Canals, laterals, and storm drains in Phoenix, Arizona


To really understand Phoenix, you have to find the canals. The canals bring water into Phoenix for agriculture, irrigation, and for the daily needs of everyone who takes a shower, or makes a cup of coffee. I'm enjoying some coffee right now, brewed with genuine Salt River water, with a bit of the Verde River added in, for taste.

I've known people who've lived in Phoenix all of their lives, or for a very long time, and have no idea what, or where, the canals are. They're water from the Salt and Verde Rivers, which begins as snow melt, is dammed, and then gently released all over the valley. I like to call them the "gentle rivers of Phoenix" and they're always flowing, and have been since the 1800s. And yes, there are fish in them.

By the way, I know that a lot of people tend to call anything with water in it a canal. And I know what they mean. Of course there are very few canals - north of the Salt River the two main ones are the Arizona Canal and Grand Canal. The water that you see flowing, for example, along Central Avenue isn't a canal, it's a lateral. That means that it takes water from the canal, and brings it where it's needed. When I lived in Tempe, back in the '80s, there was an open lateral in front of the place where I lived, running parallel to Wildermuth. It's been covered up now, but it's still there.

There are also storm drains, most of which in the valley are the old abandoned canals, like the old Cross-Cut Canal, which is along 48th Street, or Swilling's Ditch, which is over by the Circle K on Van Buren and 32nd Street. When the canals stopped being used to bring water in, they were converted into drains that take rain water away.

So if you call everything from canals to laterals to storm drains "canals", that's OK, I know what you mean. I'm glad that you see them, because to really understand Phoenix, you have to follow the water.

Image at the top of this post: the Arizona Canal in the 1890s, Phoenix, Arizona. Back in those days there were very few bridges over it, so it was a problem to cross. Now there are so many bridges over it that few people even realize that it's there.
Become a PhD (Phoenix History Detective) with Brad today on Patreon!

Click here to become a Patron!
History Adventuring posts are shared there daily including "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos of historic Phoenix, Arizona. Discounts for seniors, students, teachers, and veterans.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more