The fire protection dam
In 1875 work began building a lumber flume from Boulder Creek to Felton. A lumber flume is a V shaped trough filled with water that was used to float lumber which had already been cut into boards long distances. The flume ran to Roaring Camp in Felton, along the San Lorenzo River from couple miles north of Boulder Creek. It was 12 miles long. The flume was primarily fed by the San Lorenzo River but had many ‘feeder flumes’ to supply water to the main flume and increase the flume’s daily capacity.
The flume company starts work on extending a branch (also know as a ‘feeder’) flume up Boulder Creek.
The feeder flume is supplying water to the main flume, which allows it to carry more lumber.
The Boulder Creek feeder flume followed the creek up 236 and was from 1 – 2 miles long from approximately where the fire station is. Bracken Brae’s creek frontage is from 1 1/2 to 2 miles from the fire station. The likely spot where the flume picked up water would be at the creek near the end of Wooded Way. There is a gradual hill leading to the creeks edge that would have allowed equipment to be brought down to the creek. This would have been the Boulder Creek feeder flume’s ‘head’.
The head of the feeder flume is moving further up Boulder Creek.
The head of the flume was moved two year later. It is likely they built a more extensive dam than they had in 1876. Business in the flume was good, although not particularly profitable so they were always looking to increase the amount of wood they could float to Felton and that was proportional to the amount of water they could supply it.
The Harmon Brothers are living at or near Bracken Brae.
The Harmon Bros. owned Bracken Brae from 1877 – 1885 and this is likely when it was logged. Having the feeder flume head on Bracken Brae property would allow them to float the railroad ties produced all the way to Felton where they would be loaded on a train to be used building the railroad over the mountain.
Floating lumber from Bracken Brae would require additional feeders to be added up the seasonal creeks which feed Bear and Boulder Creeks. This would include Bracken Brae creek (at the time called ‘sand creek’). The water supply was acquired via ‘high dams’ such as we see on Bracken Brae creek. I have not confirmed that there is a date on the dam but would suspect if I can find one it would have been made in 1881.
You may think the dam was from Bracken Brae’s old water system but this can’t be true. The capacity of the dam would be in the millions of gallons and have a surface area of over acre. The pipe currently running through the opening of the dam is much smaller than the two that are cast into the concrete. The catchement at the back of the problem has 1928 scratched in the top of it and that is when we received a permit to appropriate water from the creek. Before this, water was collected from two springs. One, which is still there, is right above our new plastic tanks. The other is on top of the hill above the end of Wooded Way and is carved out of rock.
The great fire of 2020
In August of 2020, a great fire ripped through Bracken Brae. The land surrounding the old dam was not spared. The picture was taken about a week after the fire.
