History
The river was impounded in 1863 on what is now Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. A tunnel was dug 1200 feet to convey water to the California Powder Works adjacent to the river three miles upstream of Santa Cruz. The powder works made gunpowder for California mining after normal supplies had been interrupted by the American Civil War. During dry weather, all flow was diverted through the tunnel and a system of flumes to provide water power for powder mill machinery. The powder mill was dismantled in 1914.
Read more about this topic: San Lorenzo River
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)