As the Wheel Turns
Listen to the Water mill,
Through the livelong day;
How the clicking of the wheel
Wears the hours away.
Languidly the autumn wind
Stirs the withered leaves;
On the field the reapers sing.
Binding up the sheaves;
And a proverb haunts my mind.
And as a spell is cast,
"The Mill will never grind
with the water that has passed."
— The Water Mill by Sarah Doudney
As I began to write this article about the Jeep Trail Water Wheel, I started by wondering, ‘Why the fascination’?
What is it about a water wheel that makes us stop in our tracks and gaze at it? Is it our fascination with water? Or does it harken thoughts back to a simpler time, when man relied on nature vs. combustible engines and machinery? Is it that we look upon this device with awe that it works 24/7, even while we sleep?
Relying on my good friend Google, I did some online searching and found this at cottagecorehome.com
‘In a time, before modern industrial power plants, water wheels were constructed to convert flowing water into useful power. At the time they weren’t considered beautiful or charming. They simply served a need; milling flour, grinding wood, hammering iron, crushing ore or pounding fibers. Papermills, sawmills, gristmills, textile mills, hammer mills and rolling mills all utilized the water wheel. Today they only serve as a reminder of an innovative time when nature was put to use in the service of an industrial revolution.’
What started off as the forerunner to the modern hydro-electric dam has become the charming reminder of our past. It wasn’t an easy past. It was all very hard work, but the water wheel was a significant step forward in making goods cheaper and available to everyone.
Today we can romanticize and wonder what it was like living next to the stream, in the lap of nature, working with nature’s power. That romanticizing holds a real respect and appreciation for those who came before and innovated. Our ancestors saw opportunity, recognized ways to harness nature’s power and worked tirelessly to achieve their dreams.’
Waterwheel on the Jeep Trail. Photo by Dave Cohen.
The water wheel on the Jeep Trail is of the ‘Overshot Wheel’ design. Overshot wheels are a type of waterwheel that can be built if there is a significant height drop in the river or body of water being used to move the wheel. Generally, these are built on the side of a hill as a drop of at least 4.5 meters. In this type of waterwheel, the water exits the flume above the wheel itself. The water then falls down onto the blades of the waterwheel, pushing the wheel forward. The fact that water is introduced at the very top of the wheel means that the water falls the greatest distance, making the wheel highly efficient - from 80-90%.
As many of you may have read in a May Neighbor to Neighbor Facebook post, the Trails Committee learned in February of this year, that the Water Wheel was actually on the POA’s list of things to disassemble. Who could blame them? Over the years it worked, it didn't work, it worked, it didn't work, etc. etc. etc.
We were determined to reverse this decision and the POA supported us. We needed to come up with a permanent solution vs the band aid fixes done time and time again over the years.
We first met with some of our Trail Members who were Engineers in their careers, Don Gallagher a retired Mechanical Engineer and Javier Rodriguez a retired Civil Engineer.
We then met on site with the BC Director of Operations, Lydell Mack, who is a great partner to the BCTC, to tell him about our plan and he fully supported it.
Fast forward through a couple of months of workdays including 300' of 1" PolyTubing purchased from Home Depot, hollowing out of a Black Locust Log to serve as the water trough, milling White Oak for the trough uprights, and the hollowing out of several pieces of bamboo shoots harvested from Choctaw to camouflage the tubing in, we were ready to ‘throw the switch’.
On Friday, May 20th, we finished the project by securing the tubing 100 yards upstream to gain strong, constant water flow. SUCCESS!!!
This was a true labor of love for one of our most treasured BC Trail points of interest.
Many thanks to our hard working Trails Committee whose work on projects such as this help to make BC such a wonderful place to live.
Happy Trails.
Diagram of overshot waterwheel showing headrace, tailrace, water, and spillage. Image created by Malcolm.boura.
Members of the trails committee working on the hose that feeds the water to the wheel. Photo by Mitch Waldman.
The hose has been hidden in the creek and anchored to the creek rocks in places. Photo by Mitch Waldman.
The hose is being hidden in a bamboo stalk. Photo by Mitch Waldman.
Waterwheel in action. Photo by Mitch Waldman.