Photo by Phoenix Water Services

An elaborate, high-tech system of concrete and clay pipes funnels gallons of water to the taps of thirsty desert dwellers every day, but the method wasn’t always so high-tech. In fact, the Valley’s first water delivery system has its roots, literally, in the forest.

In the 1920s, largely because of cost, Phoenix officials used some Old West ingenuity and turned to redwood as its material of choice for a groundbreaking, 28-mile pipeline to help meet the water needs of the fledgling city.

“This was the first line that supplied surface water to the city for people to use,” says Doug Kupel, a natural resources historian in Phoenix. “This was a way to get water that didn’t have all the salts and the solids that the wells did at the time.”

With this innovation, Phoenix no longer had to depend on wells for its sole source of water.

But getting water from the Verde River to the city wasn’t easy, says Kupel, author of Fuel for Growth: Water and Arizona’s Urban Environment, nor was the redwood pipeline “Plan A.”

Voters approved $1.3 million in bonds for a pipeline in 1919, but it did not cover the cost of a concrete pipeline, and bids for one made from steel were too high. Kupel says Phoenix then was approached with the idea of redwood – a material used in those days for pipelines. In order to build the pipeline, staves of wood were stacked end to end and bound with steel straps.

“It was an acceptable technology at the time,” he says. “It wasn’t something that was totally off the wall. Not at all.”

Set into place, mostly above ground, the new pipeline worked and soon provided water to the city’s then roughly 29,000 residents. But it wasn’t perfect. As the redwood expanded and contracted in the desert heat, it leaked, and traveling cowboys would riddle the pipeline with bullet holes to shower themselves with the spurting water.

“That way they could get all spruced up before they came to town,” says Bing Brown, a former longtime water official with Phoenix and the Salt River Project.

“The City of Phoenix had a special person assigned to ride the pipeline on a horse or vehicle and look for leaks,” Brown says. “If it had been a big time in town on Saturday night, there was a good chance there would be a lot of leaks on Monday morning.”

Phoenix repaired and replaced parts of the pipeline often, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the constant breaks, like the one on Valentine’s Day in 1930 that sent a gusher of water 100 feet high.

Kupel says the problems eventually forced construction of a concrete pipeline from the Verde River in 1931, but only after voters turned down the idea twice at the ballot box. The redwood pipeline would be history.