. (originally published in the anthology The Political Edge and published Fall 2004 by City Lights Foundation) At the end of the article, there’s a short disclaimer:

“There is now (2010) very strong evidence surfacing that some of the historical assumptions that calculations and details in this article were based on need to be reinterpreted due to further scholarship. Specifically, although many maps show one, it appears that there was never an enduring freshwater lake in the Mission District. It turns out that “manantial” means spring-fed, rather than merely any freshwater. The waterways in the Mission area were all stream-fed, and Anza’s journals make it clear that “laguna de manantial” was a reference to Washerwoman’s Lagoon (earlier called Laguna Pequeña) in what is now the Marina and Cow Hollow areas. Anza passed this on his way to search for a site for the mission and thus included it in the same description. However it was not in the same geographic area.”

The original essay, linked here, shows some more dialogue on this errata. To me, it’s an interesting journey around the continuing evolution of hidden hydrology, that it is often a continual process of refinement and discovery. Some interesting dialogue as well is included on the origins of Phelp’s Lake. and as explained by Pomerantz, “Of course, my discovery creates other layers of mystery.”

The below map depicts the original coastline, marshes and creeks of San Francisco, in the mid 1800s. Lake shapes varied over time, which explains the difference between this and the detailed Mission map in the article.

Ghost Arroyos is a project that got a fair amount of press (Curbed SF, CityLab) emerged from the Market Street Prototyping Festival and the brainchild of Emily Schlickman and Kristina Loring. From the site: “Hayes Creek, a large underground waterway, is still flowing beneath the streets of San Francisco today. We asked passers-by to look behind them – the water spraying from the United Nations Plaza fountain is from Hayes Creek. Beneath their feet, the BART transit authority runs de-watering pumps to keep the tracks from flooding. Even some buildings around the Civic Center still use Hayes water today. To trace the flow of Hayes, they followed the chalked blue lines as they continued down 7th street. In less than a block, they came to where Hayes Creek historically surfaced into a marsh. There they found a watery sonic surprise.” A map below shows the location of Hayes Creek.

From the original project proposal: “Every city has invisible histories embedded within its landscape. Up until the 19th century, ephemeral streams ran through nearly every valley in San Francisco, channeling rainwater to peripheral tidal estuaries. This project, “Ghost Arroyos” seeks to reveal these forgotten waterways of the city through a simple, but powerful intervention. Situated between 7th and 9th street, the project will mark the historical footprint of the arroyos onto the urban surface through paint or lighting. Visitors to the festival will be invited to trace the path of the waterways while listening to a curated recording of hydrological soundscapes and oral histories.” The visual of a painted streetscape was a evocative invitation to the potential to cue people into this lost creek.

The implementation of the project is early, so looking forward to seeing this evolve. A few photos showing a small scale installation of paint on an intersection. A key part of the project is the audio aspects which are available in situ, through boxes mounted adjacent to the ‘painted’ streets. There’s even a step-by-step breakdown of how to make the speakers via Instructables.

The audio is found here on their site:

San Francisco Estuary Institute has long been a key resource in the region, providing “…scientific support and tools for decision-making and communication through collaborative efforts. We provide independent science to assess and improve the health of the waters, wetlands, wildlife and landscapes of San Francisco Bay, the California Delta and beyond. SFEI’s 50 scientists and experts provide data, technology and tools that empower government, civic and business leaders to create cost-effective solutions for complex environmental issues–from cleaner water and sustainable communities to climate change. We have three primary programs: Clean Water, Resilient Landscapes, and Environmental Informatics.”

My main interest related to the connection between hidden hydrology and historical ecology, which can be defined as synthesizing “…diverse historical records to learn how habitats were distributed and ecological functions were maintained within the native California landscape. Understanding how streams, wetlands, and woodlands were organized along physical gradients helps scientists and managers develop new strategies for more integrated and functional landscape management.” It goes further to explain that “Researchers are increasingly recognizing that restoration and conservation strategies have often been misguided (and unsuccessful) because of a lack of understanding of historical conditions (e.g. Hamilton 1997, Kondolf et al. 2001, Foster and Motzkin 2003, Merritts and Walter 2008). This is particularly true in California, where our cultural memory is short and we have tended to impose concepts appropriate to more humid regions to our Mediterranean and semiarid landscapes (which will become only more so).”

An indicative study comes from the Alameda Creek Historical Ecology Study from 2013, which assesses: “watershed conditions prior to significant Euro-American modification, as a basis for understanding subsequent changes in watershed structure and function, and potential options for future environmental management.” While the mapping involves a cast of many, Robin Grossinger, director of the Resilient Landscapes Project is well known for historic ecology in the bay area, and has written extensively on this, including many articles in SF Bay area.

Aside from reports, there are examples of online resources and studies, such as The Historical Ecology of Miller Creek, which was “…designed to inform residents of the watershed and other interested people about past and present ecological landscapes within the watershed, and how this information might be used to plan for the future. The time frame begins with indigenous land use practices and considers the effects of Euro-American settlement beginning about 200 years ago, continues through the present, and briefly examines the future needs of the watershed. This description is meant to broaden the view of what Miller Creek Watershed could become through science-based planning and careful management. Human induced changes in land use have affected the natural functions and habitats of the Miller Creek watershed. The emerging story foresees ongoing change that would benefit from a comprehensive understanding of the watershed’s history while planning to define and secure essential watershed services for the future.”

OTHER PROJECTS

There are also a number of other urban explorations and art installations worthy of mentioning in brief. These precedents offer some interesting examples of engaging larger communities with hidden rivers and creeks, through bike tours of sewers and regular walking tours of hidden waters.

Some specific examples are summarized below:

One I spotted a few years ago were an interesting series of “tours” that are part geographic and part performance art. Led by artist Chris Sollars, as part of the project Water Shed, which was conducted during Southern Exposure’s Off Shore from 2014, participants walked Islais Creek, Mission Creek, and Yosemite Creek in San Francisco. A summary: ““Tracing the hidden path of Islais Creek, Chris Sollars leads a walk from source to Bay while carrying a rope that references the length of one city block. Beginning in Glen Park Canyon, the group will journey through downtown Glen Park, the Alemany Farm, Alemany Flea Market, a Google bus parking lot and the Southeast Treatment Plant. Stopping at various points along the way, the walk ends in Islais Creek Park to enjoy food and drink gathered along the route. There, participants will be ferried onto and off of Water Shed, a floating shed-like structure.”

There are videos of the walks as well linked from Sollars’ Vimeo site – check one for Yosemite Creek out here.

Yosemite Creek Walk Promo from Chris Sollars on Vimeo.

Across the Bay in Oakland, a project called ‘Creeks Beneath your Feet’ connects residents with hidden hydrology. “Former creeks, now buried in culverts, are memorialized by a series of bronze relief sculptures embedded into sidewalks at locations above these culverts. The pieces portray stepping stones surrounded by native fauna that inhabit the creeks such as Rainbow Trout, Pacific Chorus Frogs, California Newts and dragonflies. Each site features five bronze “stepping stones” inviting the visitor to step across as if crossing a creek.” An article in the East Bay Times provides more info and images, and a map of the locations is found here.

An art installation from Kevin O’Connor from 2012 called “Intimate Strangers: A Ritual for the Buried Creeks of San Francisco” uses hidden creeks as artistic inspiration: “Adding yet another layer to the mystery, massive surges of groundwater, much of it potable, travel continuously just beneath us from related “subartesian” sources that even historically never came fully to the surface. We easily overlook these “creeks” since they have never come into view to receive formal names. My proposal is to place 10 blues pools in a line along the creek bed that runs through Garfield Square. Each pool will be filled with water that I have collected from the buried creeks of San Francisco. The backyard wading pools remind us that there are buried creeks that hold water in many backyard homes in the Mission area.”

Finally, it’s a minor addition, but one map from Rebecca Solnit’s excellent ‘Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas’ shows the fragment of hidden hydrology in San Francisco. From a review in High Country News: “Third Street Phantom Coast,” for example, is a map of the peninsula’s eastern fringe that depicts a now-forgotten city of ancient shell middens, long-buried streams and concretized serpentine outcrops. It shows how, over the last 150 years, the city’s waterfront expanded as successive layers of landfill were dumped on the tidelands of the Bay. Vanished landmarks from the late 19th and early 20th centuries — the “Tubbs Cordage Company” and the “Site of rancho bear and bull fights,” among others — haunt the rendering.”

Part II of this exploration of the Bay Area focuses on many of the maps and mapping resources.

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13 December 2016 23 January 2017

Beyond the LA River

Jason Kingcity, ecology, history, landscape, los angeles, maps, places, precedents, streams2 Comments

The typical news story from Los Angeles that often emerges concerning rivers tends to focus on the LA River and it’s future and fate. Countless stories of the latest master plans or rehabilitation efforts, Army Corps efforts, or just plain ire at the fact that Frank Gehry was involved have been flying around for years. One of my favorite takes is documented in the fantastic 2008 publication ‘The Infrastructural City‘, which breaks down LA into a number of systems including a good amount of focus on the River. And while no one would dispute the importance of the river to the city (and to countless movie chase scenes) there is a broad and complex hydrology and at work in the City of Los Angeles.

The folks at LA Creak Freak offer a slightly different and broader take, and while they do offer plenty of discussion on the LA River, they explore some of the other tangents of hidden hydrology. As mentioned in their About summary the site is both “… a way to share information about LA’s historical ecology – the rivers and streams that were once here – and to update people on relevant watery news and events with a mostly local focus…” and “…that we believe our rivers and creeks are vital to our communities and our planet. Though degraded and forgotten, they’re worth saving.” This information and activism role is similar in nature to much of my inspirations, so it was interesting to dig into their site. The main players are landscape architect Jessica Hall and Joe Linton, an artist, author and activist with a long involvement in the community. The site links to maps, stories, resources, and some transcribed interviews as well. It’s somewhat free-form, with a few helpful summaries like ‘getting started‘ and ‘recommendations‘ but like many sites, is chock full of place specific info that you just have to spend time digging in to.

Some of the links led to a map from the Rumsey collection of the topography of Los Angeles from 1880 by William Hammond Hall shows another “Beautiful hand drawn map of the Los Angles-San Bernardino Basin. Pen-and-ink and pencil. Relief shown by hachures. It appears to be a base map on a scale of two miles to an inch, probably preliminary (several of Hall’s notations on the edges indicate corrections needed to the topography) and earlier than the 1888 Report titled “Irrigation in California” that had 15 maps that may have been derived from this map. It may also have served as the base for “Drainage area map to accompany report on irrigation and water supply in California” by Wm. Ham. Hall, State Engineer. (188-?). Hall was a famous engineer who was the first state engineer and was responsible for many of the early state water projects (see California Water Atlas). This map does not have any names drawn in except for a few towns, rivers, or railroads lightly penciled in. All the land divisions and city plats are indicated, with mountains, rivers, railroads, roads, arroyos and shorelines shown.”

A link to a map of the North Branch of the Arroyo Seco offers some commentary on the mapping: “I am fascinated by the messiness of the historical landscape before it was flattened and filled, with water confined to neatly linear paths. There are so many notations mapmakers used to depict the ways water manifested in the historical landscape. William Hammond Hall’s maps go beyond mere notation, into the realm of artistic representation. In contrast, USGS maps of contemporary Los Angeles use a limited and inflexible set of icons to depict water: blue lines for waterways (thin or thick, solid or dashed), and blue amoebas for lakes. Does the simplicity of these icons reflect what we’ve done to our surface water; or has what we’ve done to our surface water reflect our simplistic cultural idea about how a water body is supposed to look like and behave?”

While the USGS maps of modern day (or at least 1975 from above) may have evolved be more more generic, but the old ones had some beauty, as shown here in a map from 1896 snapped from the great USGS Historical Topographic Map Explorer.

I love the scale of the monumentally awesome Historical Creek & Wetlands Map of the lower Lost Angeles River and environs map below shows a range of buried creeks, sandy washes, historic wetlands, as well as existing creeks, concrete channels and drains (key to left) from around 1902. Not sure who was the author of this map although the copyright shows 2003 from North East Trees. The original orientation of the LA River and tributaries is interesting to see, along with the other hydrologic elements and topography. There are a number of other excerpt maps from areas around LA as well.

Obviously the LA River is the major drainage, but there are plenty of tributaries and other side drainage weaving through the urban realm. A Google map created by the LA Creek Freak folks provides a bit more context beyond the main LA River channel, showing historic drainages woven through the City such as Ballona Creek much of which is buried and/or channelized.

A great example of online resource in that same basin is the Ballona Historical Ecology web site, an interactive exploration created by multiple sources including the San Francisco Estuary Institute, Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, and the Santa Monica Bay Foundation, along with CSU Northridge, CSU Chico, and USC. For more information you can also download a report for the project here.

Another link to a map show at the LA Central Library called L.A. Unfolded (awesome idea), which led to some more historical maps shows this gem from the Online Archive of California for a Map of the City of Los Angeles from 1884.

A side trip to Jane Tsong’s Myriad Unnamed Streams is a worthy diversion, with stories and maps focusing on Northeast Los Angeles. Various snippets of water history like “Where the Creeks Ran Underground” offer some place specific notes, maps and history for a small segment of LA around Eagle Rock Creek. This series of key maps shows the area with streams only.

And with the overlay with modern sewer system, “Street map showing storm drains/1888 water courses as mapped by State Engineer William Hammond Hall, overlaid onto modern topographical data. Street, stormdrain and topographical data: Bureau of Engineering.”

Also worth checking out is a Curbed LA story “25 Photos of the Los Angeles River Before It Was Paved in 1938″ shows a different, softer side to the river, such as it meandering near Boyle Heights in the 1880s:

And from 1931, “The then-new Fourth Street Bridge” showing a natural river bed and although channelized, softer edges to the river.

This one, from 1938, indicates the plans for channelization: “Shown is an artist’s sketch which graphically portrays the system of dams, underground storage basins, etc., that were set up by the Los Angeles County engineers to prevent floods and to conserve hitherto wasted rain water for domestic purposes.”

The end came after floods in spring of 1938, as described in a book The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth: (Blake Gumprecht, 2001): “The first Los Angeles River projects paid for by the federal government and built under the direction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were completed a few months after the flood. Work was finished in October 1938 on three projects to lower the river’s bed twenty feet, widen its channel and pave its banks for a little over four miles upstream from Elysian Park. Three months later, construction was completed on the first segment of what would eventually be a continuous trapezoidal concrete channel to carry the river from Elysian Park to Long Beach.”

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12 December 2016 12 December 2016

Philly H20

Jason Kingcity, creeks, history, maps, philadelphia, places, precedents, streamsLeave a Comment

One of the most amazing resources I’ve discovered was the website Philly H20. A comprehensive look at creeks and sewers in Philadelphia, don’t let the charmingly anachronistic website style put you off, as the amazing detail and density of info contained therein. The site is done by Adam Levine, the “the local expert on the history of Philadelphia’s rivers, streams, and drainage systems.” A quick into from the site:

It has been my pleasurable challenge, as a consultant to the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) since 1998, to try to piece together the fascinating history of the city’s many lost streams. PWD has preserved its own collection of historical material, which is a rich source of information, and I have supplemented that base with research in local libraries, historical societies, archives and relevant departments of the city government.

Besides many useful written records, I have uncovered a wide range of graphic material including paintings and drawings, maps and plans, photographs and surveys. This material stretches across the breadth of the city’s long history, since changes were made in the landscape almost as soon as William Penn began building his new city along the Delaware River in 1682. The bottom line is that, over the course of several centuries, most of the city’s surface streams have been channeled underground and incorporated into the city’s 3,000 mile sewer system.

The section From Creek to Sewer provides a bit more explanation, “As in many urban areas, most of Philadelphia’s surface streams, encompassing many square miles of watershed, were systematically obliterated over the course of the city’s development. Diverted into pipes–their valleys leveled with millions of yards of fill and overlaid with a grid of streets–these streams now flow in some of the largest sewers in the city’s 3,000-mile drainage system. In most cases, these projects were designed as combined sewers, carrying raw sewage along with the stream flow and stormwater runoff.”

A sequence of “Historic and modern stream maps created by the Philadelphia Water Department (using data gathered from a variety of sources), to educate the public about the fate of many of the city’s streams.” The first shows the historic streams, not sure of a date but according to the site probably from around the 1700s or prior to significant permanent settlement.

The current maps shows some intact watersheds in outlying zones, but most of the inner core, North Philadelphia with the exception of Tacony and Frankford Creeks, and mostly gone in South and West Philadelphia areas buried.

The overall landscape change is best represented with the composite map with subsurface piping shown in red, highlighting the underground hydrology still at work, but really emphasizing the removal of most of the creeks and streams in the core and replacement of a much more structured system. This is a pretty common map echoed many times around the world through the 1850s to early 1900s.

Levine has linked a number of interesting maps, such as the early sewerage system from 1895 which already shows the manipulation of streams and construction of diversions along with buried creeks. It also shows that the city was using a combination of sewer and combined systems, which was again used in many cities as a cost-effective strategy. I’m struck now just how Levine curates the material, but offers a historical explanation, on the page From Creek to Sewer, of how and why these waterways were degraded and eventually filled. A short excerpt:

“Since it was then standard sewage disposal practice to direct branch sewers downhill into the nearest stream, they knew that even pristine surface streams would become polluted once the areas around them were developed. Culverting the streams before they became polluted was seen as a positive step to protect the public health. In undertaking these projects, the engineers also hoped to reduce the cost of the city’s infrastructure in a number of ways. Sewage, being mostly liquid, flows most cheaply by gravity–pumping it up a slope is expensive in terms of fuel costs, and is only as reliable as the pumping equipment. By placing sewers in the natural stream valleys, the engineers got the gravity flow they needed, and in the process they managed to avoid the high cost of making extensive, deep excavations. Once the valleys were filled in over the newly built pipes–in some stream valleys in Philadelphia, more than 40 feet of fill was used–the cost of building a bridge each time a main street crossed the stream was avoided as well. “

There’s links to even more map sources as well, including the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network, maps and photos at PhillyHistory.org and digitizd maps available as well as the Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA) site. Another huge archive of info is curated a the Places in Time: Historical Documentation of Place in Greater Philadelphia site, which one, especially if you’re purview is Philadelphia, could spend a lifetime digging through. These 1890 Noll maps (below) are great, and Levine mentions some of the qualitative reasons. “This particular map interests me because it shows the many creeks that other maps of the period omitted even before the creeks were actually obliterated. I also appreciate the elevation contour lines, and although the datum used is different by several feet from the current datum, the numbers still give a sense of the rise and fall of the terrain. The street grid also seems more realistic than other depictions, in that it ends at the creek valleys and indicates, with dotted lines, a few streets that have been projected but not built.”

One of my favorites was the photograph of this physical topographic model from the 1940s “… which clearly shows the transition from the flatter terrain of the Coastal Plain to the hillier terrain of the Piedmont.”

HISTORICAL GIS

One hidden gem was a report from the USGS Fact Sheet FS–117–00 from October, 2000 on “Mapping Buried Stream Valleys in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania” that outlines a process for mapping streams to identify potential risk zones for subsidence. From the introduction: “Specifically requested were a preliminary evaluation of geologic factors that control recent ground subsidence in the Wissinoming
neighborhood (fig. 1) and recommendations for more comprehensive geologic studies that will be required to design a remediation effort and to delineate other neighborhoods that are potentially at risk.”

The use of historical maps of the stream valleys, specifically 1899 USGS topographic maps generated landscape change diagram. From the report: “Examples from the topographic change map included in USGS Open-File Report 00–224. Areas shaded in yellow and labeled Po have been characterized as possible fill. Areas shaded in red and labeled Pr have been characterized as probable fill. A, Map segment showing historical stream valleys of Wissinoming Creek and Little Tacony Creek. B, Map segment showing historical stream valley of Wingohocking Creek.”

The Philly H20 site is impressive in scope, and it’s clear the passion for history, hydrology, and place that are embedded within. Those in the Philadelphia area interested, this should be the first stop – as much of the legwork required in other cities has been done here. There’s tons more info on this site and the more you dig the more info you find, like an Archive with more exhaustive links to many more historical sources and write-ups of key creeks. One by Levine I perused was this “Frankford Creek Watershed: A historical overview of the Philadelphia section” that had one of the most interesting graphics telling taglines: “A Snake that will be Straighted Out”, indicative of the conversion of streams at the time.

ENDNOTE

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the most incredible Philadelphia projects, from the early 1990s. The brainchild of Anne Whiston Spirn when she was at Penn and later through MIT, the West Philadelphia Landscape Project had a “…mission is to restore nature and rebuild community through strategic design, planning, and education projects.” Over the course of 25 years this project provided a unique model for community engagement and urban ecosystem restoration that has permeated others work since.

A focus of the work is Mill Creek, where the project sought “…to demonstrate how to create human settlements that are healthier, economical to build and maintain, more resilient, more beautiful, and more just.” The focused Mill Creek Project investigated hydrology and history with an aim to “…explore how a new curriculum organized around “The Urban Watershed” could combine learning, community development, and water resource management.”

This was some of the first examples of GIS based historical mapping I had seen, and although the tech was early, the impact on me was long-lasting. This is perhaps my first exposure to the concept of historical mapping and urban streams, and I vividly remember reading about it in undergrad and being blow away. I mention it just in passing as a Philly endnote (because it deserves a more complete review as a case study) in greater detail. More on this work to come!

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22 November 2016 12 December 2016

Hidden Rivers of Washington DC

Jason Kingcity, creeks, cultural, history, maps, precedents, streams, washington dc2 Comments

The work of David Ramos and his work on the site Imaginary Terrain that includes mapping, tours, and investigations of the hidden rivers of Washington DC. He comes at the task from the lens of designer, developer, and design educator and mentions: “I’m interested in how long-buried natural systems and historic land use patterns poke their way to the surface, shaping our cities today. I produce maps and lead tours that examine landscape history and planning issues, particularly in the D.C. area.” This is the point of departure for his work mapping the historic and modern of DC.

Some earlier maps show the evolution from the mapping of the creeks on the historical map and the modern street network.

Map data is available in a GitHub repository here, and an interactive version of the map is also available to explore in more detail.

As mentioned, the bulk of historical mapping data is derived from the Topographical map of the District of Columbia / surveyed in the years 1856 ’57 ’58 & ’59 by Albert Boschke which was published in 1861. It shows the plan for Washington DC as well as extensive outlying areas.

This followed the 1857 publication by of the Map of Washington City, District of Columbia, seat of the federal government: respectfully dedicated to the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of North America which was a more zoomed in version showing structures of the formal city.

These maps are both available via the Library of Congress, which also offers an interesting origin story:

“With the outbreak of hostilities in April 1861, it became necessary to begin preparing the defenses of Washington, DC. In 1857, Albert Boschke, a German born civil engineer, published his Map of Washington City, District of Columbia, seat of the federal government: respectfully dedicated to the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of North America which showed, for the first time, the location of every structure in the city as of the publication date. Following the publication of the 1857 map, Boschke and his surveyors continued surveying the entire District of Columbia, sometimes referred to as the ‘ten mile square’, which resulted in his landmark Topographical map of the District of Columbia / surveyed in the years 1856 ’57 ’58 & ’59. Published in 1861, near the outbreak of the war, this very detailed map showing the locations of all the structures in the city was a potential threat to the security of the entire city, the seat of the federal government. According to an 1894 article by Marcus Baker in the National Geographic Magazine, Boschke sold his interest in the map to the publisher, David McClelland. Shortly after publication, representatives from the War Department seized the original manuscript and copper plates from which the map was published to prevent dissemination of the map.”

I’m also intrigued by one of Ramos’ references, a circular from the late 1970s by the US Geological Survey (USGS) by Garnett P. Williams entitled Washington, D.C.’s Vanishing Springs and Waterways / Geological Survey Circular 752.

“This paper traces the disappearance or reduction of the many prominent springs and waterways that existed in Washington, D.C. , 200 years ago. The best known springs were the Smith Springs (now under the McMillan Reservoir), the Franklin Park Springs (13th and I Streets, NW.), Gibson ‘s Spring (15th and E Streets, NE.), Caffrey ‘s Spring (Ninth and F Streets, NW.), and the City Spring (C Street between Four and One-Half and Sixth Streets, NW.). Tiber Creek, flowing south to the Capitol and thence westward along Consititution Avenue, joined the Potomac River at 17th Street and Constitution Avenue. In the 1800’s, the Constitution Avenue reach was made into a canal which was used by scows and steamboats up to about 1850. The canal was changed into a covered sewer in the 1870’s, and the only remaining visible surface remnant is the lock-keeper ‘s little stone house at 17th and Constitution Avenue, NW. Because of sedimentation problems and reclamation projects, Rock Creek, the Potomac River , and the Anacostia River are considerably narrower and shallower today than they were in colonial times. For example, the mouth of Rock Creek at one time was a wide, busy ship harbor , which Georgetown used for an extensive foreign trade, and the Potomac River shore originally extended to 17th and Constitution Avenue, NW. (Woodard-USGS)”

The fact that this document was produced by the USGS I am curious what the motivation was, beyond mere historical interest. There is some reference to sedimentation in current creeks, due to development, and the cost of dredging to maintain navigability. Perhaps worthy of a follow-up post. Finally, I did find this interesting MLA Thesis from Virginia Tech student Curtis A. Millay, worth checking out: Restoring the Lost Rivers of Washington: Can a city’s hydrologic past inform its future?

The main question is interesting, and offers potential for how study of historic hydrology can inform future development.

“Can a historically-driven investigation of these buried channels lend credence to the resurrection in some form of a network of surface stormwater channels, separate from the municipal sewage system, to solve the city’s sewage overflow crisis? The following study is an initial exploration of the re-establishment of waterways through Washington with the purpose of improving the current storm sewer overflow dilemma and exploring the potential urban amenities that they could provide as part of a stormwater management plan for the year 2110.”

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19 November 2016 12 December 2016

Vancouver’s Secret Waterways

Jason Kingcity, creeks, cultural, history, landscape, maps, places, streams, vancouver11 Comments

I stumbled on this map a few years ago, while searching for precedents in the Pacific Northwest for disappeared streams similar to Portland. The image below is a fold out map insert from a book by Sharon Proctor ‘Vancouver’s Old Streams’ (1978), which incorporates streams from 1880-1920.

The hand-drawn quality of the map is a nice touch, with the original shoreline, rivers/streams, and what is called in some cases, ‘Educated guess of waterways’. The description of the map alludes to the varying nature of information and hydrology.

“This map shows the natural drainage of Vancouver, as it was before the City was built. Based on old maps, Archival records and interviews with pioneers, it continually changes as additional sources of information emerge or as people dig new holes in the ground.”

I’m still trying to track down a copy of the book that has the original map, as many I’ve found are missing the map, or only found in libraries. A search yields a link for the Featured Digitization Project at from UBC’s Koerner Library, Vancouver’s Secret Waterways, where Proctor’s map was updated by Paul Lesack in 2011 and available in a new PDF format, as well as GIS shapefiles and Google Map KMZ. A quick summary of the project:

“Vancouver’s vanished streams and waterways can now be seen again in Google Earth, PDF form and other digital formats. UBC Library digitized the content of the Aquarium’s old paper maps, allowing both scholars and the public to see the paths of old streams and the original shoreline of Vancouver. The digitized maps encompass only the area of the City of Vancouver, and show the large area of land reclaimed since the 1880′s.”

The map was subsequently published by the Vancouver Aquarium and although a bit less DIY than Proctor’s original, perhaps easier to read and based on the more recent city grid.

A variation on this comes from the False Creek Watershed Society, created by Bruce Macdonald with drawings and design by Celia Brauer, provides a bit more habitat and cultural context to the story, along similar lines to the Waterlines Project in Seattle, with indigenous villages, flora and fauna, and historical place names. These are available to purchase from FCWS.

The earliest map I’ve found for Vancouver was towards the end of the centry, this one from the Vancouver Archive showing a plan of a relatively developed city “Drawn in 1893 by Allen K. Stuart, pioneer, May 1886, in the City Engineer’s Office, City Hall, Powell Street, where he was Assistant City Engineer” which coincides with the founding on Vancover a few years earlier in 1886 (many decades later than Portland and Seattle, which were formally established closer to the 1850s). Some of the creeks remain, but many are no longer evident, maybe to show the relatively developability of the gridded plan, or due to the fact that they had already been piped.

Also available to tell some of the story are some of the aerial lithographs popularized in most cities in the late 1800s. A black and white version of the Panoramic view of the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, from 1898, shows a view looking south over Burrard Inlet, across the modern downtown towards False Creek and areas south.

The colored version is also available in reasonably detailed high resolution also, which reveals that many of the streams documented on the 1850s map were lost to development within the 40 plus year time-frame when this was published.

Proctor’s map of Vancouver is an interesting example of the disappeared streams concept being investigated back in the 1970s, and makes me think that in many cities, there were probably efforts even earlier by others. Carrying on that tradition and modernizing the maps were a good attempt to reconnect people with place and ecological history. Also, the early plans, surveys and aerial lithographs allow us to connect landscape change over time. They offer a bit more margin of error, since they don’t have the same fidelity of aerial photography was not in continuous practice until well into the 20th Century.

17 November 2016 12 December 2016

Seattle: The Waterlines Project

Jason Kingcity, creeks, cultural, ecology, history, landscape, language, maps, places, precedents, seattle1 Comment

Many precedents and projects from the around the globe, being slowly populated in the Resources section. These will all get some more in-depth attention, and starting it off locally, I wanted to highlight The Waterlines Project. The ability to ‘Discover and Explore Seattle’s Past Landscapes’ is hosted by the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, and offers a densely researched and vibrant picture of the historic cultural and ecology of Seattle prior to the significant engineering that has subsequently taken place.

“Founded on Indian ground by American settlers in 1851, Seattle is one of the most dramatically engineered cities in the United States. Its shorelines have been extended, lagoons filled, hills flattened and rivers re-routed. Built on an active geological fault near a large volcano, Seattle has also been jolted by huge earthquakes, washed by tsunamis, covered by volcanic mud and ash, fluted by glaciers and edged by rising seas.”

The project is historical in nature, using the shorelines as a datum for use and reconfiguration over time, which the creators offer as”an appropriate and compelling framework for viewing the city’s history–one that will engage public audiences and raise themes that are important in American history.” Synthesis of documentary info (maps, photos) alongside oral histories and other archaeological and geological study weaves a mosaic visual that is more accessible to the public.

The main product of the project is the large Waterlines Project Map, which available in a number of places around Seattle, as well as graphic and PDF download on the site. The front illustrates the mid-19th Century landscape, before settlement by non-native peoples, including keyed places that reference Coast Salish terms, many of which are evocative and descriptive of function, such as The Growing Place and Water Falling Over an Edge. The ecology is also evident, with a range of forest, prairie, wetland, rivers and creeks.

There’s also a very faint outline of the modern shoreline, which doesn’t dominate but gives a feel for the adjustment of these Waterlines the significant filling, straightening, and flattening that occurred. This is highly evident in the mouth of the Duwamish River seen below, with the creation of Harbor Island and industrial lands south of downtown, as well as the channelization of the previously bendy river.

The back side of the map shows more information in the form of tours of significant historical stories, such as the lakes, glaciation, and rivers, as well as the original settlement location in current Pioneer Square, which was also an indigenous village named The Crossing Over Place. There’s also a timeline of the most recent 20,000 years of geology and development for a bit of long context.

The background for the map is immense, drawing from the previous work of the the Puget Sound River History Project, and involves multiple disciplines. yet it’s simple and effective, somewhat similar to the Mannahatta 2D visuals. The site offers additional source materials, such as maps, photographs and links to resources. Some interesting juxtaposition occurs when paired with recent aerial photos at similar scale – both as a way to emphasis erasure and addition, but also to show traces of what still remains.

The iterations of time between the two time intervals above are indicative of the Seattle penchant for ‘making land’ (matched in intensity with ‘taking land’ perhaps). The story of the filling of the Duwamish and colonization of tideflats and water from 1875 through 2008 in the series below and reinforces the significant alteration that both radically shifted the ecology of Seattles only river, but also provided land to grow the city and industrial base.

The core team includes Peter Lape, Amir Sheikh, and Donald Fels, and a host of collaborators listed here. While referential, the focus is not on the buried streams and creeks, so my work is complementary and draws much in terms of inspiration and information from this project as well as possible collaborations and resources in Seattle.

For a bit more context surrounding the Little Crossing Over Place, this video made by the team shows the transformation of the Pioneer Square area of Seattle “a bird’s eye glimpse at some of the social, economic, and landscape histories of the neighborhood through time.”

# all images via Waterlines

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15 November 2016 14 November 2016

Lost Rivers

Jason Kingcreeks, cultural, ecology, film, maps, places, reviews, streams1 Comment

p9784174_p_v8_aa I finally had a chance to view the Lost Rivers documentary thanks to a co-worker picking up a copy of the DVD. The log line sums it up: “Once upon a time, in almost every city, many rivers flowed. Why did they disappear? How? And could we see them again? This documentary tries to find answers by meeting visionary urban thinkers, activists and artists from around the world.”

The films highlight a bit of the multifarious of the hidden hydrology paradigm, that of the explorers, or ‘drainers’ that crawl through pipes in search of photos, and adventure, cities daylighting streams for economic development, urban archeologists with a penchant for maps and popping manhole covers, and designers proposing integrated strategies for flood control and stormwater management. The common thread of these stories, including Montreal and Toronto in Toronto, European examples in London, Brescia, Italy, and some daylighting projects in both Seoul, South Korea and Yonkers, New York.

“We built our cities on the shores of rivers. Over time we pushed rivers away, out of sight and out of reach. But they’re still there. Hidden, everywhere. And around the world city dwellers are on a quest to reconnect to this lost nature.”

We first meet the explorers, or “drainers”, as they are referenced by Danielle Plamondon, one of these explorers that regularly appears throughout the documentary. All around the world folks don hip waders and backpacks of gear, then crawl, rappel, and slog through sewers. The reasons are varied, some with a bent for history, others for the joy of revealing that which is hidden. The illegality of it is also a draw, moving into these as she mentions in the beginning, of people who know what she does, “They don’t realize how forbidden it is.”

I had the distinct feeling that the adventure/illegal paradigm might be the only draw, and wondered, beyond the thrill, what the point of these explorations would be. Having traced a few creeks, it’s been many years since the desire to crawl through pipes passed my mind, although I have to admit this piqued my curiosity for sure. One creative output was photography of the tunnels – which is excellent and perhaps the only view most people will have of these places. Lost Rivers includes the work of Andrew Emond, exploring Montreal’s Saint Pierre River, which starts as a trickle near a golf course and leads to a subterranean labyrinth. His photographs are pretty amazing, and the documentary features some bonus tracks with more of his art installations.

Beyond the purely adventuresome, the film does delve into the history to a degree, and what better city to do this than London, birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. The rapid development of the city meant that London was one of the first. As described by Tom Bolton, author of London’s Lost Rivers, there are 15-20 buried rivers that used to flow on the surface into the Thames, with around two-thirds of the original tributaries either partially or completely buried.

The rivers grew cities, providing hydropower for mills, inputs for tanneries and manufacturing, clean drinking water for residents, all were the engine of industrial development. The same processes which grew cities also led to the downfall of these waterways, with population growth these creeks and rivers became polluted and often deadly. The ‘Great Stink‘ in London in 1858 caused the city to virtually shut down due to smells, and rampant cholera, which quickly led to the modernization and sanitation of these creeks underground in sewers.

This happened in virtually every city in various forms and expresses itself in many ways today, including basement flooding or sewer backups, or even sinking houses, such as those in Toronto that are located atop the former route of Garrison Creek.

Cities that used creeks to drive industrialization were also quick to close them up for progress. Yonkers, New York took the working Saw Mill River, which is a tributary of the Hudson River, and installed a flume, which was buried under a parking lot. As seen in the photos below, the river was channelized, and then eventually capped and filled, a fate that tens of thousands of urban creeks fell to in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Driven by a need for economic development to revitalize downtown, the daylighting of the Saw Mill River was seen not just as an ecological plus, but as an economic driver. Ninety years after it was capped, and at considerable cost, the restoration of the river has restored vitality to a depressed downtown core.

The efforts have also been coupled with habitat plans, and followed by environmental education of school kids, who are helping study the ecological impacts of the restoration, particularly on creating new habitat for the American Eel.

London also has taken an active approach to using the routes of lost rivers to aid in resilience to flood control, which has been estimated to potentially cost billions. The River Quaggy, which had been culverted for over 100 years, and because a testing ground for a green approach to flood protection. By removing concrete, daylighting creeks, and using open space, ecologists were able to restore wetland vegetation in Sudcliff Park, creating an urban natural reserve that provides protection from flood waters now and into the future. An additional 15 kilometers of river restoration is planned in the future.

The film also points to some of the misses, such as the strategies brought forth by designers in Toronto, even back in the mid 1990s, to utilize open space of the former Garrison Creek basin for a similar type of flood control. Unfortunately, what could have been a new nature-based paradigm was not implemented, the city choosing to use more technological engineering approaches such as storage tunnels.

I really appreciated learning about the Brescia Underground, a group of Italian urban drainers that were given the official status as a historical society, where they lead tours of underground rivers and continue to explore the unique history of their place, including Roman-era marble bridges built almost 1000 years ago.

The public nature of their tours is impressive, not just walking along the surface but leading the public down into the guts of the city. As one of the explorers mentions, “in every city we dream of doing this.”

The final project discussed is one known to many, the amazing and controversial Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, South Korea. In addition to finally learning how to pronounce the name, it was interesting to learn more about the additional history of this project, which removed an urban elevated highway and restored six kilometers of river to the urban center.

The newly restored river has had over 123 million visitors, and is focused both as an ecological and cultural system. This is not however, without some costs to both. In the process of removing the highway and restoring the river, a large number of merchants were displaced, taking a social and economic toll, as they were relocated from their lucrative high-traffic locations to a new spot where they now struggle to make ends meet. In addition, the ecology of the site is artificial, due to the nature of the hydrology, the water needs to be continually recirculated through the system, with over 100 million cubic meters of water per day pumped from the Han River, which expends enormous amounts of electricity. As mentioned in the film, “authenticity and illusion may be blurred, but people are drawn to it.”

The artificiality of the system and displacement aside, there were some appreciable benefits beyond the human. The diversity of wildlife has been documented, and over 800 new species have been welcomed back into this urban ecosystem, which is impressive. The remnants of the highway structures were a nice touch as well, sort of a post-apocalyptic homage to the new, novel ecosystem created from the detritus of the past.

The conundrum of pure natural systems versus pumping and manipulation of hydrological systems is evident in all of these projects, as we will talk often in hidden hydrology, there is a continuum that spans from the abstract and artistic to weaving through the designed and engineered to the opposite poles of the true ecological and hydrological restoration. There’s no perfect answer, between painting a blue line on the surface to painstakingly mimicking the natural reference ecology – all are valid approaches.

This sort of topic lends itself to multiple types of media, and a documentary offers a unique way to delve into the experiential qualities of lost rivers, especially urban explorations and the sights and sounds of nature buried and also that restored. The structure of the film jumped back and forth between multiple narratives, which inevitably . And while there was an ecological narrative and implications of resilience and climate change, these themes were not always evident, which had the good side of not seeming preachy, but also made the film seem to lack some substance and impact about the potential. It didn’t try to gloss over some of the critical elements, like the failure of plans in Toronto, and some of the artificiality and social impact in Seoul,

Because the film was released a few years ago so screenings are a bit scarce, but you can purchase the DVD here. It is also available for academic use so set up a screening at your school… its worth a look.

Now, where’s a big pipe I can crawl into around here… ?

# All images are screen grabs from the documentary, copyright to the makers, unless otherwise noted.

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17 October 2016 12 December 2016

Origin Stories: Disappeared Streams Map

Jason Kingcity, creeks, maps, places, portland, streams5 Comments

Over the next week, I have been outlining some of the inspirations and precedents related to the idea of Hidden Hydrology, with a specific focus on Portland stories, as this project has been shaped and has evolves across many years to it’s present incarnation. One of the main inspirations was the map of ‘Disappeared Streams’ that was produced by Metro. My first encounter with this map was during a presentation at DaVinci Arts middle school, as part of the preliminary planning for what would become their beautiful water garden. At the time I was working with local non-profit Urban Water Works – and the students were showing off many of their water-related side projects, including hand-made flowforms, studies of water movement, and mapping. One student had a GIS application that was showing the disappeared streams – which has stuck in my brain every since. Metro now publishes it in map form – available at the Data Resource Center – along with many other great maps.

As I mentioned there are a few methodological caveats to this map – as it is not a historical representation of actual streams, but looking more specifically at locations of potential water routes. From the map, some of this language:

“Development patterns in the Metro region have historically resulted in piping, culverting, or filling of streams and stream beds. A computer mapping program was used to evaluate the terrain in the region, and to generate areas where major streams (those draining 50+ acres of land) may once have existed. While this does not represent an authoritative analysis, it does visually describe the effects of urbanization on the regions natural systems. This exercise indicates that an estimated 388 miles of previously existing streams are now underground.”

The coding of the map is pretty striking (the choice of ‘blood’ red I think fitting) when viewed as a whole (above) particularly noting the core area of Portland that has been denuded of streams over the course of 150 years (below, closeup of City of Portland), where flatter areas were developed for Eastside residential, and margins on the Willamette filled in for industrial development.

You can also get a close-up view,including the central business district – seen in closeup below. Notice the existing pattern, where streams are kept somewhat intact in the west hillsides (topography being somewhat of an antidote to piping), then quickly buried when they reach the urbanized area. Tanner Creek, one of the hidden streams we will be studying closer, is captured as it originates from the Oregon Zoo and cuts through the northwest corner of downtown.

A relatively simple map that is more evocative than accurate, but does much to reinforce the ideology of what is hidden beneath our developed urban areas. As I mentioned, it has stuck with me (and I’m glad Metro still has these available). One of the stronger and original inspirations for the project, it continues to entertain and inspire investigation into our hidden hydrology.

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28 September 2016 12 December 2016

Underground Airlines

Jason Kingcity, creeks, history, indianapolis, language, literature, maps, places, streams1 Comment

cover There’s been a buzz about Ben H. Winters new novel Underground Airlines, a daring mix of ‘slavery and sci-fi‘, which envisions a present where the Civil War never happened and follows a bounty hunter protagonist through Indianapolis and a handful of other places. I read it over the past few days, and find it an intriguing novel worth a read — both for the world that Winters has created as much for the tone and pacing of the text.

The relevance here, is that featured prominently in the story is Pogue’s Run, a hidden urban stream located in Indianapolis, mentioned in the context of the book with some great context in a recent Atlas Obscura article ‘You Can Follow a Hidden Stream Beneath Indianapolis—If You Know Where to Look’. As mentioned by Atlas Obscura, the disappearing stream is also coupled in a mysterious disappearance of the man himself, “All underground streams have a mystery about them, but Pogue’s Run has a more ghostly history than most. Its story begins with one of Indianapolis’ first white settlers, whose disappearance has never been solved, and a Scottish-born city planner with a tidy vision.”

painting — 1871 Painting of Pogues Run – Image via Atlas Obscura / Wikimedia

Pogue’s body was never found, and the eventual development of the City plan by Alexander Ralston, who worked in L’Enfant and modeled the Indianapolis plan on the formality similar to DC, “…a square grid, a mile on each side, with a circular plaza in the center and four wide, stately boulevards radiating out towards each of the square’s corners. Except—in the southeast corner of the city, the gridded blocks tilted, askew. There was a black line snaking through the plan, throwing the grid off kilter. That was Pogue’s Run, ruining the city’s planned symmetry.”

In the novel itself, the current culverted underground configuration is mentioned and becomes the location for a few pivotal scenes about place. The first interaction as Victor is with Martha a woman he met along the way, looking for the father of her child. They visit an older woman, Mama Walker, whom Martha comes to borrow money. Mama Walker uses the story of the old creek to illustrate the point of what happened to the child’s father.

“It was verdant down here back here in the day, that’s what they say. I’m talking about before I was born. Understand? Before my mama was, and hers was. There was a stream here. Little creek. I got a map somewhere, somewhere in here but you can can see it too you go huntin’ through the dog shit and the broken glass out there. You can see, like, traces of it where it ran once, all those years ago. But see, the white men who were planning out the city, they didn’t like where it was, the little river, so they just…” She made a quick gesture with her hand, sweeping the air, “…ran it under the ground, built right over it, you understand? You see?”
She waited. She wanted an answer. Martha whispered, “Yes.”
I took off my glasses and wiped them on my shirt. Dope smoke wafted over from the love seat.
“They sent that little river underground, and they built their fucking ugly city over it. That’s how they do. Anything they don’t care for, anything that does not please, they use it up or they kill it or bury it and they never think of it again, you see?
Martha’s eyes were shut now. “I see.”
“So that’s what they did. Open your eyes sweetheart. Open.” Martha obeyed. “That’s what they did to your boys father. Them. White people.”

The power of the story of the burying the stream as an illustration of dominance and power is compelling, one of a number of passages that make the book powerful to read. Later in the book, the main character Victor ventures underground to find the man he is chasing, an escaped slave. He ventures through the depths in search of the runaway, from Underground Airlines:

Image by Stuart Hyatt – via Atlas Obscura

“I cleared the trailer park and passed a jumble of picnic benches and playground equipment and stepped carefully down the slope of the ravine and swung the heavy beam of my flashlight along the creek. Now it was clear, with the water swollen by the rains, the direction the brown water was still flowing. The black mouth in the base of the shallow hill was an entrance, not an exit. This low little trickle of mud water was a kind of rivulet, a poor cousin of a creek, and this spot behind the motor court is where some long-ago engineer had diverted it.
The creek was called Pogue’s Run. I’d found it on the map. I’d looked up the story. This small waterway was discovered at the turn of the century – the eighteenth turning into the nineteenth — discovered and named and recorded, penciled in on early maps, when the city was not yet a city — when it was a gathering of huts, a stopping place on the way to other places. The small river was inconvenient for the city fathers and the grid they’d drawn. So they did just as Mama Walker said: they ran it underground.”

After determining that he would have to travel into the tunnel, Victor continues. [This passage is edited a bit for brevity to focus on the stream experience – but seriously, read the book!]

“The water in the creek was shallow, but it was rushing, pulsing a little as it rose with the rain. I walked slowly, picking out individual rocks to stand on, til I got to the mouth of the tunnel. There I got down on all fours, feeling the creek water rush around me, swallowing my hands up to the wrists and surging around my knees and feet, and looked with narrowed eyes up that infinite darkness of pipe. A cold, wet animal smell breathed back at me.

…
There was nothing to be done. This was it. I leaned forward and hunched my shoulders together, pushed the upper part of my body carefully forward, as a circus perfomer gingerly places his head into the lion’s mouth. I eased back and forth, back and forth, getting a sense for the width…
…I got in there okay myself. Turned off my light, stuck it back in my jacket, and eased my body all the into the hole. I splashed in the dirty rush of water, hunched forward, keeping my upper body small and bent. I walked with my hands stretched out on either side, fingertips scraping along the roughly textured walls. I walked a long time that way, bent almost parallel with the ground, genuflecting as I went, until the ceiling tapered back down and i was forced onto all fours and went awhile that way, soaking my kneecaps and my palms.
Time passed, and I didn’t know how much time, either. I just walked, an invisible man moving through the darkness.”

pogues — Image by Stuart Hyatt – via Atlas Obscura

The scene ends with the discovery – the journey of the tunnel echoing the emotion of the main character.

“Eventually the tunnel gained some headroom, and I was able to draw up to full height. My feet echoed with wet clicks on the slimy concrete. I turned my flashlight on and followed the light, the beam wavering into strange patterns on the irregular, parabolic surfaces of the tunnel. Above my head was its thick stone shell and above there was clay and river rock and then a thin layer of topsoil and then the streets and sidewalks of the living city.
I’d walked at least two miles. The tunnel was tilting slightly downslope, and it was getting colder, too. The air was heavy and damp, thick with uncirculated oxygen and the dank smell of the water.
I was getting closer. I took out the gun I hardly ever carried but was carrying tonight. Soon I’d find it, whatever it was — the dangling padlock, the walled off chamber, the rock rolled in front of the mouth of the cave.
But when I got there, when I found the locked door, there was no lock. There was no door, even. I was sliding my palms roughly along either side of the tunnel, feeling for the narrow crack of hung door or the bulge of a handle, when the left-side wall just opened up. I turned and crouched and help up the flashlight and found a narrow gap in the tunnel wall, like a secret left there for a child to find. I got down on my hands and knees and turned off my light, although of course if he was in there — and I knew he was, I knew that he was — he’d already have seen me, seen my light bobbling down the tunnel as I cam, seen in shining into this hidey-hole on which there was no lock and no door.
… I passed into this new chamber, into deeper darkness, and empathy rose up in me. I was him. I was that man huddled in there, waiting, holding his breath, terrified by the small approaching light. My heart hammered, as his was likely hammering. I felt the sweat of fear on my brow that was the sweat of his fear.”

pogues_tunnel — Image by Stuart Hyatt – via Atlas Obscura

Such great drama – I’ll leave the rest for you to read on your own, but the use of the place in that scene is powerful stuff, which plays of the metaphorical story from Mama Walker in the beginning. The use of a real location to heighten ficitional drama I really appreciate, and not having been to Indianapolis or experienced this journey underground, good fiction writers, as always, have the innate ability to connect the reader with the experience.

Underground Airlines author Winters was brought to the underground stream by musician Stuart Hyatt, who has used Pogues Run extensively in his audio work along with providing some great photographs for the post. As mentioned in Atlas Obscura, “When Hyatt brought Winters to Pogue’s Run, the author was in the formative stages of writing his book. ‘I needed a place where my hero could literally descend and find himself underground,’finding layers under layers, of both the case he was unraveling and his own identity, Winters says. Pogue’s Run felt like the right place.”

I’d agree. Perhaps maybe even a new subgenre – hidden hydrology fiction.

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