Wood pipe discovered by construction workers in Denver
Construction workers made an unexpected discovery while working on the North Federal Boulevard Pedestrian Safety Project last January. They came across a wooden pipe, one they had never seen before.
“They pulled out the chunk, this 50-pound chunk of log, set it on the ground,” Megan Mueller said. “We were like, ‘Oh, that’s not… shouldn’t be here.”‘
Mueller is a Cultural Resources Specialist with HDR, Inc. She helped identify the object as a log wood pipe the Beaver Brook Water Co. installed in 1886. It was found along West 25th Avenue between Eliot Street and Federal Boulevard.
“Everyone thought it was going to be one of the wood stave pipelines. We assumed that once you started cutting into the wood stave pipeline, you would hit one of the boards and it would lose its tension and kind of collapse on itself, but it didn’t do that,” Mueller said.
Wood stave pipes are ones that involve narrow lengths of wood pieced together to form a tube. The pipe they discovered was one solid piece of wood.
Alongside historians and archaeologists with Denver Water and other city municipalities, Mueller dug through old newspaper articles and other sources to determine where it came from.
“They were made out of hollowed trees, hollowed white pine,” Mueller said. “A lot of the pipelines, the historic pipelines that we have found and know about in the Denver metro area historically were either made out of cast iron, they were made out of ceramic, or, like the larger mains, they were made out of wood staves.”
For this reason, the group realized they had something unique on their hands. Mueller shared that these types of pipes were common in the eastern United States, but there are few known examples in the West.
“The big push for the Michigan Pipeline Company was just advertising it as a cheaper and more safe, more healthy way of delivering water, versus wood staves that’s expensive, or cast iron or lead that’s not healthy for you,” Mueller said. “Just stick it through a log and everything’s fine.”
It’s an odd survivor to find, with more than a century spent underground.
“It is very unique to Denver, at least that we know of,” shared Mueller. “But there’s always room for more research. History is always evolving, changing.”
The pipe was not in use when workers dug it up. Mueller guessed it was discontinued around the 1890s.
Mueller shared that there may be more of these pipes in other states out west, but they aren’t aware of others.