Don  Lancaster's Guru's Lair 2013 Blog Canal Excerpts
auctions bargains books contact email home library map ?new? rss
	search Guru's Lair

An interesting collection of free Souothwestern Archaeology
videos can be found here.

Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list
of needed further work ...

The Riggs Complex near N 32.77846 W 109.78945
suffered a setback in that it is nearly invisible on the
latest Acme Mapper version. It is a group of small
braided channels that may be older than some of
the other canals. The braided channels are much
smaller than those on Frye Mesa.

A source and destination remain unknown and
the workmanship on these appears sub par.
A link to the Robinson Canal or a predecessor
appears likely. There is obvious damage from
stream piracy.

Considerable challenging work remains.
Local terrain is quite unpleasantly rocky.

At first glance, Safford and the Upper Gila Valley does
not appear to be much of a high technology place. But
for centuries, we've had bunches of world class and
( literally ) off the wall tech stuff. Such as...

The LBT large binocular telescope and friends.
Tens of thousands of prehistoric archeological grids.
The solvent extraction process of copper refining.
Over fifty miles of prehistoric hanging bajaja canals.
World class prehistoric lowland river canals.
Newly efficient cotton drip irrigation.
The Mount Graham aerial tramway.
The Morenci Southern Railway loops.
Toll Roads through difficult terrain.
Spectacular logging flumes.
Leopard Frog Renarium
Check dams with aprons
The UFO fish fillets

More on some of these here.

Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list
of needed further work ...

The Allen Canal needs a credible destination and the
route determined between the mesa edge and the dam.

One possible end point would be fields presently buried
under the Central Dam. But numerous trips have failed
to reveal any obvious link.  

Spring canyon water was apparently a resource shared
with the Frye Mesa canal. It needs further study in that
it likely was a much more significant source then.

Areas around the Hawk Hollow tank have yet to be
precisely located with numerous CCC items also
in the area.

Allen Dam itself is an enigma in that its watershed is
quite small. Possibly it relied heavily on Allen Canal
water. And may in fact have a prehistoric original.
Or possibly have used presently unknown artesian
sources.

The Culebra Cut is dramatic enough that it demands
further photography and study. There is also a
lesser but longer cut largely unstudied north of the
Mud Springs back road.

The present northern limit is in a small pass that demands
further study. Its location and use appear brilliant.

Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list
of needed further work...

The Robinson Canal has seen major historic rework
making its interpretation difficult. The first mile starting
with a Frye Mesa Canal ponding area at N 32.75995 W 109.81151
has not been explored yet, but is rather clear on
Acme Mapper and is not expected to produce
much in the way of surprises.

The canal route marking has recently been improved
in Acme Mapper. Its exact destination remains unknown,
but is believed to be in the Robinson Flat area. The
most likely candidate is the empty lake at N 32.81371 W 109.77061
It could also underlie the Mount Graham Golf Course
perhaps near N 32.81125 W 109.77465.

The latest Google and Acme images seem to have far less
detail useful to canal identification. The is possibly caused
by lower resolution, different times of day, or different
spectral sensitivity.  

Exploration in the northern area is difficult because of
extensive historic reqork. Also needing study is
a small artesian pond at N 32.80263 W 109.78087

The CCC appears to have purposely destroyed
portions of the Frye Mesa Canal, presumably in
the 1932 time frame. This would seem to place
a last use date for the Robinson Canal. Unless
an alternate Frye Creek source was substituted.

Revised and updated our hanging canal resource directory.

Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list
of needed further work...

The Frye Mesa canal could well represent a world
class set of crown jewels for the entire system.
But all we have for sure at present is two huge
canal structures near N 32.75997 W 109.81149.

By any possible measure, these are stunningly
"beyond beyond".

One of these appears to be the unverified source for the
Robinson Canal. The second HS Canal, which is very
spectacularly counterflow, services Frye Creek in some
manner. Ultimately reaching fields uner the Blue Ponds
has not yet been ruled out.

Frustratingly, the Acme Mapper imagry of Frye Mesa
is not remotely as lucid now as it was in their previous
data base. Possibly explained by season vegetation
differences or time-of-day photography But braided
stream channels with possible CCC rework do remain
dim but findable. Delivery slopes are eminently credible.

The most likely water source would be the spring in
Spring Canyon at N 32.73900 W 109.85188.
There is a modern water development here that
could have underlying prehistoric origins feeding the
Frye Mesa Canal. This obviously needs major
further study. The canal itself could possibly have
been under the Frey Mesa falls road.

Apparent CCC construction seems to have gone out
of their way to destroy the canals on Frye Mesa
proper. This certainly needs further verification.

Finally, a key question remains as to why the major
development based on spring canyon that largely
ignored Frye Creek itself.

Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list
of needed further work ...

The Shingle Mill canal needs proof it actually existed,
a source and a destination. The middle third is
quite obvious as the historic Minor Webster Ditch,
and located between N 32.79806 W 109.87271
and N 32.81060 W 109.86761.

Proof of prehistoric origins is presently only indirect,
based on the strong "steal the plans" tendancy
elsewhere in the valley and the fact that lack of a
shingle mill prehistoric canal would be highly conspicuous
by its absence. Given that every other nearby stream
has been fully exploited by one or more canals.

The canal becomes progressively harder to trace west and
south of the McEniry Road, eventually subject to heavy ravine
like erosion. There are moderate potsherds in the area. The
original takein is presumed to be somewhere around N 32.79275
W 109.88735.

Routes north of N 32.81060 have not yet been checked. But
likely have been extensively reworked by historic pioneers
and later Arizona Game and Fish modifications.

Managed to get a hanging canal paper submitted to Wikipedia.
There acceptance/rejection backlog is now several months.

To participate in Wikipedia, you first have to register. There
are separate places for images and articles. Images should
be done first. You must personally own all rights to your images
and be willing to post them on a Creative Commons basis.

Images can be uploaded using their Commons Upload Wizard.
Articles are apparently best done by using a private provided
sandbox. Once formatted and tested, the article can be
submitted for others to review.

Articles basically use a variation of HTML or XML with a few
added details. Bolding is pretty much reserved for headers
and subheaders, while italics are the preferred method of
emphasis within an article. The easiest way to do italics
is to trace over and use the I button. Otherwise, the
italized portion can be marked with two single quotes.
As in ' ' italic stuff ' '

External url links are marked with single opening and closing
brackets. Either as [url goes here] or [url goes here | text
different from url ]. Internal url links that cross reference
another Wikipedia article use double brackets instead.
As in [[other Wikipedia reference ]]. Or [[other Wikipedia
rererence | text different from link name ]].

Images are similarly double bracketed in a [[File:image name|
thumb|right|caption]] format. This automatically provides a
wraparound thumbnail that click epands into the full image.

Headers are bracketed by one or more equals characters.
= stuff = is the largest and = = = = = stuff = = = = = the
weakest. ( Note the equals signs should be contiguous
without intervening spacing. ) A horizontal rule is provided
after the largest headers.

Some details on Google Maps elevation reporting services
appear here.

It is important to note that the elevation reports use interpolation
from four nearby data points. The distance between points
is reported by their resolution reqponse to an elevation
inquiry.

A foremost rule of interpolation is that no new information can
be added. All you can do is minimimize interpolation artifacts.

Thus, if a wash or ravine or building happens to sit between the
original data points, no way will your elevation report be
accurate.

All of which suggests that the Google service might not be
quite good enough for resolving hanging canal slope or
location issues.

An interpolation assumes that the slope of the function is
continuous and has continuous deravitives. Otherwise
known as a "smooth" surface.

A tutorial on some of the math involved can be found here.

Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list
of needed further work ...

The Jernigan canal is one of the few that has a very
well defined field destination. It includes moderately
hanging portions, a French Drain cascade, and a
midsized but undated Mesquite tree mid channel.

It is a good choice for tours as it is easily accessible
and has a wide variety of features and nearby
habitation sites.

The split from Mud Springs canal appears well  defined at
N 32.82782 W 109.81981. Some small rocks suggest
some sort of headgate structure that remains unexcavated
and unexplored.

The canal seems to vanish between a knuwn N 32.83143
W 109.81792 and a presumed N 32.83727 W 109.81502
and needs verified. The area between N 32.83727
W 109.81502 and N 32.83961 W 109.81354 needs further
study in that the route is only dimly suggestive.

There is a branch which may lead to an aqueaduct
or dam structure at N 32.83911 W 109.81543. Or might be
a historic artifact or rebuild that needs resolved.

A major portion of the canal remains unlocated between
N 32.84295 W 109.81238 and N 32.84192 W 109.81496 
despite many attempts at discovery. Careful altitude
measurements might restrict the range of possible routes.

I've started the byzantine process of uploading some of our
Hanging Canal info to Wikipedia. There seems to be layer
upon layer of painstaking detail involved in the learning
curve. .

At any rate, our first two images can be found here
and here.

Please suggest  any additional image categories that can
be added.

Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list
of needed further work ...

Mud Springs is sort of my favorite as I've spent the
most time with it and parts of it have easy access.

A case can be made that Mud Springs was the
pilot or prototype for the other 28 known canals in
that there were several locations where pretty much
the entire canal route can be viewed at once.

Our foremost problem is finding out the Mud Springs
destination. The route vanishes under a jeep trail at
N 32.84796 W 109.81104 and many searches to date
have not found even a hint of where it was supposed to go.

My best present guess is that the canal took a
sharp left and ended up in fields under the now
totally trashed central dump.  Possibly near
N 32.85631 W 109.81522

While an actual tie in to lowland riverine canals was
clearly possible, the amount of deliverable water involved
would not seem to have been remotely worth the effort.

A small piece of canal is missing between N 32.83087
W 109.81533 and N 32.83389 W 109.81139. Possible
explanations are damage from sheet flooding or simply
looking in the wrong place. An automatic level could
possibly be used to restrict candidate elevations to those
below the known source and above the known continuance.

A mystery tank that appears historic yet Mud Springs
related can be found at N 32.82769 W 109.81896. The
watershed here seems much too small unless the Mud
Springs canal was in fact the source of the water.

What we call the troll house can be found at  N 32.82540
W 109.82280. While clearly related being flush with
the canal bottom and literally one meter away, the
pithouse suggesting structure defies explanation to
date. There appears to be no charcoal or significant
potsherds.

The canal appears to have a much smaller and
inexplicable branch near N 32.82322 W 109.82523.
This same area has been overworked with huge
SCS or CCC water channels.

The next mile or so is fairly well studied but poorly
photographed. A huge mesquite tree mid channel strongly
sugests age. The tree has not been dated yet owing to the
ease of instrument destruction and the false rings typical
of Mesquite hardwoods.

A very interesting hanging portion lies near N 32.81442
W 109.82790 in the hardest to access reach of the canal.
It needs additional photograhy. There is some mystery
to the route for a few hundreds of feet south. There is
also some CCC water spreader work in this area.

The area from N 32.80319 W 109.83946 to N 32.79424
W 109.85148 has not yet been explored, owing to a
small portion of it unfindable at the north end. Survey
should now be easy and fun to trace.

The Ash Creek road has recently been dramatically
improved, greatly simplifying source access to mud springs
canal. But the exact N 32.79200 W 109.85302 to N 32.78569
W 109.85440 route and takein point remains unknown.

Portions of conglomerate with vertical walls strongly suggest
catastrophic flooding.

We still do not know where the Allen Hanging Canal
goes or what its purpose is, but its likely destination
would seem to be fields underlying the Central Dam.

Almost certainly, the present fields are a siltation
artifact of the dam itself. But prehistoric precedents
would seem both possible and likely.

Found some really cute engineering just where Allen
enters Central Wash near N 32.83388 W 109.80419.
There are a group of low and small hillocks that block
canal access except for one point that we might call
"the pass".

The canal very carefully aligned itself on the most suitable
route through the lowest part of the small pass. It is a lot
wider and shallower than normal at this point.

Another mystery of the canals in general is how
infiltration was controlled over their typical six
mile lengths. For even minor "soaking in" loses
would leave you with no deliverable water.

Yet, infiltration was obviously controlled, or they
would not have repeatedly built so many long canals.

... And here is how you send multiple recordable
elevation requests. The trick is to use a vertical
bar ( or "pipe" ) delimiter as a separator...

http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/elevation/json?
locations=39.7391536,-104.9847034|39.7391636,-104.9847034
&sensor=true

( You may have to cut and paste the above url for the correct
double elevation result. )

You are allowed 512 requests per url transmission
and 25,000 total requests per day.

The main problem with all of this is that the actual
elevation points are rather few and far between.
Some sort of interpolation ( likely linear, but
possibly quadratic or cubic spline ) is used that
may in no manner reflect the actual topography.

Differential elevations should end up more accurate
than absolute ones, but even this is not clear.

Nearby buildings also affect the results. The
technique should work best on flat desert.

I have my doubts that this will be good enough to
predict the paths of unknown hanging canal
portions.

Here is how to gather a recordable elevation in
Google Maps:

Send this over the web...

http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/elevation/json?
locations=39.7391536,-104.9847034&sensor=true

And get this back...

{
   "results" : [
      {
         "elevation" : 1608.637939453125,
         "location" : {
            "lat" : 39.7391536,
            "lng" : -104.9847034
         },
         "resolution" : 4.771975994110107
      }
   ],
   "status" : "OK"
}

There is a limit of 25,000 requests per day.

Thought I'd start a hanging canal by hanging canal list
of what needs done next. So far, a typical canal is only 60
percent or so defined. Key issues are the destinations
for many of the canals, more accurate dating, and in
resolving infiltration issues on a six mile canal reach.

The crown jewels of the Safford system appear to be
on Frey Mesa. Where a ponding area can be found
routed to the spectacular HS and Upper Robinson
canals. HS is particularly intriguing because it is
counterflow and heads up canyon. A possible but
wildly unverified destination could be the Blue
Ponds area.

A logical but as yet unproven source for the Frye
Mesa water could be the spring in Spring Canyon.
Which also eventually feeds the Allen canal. There
is a modern water project that accepts Spring Canyon
water and routes it down Frye Mesa that suggests
an unverified "steal the plans" prehistoric original.

The braided water routing down Frye Mesa apparently
required some tricky engineering to maintain slope.
The issue is complicated by what appears to be CCC
cross channel rework that seemed intent on destroying
the utility of the underlying originals.

A related question is what was "wrong" with Frye Creek
water that required such an elaborate second source
bypass. The HS canal was clearly intent on preserving
as much delivered water as possible, rather than simply
dumping any excess over the mesa side. Possibly a
spring source would be more reliable and less subject to
flash flooding or seasonal variations.

There is a short modern canal apparently once intended
to switch water between the Blue Ponds that may or may
not be HS related. Some Acme Mapper route hints seem
to be abandoned wagon roads, complete with horseshoes.

Yet, clearly, "they" obviously had something big in mind
for the HS canal. Considering the extreme time and
energy needed for its construction.

Added new culebra1.jpg and culebra2.jpg images to our
hanging canal image stash.

This is the deepest cut on the Allen Canal  and lesser only
to the aquaduct on Marijilda, the HS Canal and the Upper
Robinson Canal on Frey Mesa for amount of excavation.

The Culebra Cut is approximately two meters deep, three
wide and a hundred long.

More on the hanging canal s here.

Many thanks to those of you who attended our guided
tours of the hanging canals this weekend.

The tours attracted an amazing number of "name brand"
professional archaeologists. Typical comments were
in the "There is something unique and special here that
has tremendous research potential" class".

More on these newly rediscovered world class engineering
wonders here, with possible tours, lectures, or research
opportunities here.

Meanwhile, please ship all of your spare Draganfly's to
3860 West First Street, Thatcher AZ, 85552.

This weekend's Hanging Canal tours are expected to
go something like this:

Initial meeting at the Discovery Park parking lot at
10:15 Saturday October 19th. Morning tour to the
lower Mud Springs canal and the Jernigan canal
which will be followed by lunch at Juanita's ( Bush
and Shertz ) in Pima.

An afternoon tour will visit the seldom seen portions
of the Mills Collection in Discovery Park.

For those wishing more on the canals, there will be
a ribs night dinner at 6 PM at the Branding Iron
( north on Safford's Eighth avenue, cross bridge,
left at Airport Wye.) At least five major southwestern
archaeologists are expected to attend in this unique
meet and greet.

Sunday's activities will depend on interest and skill levels
as well as the number of participants.

They tentatively would include one of the most
spectacular hanging canal portions, the Aquaduct, the
utterly mind boggling world class HS Canal, and possibly
original research over a still unexplored upper reach
of the Mud Springs canal.

You are certainly welcome to attend on either or
both days. Additional background here and
specific info here. Or by calling 928-428-4073.

A once-again reminder that we have guided tours of the
hanging canals coming up on October 19th and 20th.

Apparently some leading Southwestern Archaeologists
have said they are going to participate. Which should
make these tours into a significant gathering.

You are welcome to attend. Per these details.

A reminder that we have a pair of hanging canal tours coming
up on October 19th and 20th. These will include a bunch of
"name brand" southwestern archaeological professionals
and you can find further details here.

And the related Glyphs story is newly available for free download
here. Its live linked and combined web version can be found here.

Or email me directly.

Google recently updated their satellite coverage of the Gila
Valley. With some disconcerting results.

The new resolution seems about the same as the old, but
obvious variations in time of year and time of day seem to
have appeared. Besides obvious changes in building
construction, some areas are better, and some worse.

In particular, portions of Frye Mesa that previously revealed
major obvious hanging canal artifacts are now vague and sketchy
at best. What is here now is not nearly good enough to
even suggest the unique canal potential of this area.

Fortunately, the old imagry has been largely field verified.

The same imagry is apparently used by Acme Mapper.

A collection of print style archaeological publications
can be found here.

And some newer open access archaeological sites
can be found here.

Half of our first fully professional hanging canal paper
is now in print...

Neely, J. and Lancaster, D. 2013.
The Bajada Canals of the Safford Basin:
Small Corporate Group Collaboration in
Southeastern Arizona. GLYPHS,
Arizona Archaeological and Historical
Society, Vol. 64, Nos. 3 & 4. Tucson

Presumably part I should shortly appear for
free download on the Glyphs website.

Meanwhile, you can view the entire paper
with live web links here.

Curiously, the Gila Valley seems to have used at least
six ( and possibly seven ) major and innovative prehistoric
ag tools. While somewhat mutually exclusive, in places
they are literally piled on top of each other.

Possibly the oldest are what I call mulch rings and
others have named "cairns". Basically a filled ring of
rocks three feet in diameter and one rock high whose
apparent use was to retain moisture and limit evaporation
for a single plant, perhaps an Agave. These are typically
randomly arranged in groups of fifteen or so, perhaps
twenty feet apart.

Second are the grids, which bear an astonishing
similarity to Dilbert office cubicals. These are a
rock border perhaps twelve by twenty four feet
that define a field area. Apparently crops were
planted under the rocks, rather than in the
more obvious middle. There are possibly tens
of thousands of these north of the Gila and
likely at least few hundred to the south. Their
definitive text is found here.

A possible third are the UFO Fish Filets.
These appear to be a cross between grids and
trincheras. Only one example is known and
it is both fairly remote from more dense habitation
areas and could possibly be an odd CCC artifact.
They are definitely in need of further study.

Fourth are the aproned check dams. These cross
intermittent small washes and have a fine soil area
built up behind them. Their size suggests some
sort of plant nurseries. A smaller apron is often
below the main dam, perhaps for a secondary
crop area or to prevent erosion.

Fifth are the roasting pits. These are "miniature
sinkholes" that were apparently used to roast
agave. They are typically five feet across and
two feet deep. And are quite discinctive because
of their negative terrain.

Sixth are the lowland canals. These are large
and Gila river derived and quite similar to
Hohokam canals in the Salt River Valley.
While truely spectacular and impressive, the
enginerring behind them was not all that great
as it involved nearly level dirt and obvious
routes using gently sloping constructs.

And finally are the bajada hanging canals that 
apparently made spectacular use of virtually
every drop of Mount Graham stream water.
28 of these are known for a total distance of
50 miles. In places, they are literally hung on the
edges of steep sided mesas, making their
slope largely independent of the surrounding
terrarin! Their astonishing engineering over
incredibly hostile terrain remains world class.

More on similar topics here.

So who built the hanging canals? Where did the technology
come from? One possibility is that these are in fact world
class unique and amazingly rapidly evolved in place.

Of the four or five Gila Valley "trading partners", only
the Hohokam had significant canal technology. And their
canals are remarkably similar to the riverine lowland
canals here. A strong argument for lowland adaption can
thus be reasonably made.

But the hanging canals involve orders of magnitude
fancier engineering and skill sets. They also seem
"complete" in that there are no obvious additional
locations. And ( with possible exception of Henry's )
are conspicuously lacking in upgrades, outright failures,
or obvious rework.

No similar systems are known elsewhere in Basin and
Range. But a case can be made that Mount Graham is
unique unto itself with additional height, numerous preannual
streams, much higher snowpack, and convenient northeastern
conduit mesas.

In short, there does not presently appear to be any known
source to directly import the needed technology and skills.
And thus, the hanging canals might be uniquely evolved locally
within the Safford basin.

The motivation for such rapid technological advancement
remains highly enigmatic. Bordering on the astounding.

Much more here.

Expanded and updated our Gila Hikes web page.

Please email me with anything I missed or needs
further updating.

A map showing the conflicts between the newly discovered
prehistoric hanging canals and one proposed Sunzia
transmission line route can be found here.

The most reasonable and practical proposed southern
route that is many miles away from the canals seems
to be raising major NIMBY complaints.

To me, it makes the most sense to create integrated
resource corridors. In which the identical route is
used for interstate thruways, railroad lines, fiber
optics, pieelines, solar and wind farms, local power
transmission, and regional power interties.

Google has updated their local imagry for Google Maps
and Google Earth. The same data base gets used for
Acme Mapper.

Some of the image capture was done around May
of 2013, and seems to apply mostly to developed areas.
The resolution remains pretty much the same.

Note that image dates appear on Google Earth but not
on Acme Mapper or Google Maps.

Some remote areas appear slightly different, while
others clearly still use older data. Elsewhere, newly
developed flybys and other features are now offered.

Once again revised our Hanging Canal summary here
with its sourcecde here. This should be pretty much
near the final version.

More on the hanging canals here.

Rediscovered a group of southern grids just off the
Porter Springs road. The score now approaches
several thousand north of the river and a few
hundred to the south.

The new finds are pretty much invisible on Acme
Mapper. They also include mulch rings, roasting
pits, and a strange canal-like water management
scheme that includes both long linear walls and
crosswise aproned check dams. Bizarre.

The key paper on the grids appears here with
an image here and more on our hanging canals here.

The grids were apparently a giant aqave booze factory
and the very first Dilbert office cubicals.

Just created a new image subdirectory for our web
hanging canal files. Some of the intitial images include...

allen0.jpg - Allen Canal takein
allen1.jpg - Allen Canal below dam
bestgrid.jpg - Best Northern Grids image
culebra1.jpg - Culebra cut with Dr. Neely
culebra2.jpg - Culebra cut raw
dragan.jpg - Draganfly promotion
frye1.jpg - Robinson Topo ( misnamed )
frye2.jpg - Frye Mesa Braided + HS Canal
gc1.jpg - Golf Course image #1
gc2.jpg - Golf Course image #2
hangcan1.jpg - Original Marijilda hanging
henry1.jpg - Middle of Henry Canal
jern1.jpg - End of Jerningan Canal
map2.jpg - Screen dump of early kml
mary2.jpg - Nicer image of Marijilda hang
mud1.jpg - Middle of mud springs below dam
mud2.jpg - Lowest known end of Mud Springs
rinc1.jpg - Twin boobs ponding area
rinc2.jpg - Detail of Twin Boobs + Cactus
rob1.jpg - Main hanging portion of Robinson
rob2.jpg - Hung Robinson detail
rob3.jpg - Robinson top of mesa
safcan1.jpg - GIS Map
safcanmap.kml Google Earth Map
threeswitch.jpg - Narrow portion of Deadman
tranq1.jpg - Mid tranquility in urban area
tranq2.jpg - Tranquility rebuild detail
trol1.jpg - Troll house mid Mud Springs
twinb1.jpg - Twin boobs before Safford trashing

Added a new Hanging Canal Image to our image stash.
It is pretty much the same as this older one, but is far
more colorful and shows the "water flows uphill"
illusion somewhat better.

The mountains in the background are the low and very
arid Whitlocks. There once was a scheme to put a luxury
destination telescope resort on top of this totally inaccessible
range.

More happy horseshit on the Whitlocks here.

More on our hanging canals here.

An interesting new barometric sensor can be found
here and described here. It costs $5 in quantity,
is micropower, and can give down to an eight inch
resolution.

We earlier looked at a competitive item here.

We still have not found an optimum method to
measure hanging canal slope. The sensor in the
Garmin etrex30 is much better than a direct
GPS measurement, but still not nearly good
enough.

Current thinking is to use a surveyor's automatic
level. Such as one of these.

One of the more amazing and utterly inexplicable features
of our local prehistoric hanging canals under study is
simply this: They appear both "perfect" and "complete"

It seems that literally every drop of northeastern Mount
Graham stream water was fully and completely exploited.

There are no obvious remaining locations to build any
new canals. Of the existing canals, all of them seem
"perfect" and fully functional. There is no evidence of
any work in progress, nor any remnants of construction
mistakes or errors.

Surely somebody screwed up something somewhere along
the way. But such evidence remains conspicuously absent.

Those compulsory faculty teas that drove me away from
an advanced archaeology degree might not have been
that bad...

           ....if only they hadn't been intravenous.

A possible Wikipedia entry for our hanging canals
appears here with its sourcecode here

And a slight variant for Wesrch can be found here
with its sourcecode here.

These are rough drafts of preliminary files. Please
email me with any critical review or comments.

Plans are underfoot for another hanging canal tour on
Saturday October 19th. Chances are that you would
be welcome to attend.

A possibly final ( or at least temporarily final ) version
of the hanging canal .GIS map appears here.

Most ( and hopefully all ) of the papers referencing
it supposedly have been updated.

Found some more curious rock alignments here, but have
not yet fully explored them.

They appear to be old but not canal related. Unlike
typical grids, they seem to be on undulating or sloping
land. As usual, they raise more questionss than they
resolve.

There are also mulch rings and other structures in
the area. Including a "plaza" just east of the road.

Found another mystery prehistoric hanging canal up on
Deadman Mesa. As usual, it generates more questions
than it resolves.

It looks sort of older and smaller than the others.

This one has yet another example of what we might
call "knife edging". The highest portions of many
mesas can be extremely narrow. With knife edging,
a three foot wide canal precisely aligns itself with
the uppermost highest six feet of the mesa.

Its destination remains unknown, but it seems to
be heading directly to Upper Deadman Tank.
The only tiny problem is that there is a huge
cliff in the way.

The engineering and thinking that had to go into
this sort of thing is utterly mind boggling. In many
cases, knife edging is the only feasible route that
can preserve the needed canal slope.

There are now two knife edges on Deadman Mesa,
two on Frye Mese, one on the Marijilda route,
and several others. Clearly, they are a major
concept used in the system design of the hanging
canals.

There is at least one example of the opposite of
knife edging as well. Where a canal crosses a
very narrow saddle between Ash Creek and
the Mud Sprongs bajaas. Via the only feasible
route.

This find has not yet been field proofed.
Your help  is welcome. An ATV would
greatly simplify access.

Much more on all this here.

Google now has an image search feature. The only tiny
problem is that it seems to deliver too many false hits.

You can add image search to Chrome with this plugin.
It appears as a new munu item when right clicking
over an image

This item was up for an auction sale. Using the search
found dozens of omelet images. But nothing useful.

I did go to the sci.electronics.design newsgroup. Out of
a dozen reasonable suggestions, one was a Kroy Lettering
Machine. It turns out that only Kroy has a six wide keyboard
and a tiny case notch upper left.

But it does not appear to be a K5100 because of the bottom
connector. Any ideas?

Just made the summer issue of Lafayette Magazine.

Did I ever tell you about the time I made the cover of
the Rolling Stone? Er, actually, it was on page 23 and
there were a few others in the picture. About 275,561
of them as I recall.

Amazingly and inexplicably and astoundingly, our
picnic cooler was prominently featured on the next
page.

Expanded and updated our Gila Hikes web page.

Just uploaded the initial version of our Hanging Canal
Lecture III here with its soucecode here,

Version II remians available here with sourcecode
here.

Adobe's crippling of Distiller has made using the
sourcecode more difficult, in that images now 
have to be hand inserted and linked after PDF
creation. Or else page substituted.

Much more on our hanging canals here.
Yes, tours, talks, and research opportunities
are available.

As we've seen, Adobe has hopelessly crippled Distiller in
Acrobat X and higher by locking out disk access. As a
result, I'm having to rework most of our early PostScript
programs.

At present, the Hanging Canal slide show is up for revision.
In the good old days, I had a completely automatic image JPG
inserter, sizer, and linker in my Gonzo utilities. This no longer
works due to the disk access ban. You now have to manually
insert and link images after the .PDF file is distilled.

The process now has to go something like this: You insert
a full version of my Gonzo Utilities inside each file to be
distilled. Every place you want to insert a full page image,
you add a dummy page with a very wide black margin and a
reminder note to yourself with the name of the image and
the link.

After distilling, you go to each dummy page and add a watermark (!)
containing the desired image. Be absolutely sure you do not overwrite
any previous watermarks and that you are limited to the specific
page you are working on! You then expand the watermark to the
desired full size. After that,you go to the advanced editing tools
and insert the desired url link. Then save the full PDf file to a new
filename.

At this point, it is a very good idea to extract your single page
image as a .PDF file. That way, on later revisions, you only
have to replace a page rather than go through the pain of
a watermark and link.

I sorely miss the ability to run disk files in Distiller.  In those
cases where there is no other workaround, I've gone to
Ghostscript. Which freely allows full disk access, But it seems
to have problems in generating complex PDF files.

Updated our Hanging Canal and Tinaja Questing sampler
pages to pick up Neely's Lefthand paper, and our
combined Hanging Canal Summary and its sourcecode.

Uploaded a rough preliminary copy of our new joint
Hanging Canal Summary paper here with its
sourcecode here.

The GIS map is not quite finalized and the
Google Earth version is not nearly complete.

Other hanging canal papers and related info
can be found here.

Uploaded a copy of Dr. Neely's Lefthand Canyon
paper here.

More on local prehistory here.

Is the Blue Ponds Canal the crown jewel of our local
prehistoric canals? Or just a fignent of my imagination?

So far the ground truth remains lacking.
Evidence to date goes something like this...

The spectacularly sized HS canal off Frye Mesa needs a
delivery destination ideally met by the Blue Ponds route.

Most historic and modern water projects stole the plans
from an underlying prehistoric original. Projects based
on Frye Reservoir and Deadman sourcing were by far
the largest and thus "borrow the blueprints" candidates.

The Blue Ponds route is eminently practical and its
lack would be conspicuous by its absence.

Acme mapper shows both a hanging construct and
most of the route traceable. Sadly, at least a portion
of this seems to be a wagon road complete with horseshoes.

A short prehistoric looking canal segment exists whose
purpose appears to be routing between the two ponds but
includes a modern diversion headgate.

Your assistance welcome.

As I see it, approximately 95 percent of all local pioneer historic
water projects were "steal the plans" and "dig out an old ditch"
from prehistoric origins.

The remaining 5 percent were "borrow the blueprints".

More here.

What is the "best" possible image processing program for
a scientific publication? This is proving to be quite a problem
for our upcoming hanging canal publications.

For internal use, Acme Mapper wins hands down for its high
resolution satellite imagery, internal topo maps, easy email
linking, convenience, magnifiability, and instant GPS readings.

For classic "static" figures , something GIS based offers the
most attractive appearance and the easiest way to do things
like rotated text, fancy paths, or custom details.

But for full "flyby" interaction, .KML files under Google
Earth are clearly the wave of the future. While pretty paths
have recently been added, some simple features such as
dotted paths, direct text, topo maps, highest resolution, or
text rotation are not yet available. But such features can
nearly certainly be soon anticipated.

As can improved path data entry.

At present, we have multiple people working on "all of the
above".

Revision 3 of our Hanging Canal paper can now be found
here with its sourcecode here.

The main changes are that we are now compatible with
the horribly crippled new Acrobat Distiller version, that
the latest Frye Mesa info is included, and some other
numerous typos and updates were made.

Managed to get one of my key Hanging Canal papers
compatible with the new and horribly crippled version
of Acrobat Distiller.

First, the full Gonzo now has to be towed along inside
each program, replacing a simple run command with
about 85K of extra code.

Second, my auto imaging and insertion now has to
be done manually in Acrobat after distilling. Besides
being a long and painful process. This can be
eased somewhat by a reminder script at the end of
the code.

I have found no obvious way to use newly crippled
Distiller to insert images into a .PDF document. And
presumably no way to do so automatically with a
script during distilling.

But there is a super sneaky trick you can pull.
Buried in the watermark code are some highly
useful image manipulation tools.

It turns out you can use an image as a watermark
and that you can place more than one different
watermark on any individual page.

Downsides are that it is easily to trash the process
and you have to manually add links after distilling.
Fortunately, latter corrections can often be done
by single page substitution and not require all
images in the total document to be hand reloaded.

Adding a reminder comment script to the end of
your PostScript code can be most useful for keeping
track of image sources and destination links.

Nonetheless, I sorely miss Distiller's once great
ability to read or write any disk file in any format.

We've already looked at three "cloud" projects
that can let you do genuine and authentic archaeological
research here, here, and here.

A fourth cloud project can help us resolve just how ( and
if ) the HS canal gets to the Blue Ponds area or even
the Longview area. It is unlikely to folllow the lowland
route favored by modern pipelines as just about everything
else in the system tends to be hung on the side of mesas.

Or routed along the highest feasible terrain..

The task for cloud 4 is to determine whether this is
a prehistoric canal or an old wagon road. Or if a
road, whether its slope would allow it to overlay
a prehistoric canal.

Points off for horseshoes, of course.

Considerably more prehistoric time and effort appears to
have been spent developing and using the spring in Spring
Canyon rather than Frye Creek. A possible explanation is
that it was a much larger source. Or a more reliable or
less seasonal one.

No larger upper Frye projects are known to esist or survive.
Although there are a few scattered small ag sites and small dams.
The above dam terrain is, to say the least, formidible.

Meanwhile, historical FryeCreek projects overwhelmingly dominate.
The likely cause being that the dam and storage dramatically changes
the stability of deliverable useful water. Enclosed pipes also
tended to favor lower destinations and are less slope critical as
well.

Curiously, the CCC went exceptionally out of their way
in the 1930's to uterly demolish any functionality of the
prehistoric Spring and Allen Canal disribution systems.
Besides the usual water spreaders, the braided channels
appear to have been purposely blocked in many places
with cross channel dams .

Only a single Spring Canyon cattle tank remains in use today.

This whole study demands orders of magnitude more
expertise thrown at it than is happening today.

A modern Coronado National Forest water project has been
verified that exactly overlays projected prehistoric hanging
canal developments. I feel this is now just barely enough to
definitely state the prehistoric developments appear genuine.

And further, that the Frye Mesa area would seem to represent
a beyond world class "crown jewels" to the entire Gila area.

An apparent large spring at N 32.73895 W 109.85221  seemed to
be the focus of development. Well down Spring Canyon at 
N 32.78243 W 109.83566 can be found the takein point for
the prehistoric Allen Canal.

Meanwhile, a presumed diversion structure near
N 32.74617 W 109.83968 and a routing presumed to underlie
the Frye Mesa Falls Road in and around N 32.75144 W 109.83826
is believed to lead to multiple braided channels area near
N 32.75774 W 109.82801

These are believed to lead to a ponding and diversion area
near N 32.76005 W 109.81122  which in turn drives a pair of spectacular
canals. One is the HS Canal at N 32.75885 W 109.81381 which routes
counterslope and UPCANYON and apparntly merged with Frye Creek
somewhere near N 32.75799 W 109.8138 .

The goal of this merger remains highly speculative, but might end up
in the Blue Ponds area. A modern "pond selector" canal at N 32.77720 W 109.77527
might represent prehistoric origins and an unverified hanging feeder
canal may exist at N 32.76653 W 109.79362

Meanwhile, back at the ponding area, a second major canal tentatively
called Upper Robinson at N 32.75981 W 109.80764 seems to route
water to the main Robinson Canal ( AKA Robinson Ditch ) proper at
N 32.77710 W 109.79614

Just to confuse matters, some smaller and apparently older braided
water channels that appear to be of prehistoric construct are
found at N 32.77846 W 109.78945  and are called the Riggs Complex.

This map summaric these locations....

http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=32.77846,-109.78945&z=19&t=S&marker0=32.74354%2C-109.84247%2C5.4%20km%20NxNE%20of%20Mount%20Graham%20AZ&marker1=32.73895%2C-109.85221%2Cunnamed&marker2=32.78243%2C-109.83566%2Cunnamed&marker3=32.74617%2C-109.83968%2Cunnamed&marker4=32.75144%2C-109.83826%2Cunnamed&marker5=32.75774%2C-109.82801%2Cunnamed&marker6=32.76005%2C-109.81122%2Cunnamed&marker7=32.75885%2C-109.81381%2Cunnamed&marker8=32.75799%2C-109.81387%2Cunnamed&marker9=32.77720%2C-109.77527%2Cunnamed&marker10=32.76653%2C-109.79362%2Cunnamed&marker11=32.75981%2C-109.80764%2Cunnamed&marker12=32.77710%2C-109.79614%2Cunnamed&marker13=32.77846%2C-109.78945%2Cunnamed

Manually entering lat lon data points into a kml path
in Google Earth, can end up somewhat tedious. Our
hanging canal map needs several thousand path
entries of seven decimal point numbers.

Instead, use the crosshair marker feature of Acme
Mapper. Enter up to 26 markers at a time, separated
by a minimum of 100 feet. Then capture and view
the URL.

You can simply use a word processor or editor to
rearrange the format between an Acme URL and
a .kml path. Or else use this automated routine
of mine.

Additional point groupings can be simply spliced
together with never a need for "real" data entry.

If the path is still slightly rough ( unlikely ) modify
each location by replacing it with half of itself and
one quarter of its immediate neighbors. Thus
approximating a Gaussian low pass filter.

There's a curious bug/feature in Acme mapper: If you
try to place a mark within 30 meters of a previous mark,
the old mark will disappear.

Sometimes several marks can disappear if they all lie
within the danger area.

There's also a second bug in which the lettering or sequence
of marks will sometimes change after the fact. I'm not sure
why this happens, but be careful in telling someone else
to go to point "J" since it might switch to "F" instead.

I want to smooth out our .kml Hanging Canal maps
by adding more data points. The present method of copying
coordinates between Acme Mapper and Google Earth is
way to tedious. Especially if you add a waypoint in the
middle.

Present thinking is to create a series of invisible pushpins
for each needed point and then copy the loctaions into
continuous paths. As before, individual canals would
be grouped into folders so that they can appear in a
single file.

Stay tuned.

Let's try a THIRD archaeological cloud. Very much for real.

This is your opportunity to potentially make some world
class archaeological prehistoric hanging canal discoveries. It
might go something like this...

At your own risk and expense and following normal
Upper Sonoran snake season TEAM procedures
and techniques in a smaller but very brushy and
steep area estimated at three hours...

Using this, something like this, and possibly an
automatic level that we can loan you, go to
N 32.79160 W 109.85388 and locate the known
southern limit of the Mud Springs canal. This
should be just under the fence in mid saddle.

The goal is to find the entire remaining portion
of the canal, which is believed to extend well less
than a quarter mile to its Ash Creek takein in or
around the Coronado National Forest border.

Between heavy brush and possible extensive
flood damage, canal tracing may not be possible
in this area. Thus, this search while crucial to
the canal, may end up unprovable and frustrating.

Simply wandering around at a slight upward
grade might be a reasonable starting point.

Should that not work, survey and flag the
most credible 0.75 percent slope between
the canal limit and the water. Then, if needed,
repeat the process at 0.5 percent slope and
1.0 percent slope.

Over the distance of perhaps one quarter of a mile,
take GPS readings, notes, and preferably at least
cell phone quality images and video of the route.
Pay particular attention to any remaining remnants
of the original takein system. This is presumed
long gone due to catastrophic flooding.

It is extermely important to attempt to complete the
route. The canal is presumed to have rather
spectacularly been "hung" on the eastern canyon
wall in a location that may or may not still
physically exist. .

If you are .kml literate, please attempt to plot the
route to Google Earth as best you can. 

Report back to me and separately publish your
results in a credibly acceptable professional free
manner to Wesrch or a comparable open source
scholarly document managing system. Please
stay OFF YouTube. At least for a while.

Keep all vehicles on suitable 4WD routes. The road is a
tad rocky ( although passable ) for unmodified SUV's,
so a smaller ATV's is strongly recommended.

Note: Canal routes typically do NOT have artifacts except for the
canal borders themselves. OBSERVE ONLY! Do NOT collect,
dig, disturb, or sample. DO OBEY ALL SIGNS! Please do not leave
the slightest trace of your having traveled this way.

These are public lands. Much more on the big picture here.

There are many similar archaeological projects here and general
exploration projects here.

To recap, a pair of what appear to be huge and stunningly
world class prehistoric canals have been relocated here
and here in the lower Frye Mesa area .

We have named one of them the HS canal. As in
"Holy Shit!". On top of everything else, it is counterslope
and clearly heading UP canyon. Its engineering seems
literally beyond belief.

At first glance these appear to be genuinely prehistoric.

While slightly smaller in cross section than the Culebra
cut on the Allen Canal below the dam, they are much
longer and in far more spectcaular hanging mesa terrain.

The problem is that they appear waaaaay too good to be
true. And monumental effort must now be spent to verify
a credible water source and thoroughly exclude the
already rather unlikely dam construction or CCC originating
alternatives. Or, for that matter, UFO involvement.

The next step is to talk to CNF. There is a large rock tank
of presumed CCC origin near the dam turnoff. Where does its
water come from? Is ( or was ) it a gravity fed adaption of
the HS source?

Possible ( but highly problematic ) water sources might
include the base of Frye Falls or Spring Canyon. With
the falls road or other less credible routes overlying
the original canal feeder route.

Separately, what are the date(s) of the Frye Mesa dam
construction? What docs remain where? Postdating some
CCC water spreaders would exclude any bypass possibilities.

Let's try a SECOND archaeological cloud. Very much for real.

This is your opportunity to potentially make some world
class archaeological prehistoric hanging canal discoveries. It
might go something like this...

At your own risk and expense and following normal
Upper Sonoran snake season TEAM procedures
and techniques for a rugged but not extreme 4 hour
dayhike...

Using this, this, and something like this, go to
N 32.79160 W 109.85388 and begin to trace
the most credible eastward route of a presumed
prehistoric canal from N 32.80339 W 109.83932

The canal can be initially located just under the new
fence and becomes more obvious as it trends northeast.

Over this distance of slightly more than a mile,
take GPS readings, notes, and preferably at least
cell phone quality images and video of the route.

It is extermely important to attempt to 100 percent
close the route. At least a small portion of the northeastern
extreme may end up untracable. At least we could not
find it during earlier surveys. The canal is presumed to
stay near the western mesa edge over much of its route.

If you are .kml literate, please attempt to plot the
route to Google Earth as best you can.

Report back to me and separately publish your
results in a credibly acceptable professional free
manner to Wesrch or a comparable open source
scholarly document managing system. Please
stay OFF YouTube. At least for a while.

Keep all vehicles on suitable 4WD routes. The roads are a
tad rocky ( although passable ) for unmodified SUV's,
so smaller ATV's are strongly recommended.

The route is well suited to hikers who bring along their own
catclaw, just in case there is not enough along the run. The
word "trail", of course, is not in their vocabulary.

Note: Canal routes typically do NOT have artifacts except for the
canal borders themselves. OBSERVE ONLY! Do NOT collect,
dig, disturb, or sample. DO OBEY ALL SIGNS! Please do not leave
the slightest trace of your having traveled this way.

These are public lands. Much more on the big picture here.

There are many similar archaeological projects here and general
exploration projects here.

Many thanks to those of you attending my talk yesterday.

The sixth slide with the canal locations was only a screen
dump.

Clicking on it was supposed to magnify into a JPG image
and clicking on the image was supposed to either download
a .KML file or get you directly into a "Ghee Whiz" flyby
under Google Earth.

For all this to work, you need online access, fast comm, a
Google Earth plug in installed, and a reasonable browser and
operating system. This all works well under Chrome and
windows 8, but only bits and pieces worked during the
talk. Let me know if you have problems getting this
to fly on your own.

As usual, the question came up as to what "prehistoric" was.

In general, a culture is prehistoric if it has no written
history or obvious percursor. In the case of the
American Southwest, Anything earlier than 1500 is
considered prehistoric. Anything later depends on who
is doing what to whom.

I was surprised over how few people yet know about
Acme Mapper. This did bring up the usual Roadrunner
jokes. But the original reason so many outfits called
themselves Acme was the same as AAA Exterminating.

Namely that they show up first in the phone book
yellow pages.

Here's the meeting notice for next Wednesday's Gila
Watershed Partnership meeting.

I'll likely be speaking there on new findings on our
Prehistoric hanging mountain canals.

There are at least seven types of preshistoric or unknown
agricultural constructs in the Gila Valley that leave distinct
rock artifacts. These seem to be largely independent and
vary from undersstudied to beyond world class spectacular...

MULCH RINGS - These are simply rock circles about two
feet in diameter, typically in spaced groups of a dozen or
more. Their purpose was to retain moisture for a central
plant.

CHECK DAMS WITH APRONS - Small circuilar dams
in minor washes retained a fill area suitable for small
gardens or plant nurseries. A second dam downstream
usually provided erosion control.

THE GRIDS - Rectangular rock arrays retained water
under their borders for Agave and other uses. There
are over ten thousand of these to the north and many
hundreds to the south. Largely dry farmed.

LOWLAND CANALS - Larger Gila River based
water systems later were adapted for modern use
and are similar to those in the Phoenix and Tucson
areas.

HANGING MOUNTAIN CANALS - Some twenty
one of these extending over forty miles exploited
virtually every drop of northeastern Mt. Graham
water. Spectacular engineering was typically "hung"
on the edges of steep sided mesas to make their
slope independent of terrain.

CCC WATER SPREADERS - Modern rock check
dams were largely pointless boondoggles. Tens of
thousands of these are known . They can be easily
confused with genuine prehistoric ag artifacts.

THE UFO FISH FILLETS - Certainly our strangest
local artifact. Believed to be a CCC adaption of
an underlying prehistoric original. Only one is known.

The concept of "proof" is wildy different between an
engineer and an archaeologist. Or for that matter,
between a lawyer, a theologian, a bartender, or a
baker.

I'm having enormous difficulty accepting archaeological
proof as "good enough". Engineering is a sense of the
fitness of things, normally brought about by enormous
sample sizes centered on a falsafiable hypothsis.

Archaeological evidence is instead sometimes based
on a single sample size from a erratic history and often
colored by personal or cultural bias. Which is what makes
it a "soft science".

On the archaeological hand, our recent hanging canal
rediscoveries in lower Frye Canyon appear world class
spectacular. As engineering proof, though, they simply
appear waaaay too good to be true. At least so far.

May you live in interesting times.

Rightly or wrongly, I've been applying several concepts
of normalcy to our prehistoric hanging canals...

That the canals actually worked.

That they were complete.

Thea they literally exploited every
drop of northeastern Mt. Graham
mountain stream water.

That missing canal portions remain
caused by looking in the wrong place
or post construction destruction.

That virtually all related historic water
project adaptations "stole the plans".

That "missing" segments remain undiscovered.

That CCC boondogles were just that.

That the permeability of canal runs was
acceptable.

That the prehistoric and historic and
CCC are ultimately seperable.

That "obvious" modern canal routes all
had prehistoric underpinnings.

Here's a preliminary model of the Frye Mesa prehistoric
canals: Whose apparent scope was to totally exploit every
drop of Frye Creek area reliable water sources via a system
of hanging canals and using that water well north of where it
would otherwise disappear from solid gneiss baserock into
valley fill conglomerates.

Earliest efforts were likely directly down Frye Creek, with
canal activity likely starting somewhere below the present
Frye Dam site and above the present disused chlorinator.
With an unproven possible hanging area here.

Water was then delivered to the southern and northern blue pond
area for ag use. A short remant segment can be found here
and was apparently remodeled historically with a concrete
diversion gate to pick which of the now flood damaged and
presently disused blue ponds was to be chosen for fill.

Some apparently very early braided vee sections can be
found here and remain unexplained. These may or may
not be related to fields in the Riggs Reservoir area.

Meanwhile, a second possible canal source appeared to
involve Spring Canyon and even a possible Frye to Spring
diversion route. Water apparently could have been
delivered under the falls road, and possibly have used
this route to get to the modern dam turnoff and rock tank.

A highly enigmatic group of braided canals then seemed to
follow the southernmost and highest edge of Frye Mesa
proper, carefully skirting intermediate drainages to preserve
the needed slope. The apparent purpose of this portion of the
braided canals was to deliver water to a ponding area here.

The primary water delivery area from here is believed to be
downcanyon via a rather steep and quite large hanging portion.
While not yet fully studied, this is believed to form the basis
for the Robinson Hanging canal here.

A second impressive and quite large and quite steep hanging
portion appears to divert and head UPSLOPE and UPCANYON.
It is clearly counterflow.

This is among the most spectacular finds in the entire hanging
Gila hanging canal systems. It has been fairly carefully visited,
but its use remains speculative. Possible diverting Robinson
when not in use or balancing the drainage availability with need.

There are a number of grids and habitation sites in the point
of the canyon proper.

Things got ridiculously more complicated with the historic
bulding of Frye Mesa Reservoir. Various generation pipelines
can be easily traced of varying technologies, including wrapped
and rivited metal, open flanged pipe, buried pipe, and concrete.

These were joined by a Transite pipe system that stole the
plans from the Deadman hanging canal portion. Significantly,
enclosed pipe water delivery systems do not have to be strictly
downhill, so long as pressures and leaks stay in bounds. These
modern pipelines are believed to more or less follow the preshistoric
routes.

As a result, free flowing lower Frye Creek water bacame
a flood liability, so all non-piped water was apparently
diverted into Sheep Springs wash and routed around the
Daley Estates development.

This created a situation where the prehistoric Robinson
canal had to cross the diverted Frye Creek water. At
that point in time, prehistoric deliver routes were
presumably ceased.

Just to confuse matters, there were obvious and numerous
CCC water spreaders that appear to have been thrown
over certain otherwise apparently prehistoric segments. As
near as I can tell, these appear to be obviously useless
busywork. Possibly simply to claim credit for work they
did not do.

Much of this is speculative and remains unproven
to date.

There is one modern stream gauge, and earlier
ones may or may not still have data available.

Details are still to be worked out, but I am planning a
prehistoric hanging canal talk for the May 8th Gila Watershed
partnership of Arizona meeting.

This will likely be somewhere around 7:30 PM in the County
General Services Building, 921 Thatcher Blvd, in Safford.

There is no charge and anyone with a past or present interest
in water management opportunities are welcome to attend.

Some more background can be found here.

Let's try an archaeological cloud. Very much for real.

This is your opportunity to potentially make some world
class archaeological prehistoric hanging canal discoveries. It
might go something like this...

At your own risk and expense and following normal
Upper Sonoran snake season TEAM procedures
and techniques for a rugged but not extreme 5 hour
dayhike...

Using this, this, and something like this, go to
N 32.75991 W 109.80942 and begin to trace
the most credible eastward route of a presumed
prehistoric canal to N 32.77601 W 109.79681

Over this distance of slightly more than a mile,
take GPS readings, notes, and preferably at least
cell phone quality images and video of the route.

It is extermely important to attempt to 100 percent
close the route. Switching ends or one or more
transcets might be needed.

If you are .kml literate, please attempt to plot the
route to Google Earth as best you can.

Report back to me and separately publish your
results in a credibly acceptable professional free
manner to Wesrch or a comparable open source
scholarly document managing system. Please
stay OFF YouTube. At least for a while.

Keep all vehicles on suitable 4WD routes. With care,  4Runner
4WD class vehicles should be only mildly challenging.

The route is well suited to hikers who bring along their own
catclaw, just in case there is not enough along the run. The
word "trail", of course, is not in their vocabulary.

Note: Canal routes typically do NOT have artifacts except for the
canal borders themselves. OBSERVE ONLY! Do NOT collect,
dig, disturb, or sample. DO OBEY ALL SIGNS! Please do not leave
the slightest trace of your having traveled this way.

These are public lands. Much more on the big picture here.

There are many similar archaeological projects here and general
exploration projects here.

There are several utterly mind boggling places in our prehistoric
canals where the concept of counterslope arises.

Normally, the part of the canal that is heading downhill generally
follows the part of the topography that is also going downhill.

But there are rare times and places when the canal purposely
goes downhill into the upslope portion of the terrain. This can
happen during a large "S" or "U" turn. The goal of burying
deeper into the mesa or other rising terrain is to keep the slope
independent of terrain.

While the canal clerly gets longer in the process the total
energy of contruction remains astoundingly low due to
minimizing of cuts and fills. In general on these canals,
almost all of the construction goes across rather than
along the route.

Of the several "S" and "U" turns on the Jernigan Canal,
at least one is counterslope. Twin East goes counterslope
to cross a wash somewhat South ( and under ) the Lebanon
Cemetary. And there is a spectacularly huge counterslope
canal segment clearly heading UP lower frye wash.

Managed to get back to the part of Frye Mesa you cannot
get to from here. Only to add far more mysteries than were
resolved.

The story so far: Some highly enigmatic constructs on a
seldom visited portion of Frye Mesa recently became a
lot more apparent, both through Acme Mapper and
Google Earth.

Some of these constructs suggest potentially spectacular
prehistoric canals while others appear to be partial CCC
rework boondoggles.

The structure here strongly suggests a major prehistoric
hanging canal, albeit one both immensely huge and quite
steep. It is enigmatic in that it seems to be counterslope and
clearly heading upcanyou.

The yet unvisited structure here also seems to be a
prehistoric canal. It is at least headed downcanyon
and could easily form a credible water source for the
Robinson Canal.

Both constructs appear sourced from a potential
ponding structure in turn sourced from five or more
braided channels. Some of these channels have what
clearly appear to be CCC spreader rework, and there
are other more traditional CCC spreaders in the area.

The braids appear much older than the spreaders.

The braids seem to originate near the dam turnoff.
Halfway along the braids is a saddle and low spot
in the mesa that would seem to clearly exclude the
continuiuum of an open canal. However, there is
one braid at the extreme southern edge of the mesa
that Google Earth elevation mouseovers appear to
allow a consistent downhill slope through this area.

There is no clear prehistoric compatible water source
for the system yet, although there is a working tank
nearby. While Frye Creek is an obvious potential
source, the access would be extremely difficult.  But
it might make little sense to take water out of the
creek and replace it later downstream.

A secondary possibility is a Spring Canyon source. But
its flow these days is much less and highly intermittent.
Despite several visits, both of the candidates remain
non-obvious. Possibly the falls road masks a portion of
the postulated route.

As a side note, there are numerous four foot bare circles
on the otherwise grass covered mesa. These suggest
a prehistoric use that might alter ph or otherwise
reduce available nutrients. Alternately, they could
be some remnant artifact of a CNF sweet resinbush
eradication program.

More eyes are definitely needed on all this.
Please email me if you have any interest.

Too good to be true?

Dr. Neely and I managed to verify the structure near N 32.75849
W 109.8145 in Frye Canyon. At first glance, it very much
appears to be a manmade prehistoric canal.

And a huge highly spectacular world class one at that.

It seems to source water from five or more braided channels
that route along the northern edge of Frye Mesa proper. And
a similar ( but still not field verified ) structure at N 32.75980
W 109.80808 seems to form a credible water source for the
downstream prehistoric Robinson Canal.

Very strangely, the structure believed to be a prehistoric
canal might have delivered water back upstream and
upcanyon. Why this would be done remains an enigmatic
mystery. Although there appear to be some possible
canyon bottom fields and grids in the area.

To be believable, all credible alternate explanations would
have to be thoroughly excluded. These alternates could
include some bizarrely atypical CCC work, or a vastly
excessive dam construction bypass, or some sort of
water or land dispute. All of which presently seem as
unlikely as being an alien UFO construct.

More eyes on this are definitely needed, especially
among qualified archaeologists or historians.

Please email me with your thoughts.

Updated and expanded our Gila Valley Dayhikes page.

Managed to explore more of the high end of the Mud
Springs canal recently. Especially the spectacularly
engineered portion near the Mud Springs to Ash
Creek crossover just under the fence.

While we picked up bunches of easily foot traced
downcanyon routing, about 3000 feet remains between
here and the next known lower portion in the drainage
west of the road somewhat north of Mud Springs Tank.

An ATV shuttle will likely be be best for this portion.

The actual takein point should be somewhere near
the CNF boundary, but I am not at all sure whether
this still exists any more at all. Nearly vertical
conglomerate suggests totally destructive catastrophic
flooding in otherwise inhospitable terrain..

Your help welcome.

The powers that be have determined that the term
"Anasazi" is no longer politically correct. The acceptable
terminology is "Ancient Pueblo Peoples"

Apparently the term meant "Our old Enemies". It is
unlikely that a culture would similarly name themselves.

Our hanging canals show an incredibly amazing variety
of trading activities including those of the Ancient Pueblo
Peoples, Mimbres, Mongollon, Hohokam, Salado, and
even possibly Sinagua.

But the Adena embassy site has yet to be located.

The original to the Xylophone Duet can be found here."

The apparent reason or hanging canals got hung in the
first place seemed to be to make their slope independent
of the terrain. This could end up exceptionally energy efficient
and could dramatically reduce the construction time and
effort.

The canal system might have taken a lot less effort than
you might first guess. Assume that an average individual
could build one foot of average canal per hour. On a
fourteen hour day, this translates to something like
one mile per man year.

If the entire canal system was 50 miles long, then 50
man years might be needed for most of the canal
route.

Or 50 people for one year.

Updated and expanded our Gila Valley Day Hikes
library page.

We have now exceeded our initial goal of 365
major entries. Please email me with any corrections
or suggestions for additional entries.

Updated our Hanging Canal sampler page to include the
AZ Republic and USA Today articles, videos, and slide
shows.

The other samplers appear midway on our home page.

As any geologist will tell you, there are three different
kinds of rocks.

These are sedentary, ingeneous, and metaphoric.

The combined Arizona Republic video and story on our
hanging canals can be found here. And its slide show here.

A similar but shorter USA today story only can be found
here.

In excessive zeal over political correctness, my "stole the
plans" got replaced by "borrowed the blueprints". And
somehow, the Twin Boobs Canal is no longer mentioned.

Several errors crept into the story. Not sure where the
"19 miles" came from. Typical hanging canals range from
one to seven miles. System totals clearly exceed 40 miles,
and possibly quite a bit more. And there is no evidence that
the canals delivered running water to habitation sites in the
area. Water use appeared to be purely agricultural.

And the TV Typewriter, of course, was from Radio Electronics,
September 1973, and not PE.

Expanded and updated our Gila Valley Day Hikes web page.

There are at least five different and largely independent
prehistoric water management concepts in the Gila Valley.
These include the lowland canals, the hanging canals,
the dry agricultural grids, the mulch rings, and the aproned
check dams.

The hanging canals are quite distinct and different than
the lowland canals. Lowland canals are quite common in
Phoenix, Tucson, and areas between. While a tremendous
amount of effort is required in their building, the needed
engineering is not all that great, and the canals tend to
build themselves by noting acceptable water flow.

The hanging canals on the other hand are world class
constructs that demanded a mind boggling engineering
sophistication. No other examples are presently known,
and the vision, the foresight, and the societal structure
needed to create them remains uniquely outstanding.

Another key difference is that lowland canals tend to
flood damage along their length, while the hanging
canals damage across their path. A lowland repair
could take years and impact survivability, whle a
hanging repair could be done by kiddies in minutes.

Three interesting developments in the goal to break the
scientific publishing stranglehold and the overwhelming
need for peer review reform :

A new federal policy demands improved public access to
to government sponsored and paid for research. And a
discussion of which can be found here.

And a new Peer J scientific journal will publish for free
distribution for as little as flat $99 lifetime fee.

And the arXiv from Cornell seems to be working just
fine, but still is limited to certain fields.

We've already seen how Wesrch represents the new
model of free public access scientific publication. My
own Wesrch papers can be found here.

I strongly feel that ALL scientific papers older than
three years should be freely web available without
unreasonable restriction or any charges .

Many of my own papers are freely available here
and here.

A story on our hanging canals is apparently scheduled to
appear in this Sunday's Arizona Republic.

A variant with video supposedly is already in their free online
tablet versions.

There's rumors a major newspaper may be doing a story
on our prehistoric hanging canals.

Whether this can attract sorely needed big time researcher
attention and funding remains to be seen.

There is a crucial difference between publicity done by
others and advertising done by yourself. Only the
latter can be totally under your control.

Much more here.

A second reminder that I'll be presenting an updated talk
on our revised Hanging Canal slide show in the ARA conference
tomorrow this saturday January 26th at Grand Canyon University
in room CAS 6 Rm 105/107.

Grand Canyon University is located at 3300 West Camelback Road
in Northwest Phoenix.

I'll be presenting an updated talk on our revised Hanging
Canal slide show in the ARA conference this saturday
January 26th at Grand Canyon University in room
CAS 6 Rm 105/107.

Grand Canyon University is located at 3300 West Camelback Road
in Northwest Phoenix.