96 Years Ago
Golden’s early water supply system used wooden pipes. They were built of staves, like a barrel, and held in a ring by iron bands. An August 8, 1929 Colorado Transcript article covering the recent City Council meeting tells us when the transition to iron pipes began.
Chas. Benson on the pipe line reported 111 leaks on the 16 inch stave pipe. It will not be long however, before his report will have a different tone for this pipe will be replaced shortly by iron pipe.
This was many decades before we had separate storm and sanitary sewers; in fact, having sewers at all was a pretty recent innovation–they had only been installed about ten years earlier. The City was still discovering the capacity limits to our sewer pipes:
The practice of people running the drain pipes from the eave troughs into the sewers is to be discontinued in the future and people who have them connected that way now are to be notified to change them so as to drain on the surface. The objection is the leaves and other debris that finds their way into the pipes.
Leaves, debris, and all other contents of the sewer drained directly into Clear Creek until the 1950s.
