The ability to reveal the hidden layers of hydrology can take many forms. Public art is a great mechanism for telling stories in ways that engage and reveal that which is often missing from our day to day experiences. These artworks also highlight key contributions of communities that are often marginalized in the official histories we are taught. Artists Shu-Ju Wang and Lynn Yarne developed a vibrant example of this at the new Lincoln High School in Portland with a large exterior mural called Restoration Roadmaps which locates the hidden hydrology story within the context of the urban high school. The summary of the project, from the artist’s website for Restoration Roadmaps provides some of processes and the outcomes:
“The process enabled us to come to a final design that is a combination of several forms of maps to describe the neighborhood–from historical to a hoped for future, from topographical to ecological, from google map to the old fashioned foldout map. Student and community responses are recorded as part of the topographical contours and inset panels.”
The images are rich with detail, focusing on the high school site and the contemporary grid, juxtaposed with the Tanner Creek historical route with other water bodies that have been erased. The creek gulches were the locations of highly productive garden areas farmed by Chinese immigrants and also provided historical areas of Native American occupation. The mural includes smaller square panels with community work done by other artists and students, and the perimeter of the mural provides detailed assemblages of 40 species of flora and fauna Indigenous to the area.
It was fun to see the process evolve and the final product ‘in the wild’ below. Let me know if you’re local and have seen the mural, or if there are other murals in your community celebrating hidden hydrology. Would love to hear from you.
Beyond helping with some mapping for the mural, my other contribution was this short video, Tanner Creek Hidden Hydrology, walking through the history of the area in the context of the historical water. I’ve included the video below:
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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 02/28/25 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/20/25.
My first Substack publication, The Climate Landscape, explored various themes related to our changing climate and landscape architecture to examine nature-based solutions to climate change impacts. I recently decided to shelve that particular project and focus exclusively on writing about hidden hydrology; however, a few of those early essays were worth retaining here as they showed good overlap and connections between the two topics.
There is a direct connection between our cities’ buried and lost rivers and climate change. I touched on climate here in a recent “Lost Rivers for Underground Energy” and have written about it often on my older Hidden Hydrology site. It took me some time to make a direct connection between my research on climate and lost waterways until more recently, and the revelation allowed me to weave together these two passions.
I’ve continued connecting the dots and trying to build a case for the importance of historical ecology and hidden hydrology in being the locus for solutions to contemporary issues, and not just focused on nostalgia. One aspect of this is looking first at causes and effects — looking back at the erasure of waterways from cities and demonstrating that the loss of ecological and hydrological systems exacerbates climate impacts such as urban heat, flooding, and sea level rise. I also looked forward to showing the patterns of historical hydrological systems that can act as frameworks for innovative climate solutions to provide adaptation and mitigation opportunities. The idea of “hydrological retro-futures” is the term I chose for this backward-forward process, which allows us to connect the historical ecology to the modern metropolis and tell these stories in an engaging, visual format.
One aspect of this project is visual. By using various graphical generative AI resources like DALL-E (see image below), I have been creating speculative images of hidden hydrology in the urban context, and exploring ways that revealing, restoring, and reconnecting with lost rivers can help us imagine the potential visual impacts that could be gained. I will share more in-depth on this project and some of the interesting graphics in a later post.
Hydrologic Retrofutures: Portland Series 1 (Generated in DALL-E via prompts Jason King)
The other aspect is research and case-study-based. Brainstorming a few key topics areas, I will continue to explore here, including:
MICROCLIMATE COOLINGThe daylighted streams will restore ecosystem services lost when buried, such as the presence of cooling surface water and vegetation that can aid in mitigating urban heat islands.
FLOOD STORAGE CAPACITYDaylighting streams and springs currently in pipes will increase the capacity of infrastructure systems and make them more effective for flood resilience.
SEA LEVEL RISEAreas of made-land in cities as a proxy for areas of flooding due to SLR and storm surge and ways to adapt these to absorb with more resilience
WATER HARVESTING TO SUPPORT URBAN BIODIVERSITYDiversion of water that would be piped into uses for support of landscape vegetation and urban greening
WATER USE FOR COOLING ENVIRONMENTSTapping into water from subsurface water pipes to help cool cities – use in pools, water features, misters, etc.
WATER FOR HEATING & COOLING BUILDINGSUsing water from buried sewer pipes for heating buildings
PALEO VALLEYSLooking at hidden ancient river valleys as sources for groundwater recharge and storage as new aquifers
By exploring these topics, I aim to gather feedback and generate a complete toolkit of solutions that can provide designers, planners, and policy-makers with options that work in multiple climates and scales and provide cascading benefits when implemented. I’d be interested to know of other topics and solution areas out there beyond this list, as well as any case studies, writings, or research on these topics.
Below are a handful of previous stories that cover some of these topics.
ANCIENT WATERWAYS FOR COOLING CITIES
A recent article in Fast Company outlines the idea of “How ancient waterways could be tapped to cool scorching cities”. The focus is on new scanning methods to reveal buried streams and ‘ancient waterways’ and how to see the hidden infrastructure and potentially repurpose the water for climate change adaptation strategies. The group leading this effort is Cool City, an offshoot of the Korean Pavilion as part of the 2021 Venice Biennale, with projects using mapping underway in both Naples and Seoul. The unique idea here is to use handheld 3D scanning technology to provide more detailed scans of systems and then to use the gathered data to inform decisions for climate.
3D scanning of “Casa dell’Acqua” Municipality of Volla (via Cool City)
I’ve covered this topic in some detail at Hidden Hydrology. There’s merit to this as a way of approaching climate change through the use of these buried systems, both as a resource for water for irrigation and a passive cooling system and as a way to increase pipe capacity by removing underground streams through daylighting which frees up vital volume for additional stormwater management.
Mapping these has been done for many years, either as a GIS exercise with overlays of historical maps on current conditions and subsequent field verification or looking at current sewer and water and combined systems. This provides a good working system network to understand this hidden potential but not forgotten water in the city. Still, Cool City is taking it to the next level, as mentioned in the article, quoting a project collaborator, Nick De Pace, a professor of architecture and landscape architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design:
“Buried streams and old waterways are not totally lost to time. Many cities have maps showing where a former creek has been shunted into an underground tunnel to make way for aboveground urban development, for example. But De Pace says many of these maps are imprecise, and the new digital scanning and mapping of the Cool City project can bring much more actionable detail to buried streams, aqueducts, and springs. By using this water to irrigate green roofs, parks, and other urban vegetation, cities can counterbalance their heat-trapping hardscapes.”
A low-resolution snapshot of the scan below shows how compelling this composite imagery may be, showing the spaces above and below. Does it aid in climate planning, maybe? They mention that it can be used for irrigation, for more green spaces to mitigate urban heat islands, and for having more water on the surface to reduce heat and provide more cooling. Additionally, the mix of green and blue infrastructure systems can tap into the buried water to help adapt to climate change impacts.
Composite scan of subsurface conditions (via Fast Company)
I wonder, however, how feasible it will be to scan much of the sub-surface infrastructure as proposed above by Cool City, as it’s a mixed bag of small and large pipes and some more expansive and cavernous sewers, depending on the location and the era in which they were implemented. It’s a question to me if it is helpful to have 3D versions of these systems, or is mapping or modeling adequate to see the potential system components and flows and determine how it can be ‘tapped’ to become a tool to fight climate change?
3D scanning is an excellent visualization tool, as it is often difficult to imagine what lies beneath, which is less compelling than a line on a map. As mentioned in the article, understanding the available water resources more clearly is half the battle. The next part is how to operationalize this water for climate strategies. I am interested in seeing more from Cool City, how the technology works, and what solutions come up for using hidden hydrology for climate solutions.
While tying flooding to historically buried waterways isn’t novel, this is a unique idea, using mapping to overlay the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps showing redlining categories, which are well-documented spatial histories of racial and socioeconomic discrimination. The researchers used these factors (buried streams and redlining grade) as two of the criteria for flood risk along with proximity to coastal zones and intensity of vegetative cover.
The article is a deep dive, so I will skim on the surface with a bit on the methodology and findings, which are engaging and would be replicable anywhere using similar criteria. The mapping processes, including mapping and DEMs, were interesting. The inference of buried water bodies and flood risk has been borne out in recent events. The authors explain the connections between mapping and current flood risk:
“Although the actual stream channel or wetland surface were buried and built upon, high resolution elevation models (e.g., LiDAR) can be used to reveal the remnants of distinct depressions from these structures, such as meandering stream valleys, in heavily urbanized landscapes. The authors assume that, although no longer occupied by active streams or wetlands, residential homes built on buried stream valleys will experience an elevated probability of flood risk not included in floodplain maps, but also that the process of burial and removal were influenced by income and race embedded in some of the racist housing policies of the 1930s and 1940s.”
Figure from article: “An example of a river in Southwest Detroit identified by the first United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographic map from 1905 (top left), the existing buried stream valley, as evidence from LiDAR data from 2020 (elevation units in feet above sea level), that is capped with residential development (top right), and the intense First Street Foundation Flood Factor risk of parcels near the ghost river (bottom).”
The flood risk data came from First Street Foundation’s Flood Factor, which would be good to explore in more detail. As described, the flood risk of parcels is rated 1 to 10 based on the chance of flooding in a time interval. There were also additional criteria, as mentioned, with coastal proximity, using available data, and vegetation density using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data to describe the level of vegetation—more on both of these in the article, along with all the analyses.
A figure from the article showing flood risks by type of area “associated with inland, coastal zone, ghost streams, and ghost wetlands within redlined neighborhoods.”
The results reinforce other narratives of disproportionate risk tied to redlining districts that had more marginalized populations. The level of parcels at risk in zones C and D from the HOLC maps, although the amount of burial varied with the presence of most buried streams in HOLC Grade A & B and more buried wetlands in HOLC Grades C & D. As the authors mention:
“Flood risk is disproportionately distributed, caused in part by outlawed, racist housing policies. Understanding where risk is highest can help identify optimum locations for adaptation measures to minimize flood damage in these neighborhoods.”
This does bring up why mapping these streams is important, and the connections to climate change, although not overt, are implied as changes in precipitation and storm intensity make flood risks more frequent and more damaging. As the authors conclude (with a nice reference to hidden hydrology (citation please), the “…role of redlining in present day flood risk applies to cities throughout the United States, as does the importance of mapping ghost streams and wetlands to inform residents of the role “hidden hydrology” may play in increasing flood risk.”
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SAVING SWAMPS TO SAVE OURSELVES
It was a treat to read one of my favorite authors, Annie Proulx (Swamps can protect against climate change if we only let them, New Yorker – 06.27.22), discussing wetlands and their potential for climate change protection. She includes tales of killer herons, stolen rafts, and evocative ideas on our complex relationship with swamps, noting that “Many modern Americans do not like swamps, herons or no herons, and experience discomfort, irritation, bewilderment, and frustration when coaxed or forced into one…”
Swamps were not always reviled or out of favor, as Proulx recounts, in particular the views of Henry David Thoreau, on the subject:
“Thoreau has been called the patron saint of swamps, because in them he found the deepest kind of beauty and interest. He wrote of his fondness for swamps throughout his life, most feelingly in his essay “Walking”: “Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or else of a Dismal Swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp.”
The connection to hidden hydrology lies in the massive loss of wetlands and the subsequent loss of function to reduce carbon and the numerous ecosystem services beyond that are provided by wetlands in filtering and mediating water in our landscapes. Development in the US meant filling wetlands for farmland, pasture, and eventually cities. The swamps often were a barrier to progress and Proulx notes:
“Across the country, the ongoing stories of vile adventures in the muck made it clear to military, government, and citizenry that something had to be done about the swamps so universally detested. Everywhere there were horrendous mixtures of fen, bog, swamp, river, pond, lake, and human frustration. This was a country of rich, absorbent wetlands that increasingly no one wanted.”
As this occurred, there were impacts, but climate change, and sea level rise in particular, exacerbates flooding, and filled-in wetlands at the margins are poor habitats for the buildings or fields we placed on them that are now in danger of being washed away with more intense storms. There were impacts to landscapes and plantings that reduced habitat. Beyond biodiversity loss, humans will feel the overall loss of resilience more acutely. Still, it is hard to save or restore these landscapes, as Proulx notes in her story of the Black Swamp.
“One authority on water, William Mitsch, has suggested that if ten per cent of the old Black Swamp soils were allowed to become wetlands again they would cleanse the runoff, yet Ohioans remain powerfully anti-wetland. Even private efforts to restore small wetland areas are met with neighbors’ complaints about noisy frogs and fears of flooding.”
Related are mangroves, which are also summarily destroyed, taking with them the ability to reduce storm surges and protect coastal areas in places like the Everglades. As described: “Mangrove swamps have been called the earth’s most important ecosystem, because they form a bristling wall that stabilizes the land’s edge and protects shorelines from hurricanes and erosion, and because they are breeding grounds and protective nurseries for thousands of species, including barracuda, tarpon, snook, crabs, shrimp, and shellfish. They take the full brunt of most storms and hurricanes, and generally survive—but not always.”
Larger, more intense hurricanes can damage mangrove areas with salt or sediment intrusion, reducing their ability to regenerate and removing their support for biodiversity. While natural disasters are a risk, development still threatens these areas despite mounting evidence of their benefits.
“Although climate researchers see mangrove swamps as crucially important frontline defenses against rising seawater and as superior absorbers of CO2—they are five times more efficient than tropical forests—they are in big trouble, and mangrove removal is a constant threat.”
The conclusion for Proulx is to re-establish our love of the swamp, and connect the existential threat of climate change to our ways of life to the natural systems we destroy in the process. Protecting what is there in terms of wetlands and mangroves left standing is the first goal, as well as restoring and expanding these valuable ecosystems, all of which are possible, even necessary as adaptation and mitigation strategies. Proulx ends with a call to action we can all heed:
“It is usual to think of the vast wetland losses as a tragedy, with hopeless conviction that the past cannot be retrieved. Tragic, indeed, and part of our climate-change anguish. But as we learn how valuable wetlands are in softening the shocks of the changing climate, and how eagerly the natural world responds to concerned care, perhaps we can shift the weight of wetland destruction from inevitable to “not on my watch.” Can we become Thoreauvian enough to see wetlands as desirable landscapes that protect the earth while refreshing our joy in existence? For conservationists the world over, finding this joy is central to having a life well lived.”
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 12/17/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
The narrative of disappearance mirrors many other cities, including pollution and diseases like cholera and typhoid turning waterways from amenities to dangers. Encasement in pipes became a way to remove the sources from contact and also opened up future land for development.
Images of sewer construction in Montreal’s Saint-Pierre River in the 1930s (Archives de la Ville de Montréal – via CBC)
The article explores particular creeks in Toronto including Mud Creek, where Helen Mills, founder of Lost Rivers, gives a tour of the remnants and traces of the urban waterway. It also discusses Taddle Creek which provides one of those dramatic before-and-after visuals we all dream of when envisioning the hidden hydrology in the modern context.
Taddle Creek near Toronto University, in 1861 (uc.utoronto.ca/public domain/CBC)The same view in 2023 (Emily Chung/CBC)
The methods we used to show lost rivers are worth more exploration here, and the news interactive does a great job of using a scrolling format and some oblique aerial maps of the three cities, such as Toronto below.
The interactive aspect allows for more context for places, such as the route of Mud Creek through the Evergreen Brick Works, using a revealing overlay w/ aerial imagery with powerful effect.
Overlay of Mud Creek in the Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto (CBC)
The story similarly looks at both Montreal and Vancouver in-depth, so check out the full exploration. For some added context, I previously covered some of the Canadian cities in some depth with Vancouver’s Secret Waterways (November 2016) and Toronto’s Lost Rivers (July 2017), and also a more in-depth discussion of the great documentary Lost Rivers (November 2016).
There’s a focus on daylighting, and they include Luna Khirfan, a professor of planning at the University of Waterloo who has done extensive research on stream daylighting projects around the globe. She mentions other cities around the world that are doing work on daylighting and restoration of urban creeks, such as Zurich, Switzerland, Seoul, South Korea, Berkeley, California, and Yonkers, New York, which we will cover in more depth in the future posts.
The imagery emphasizes the constrained conditions of some of the waterways that were not buried and still exist in daylight, but have been channelized at the margins of. This image of Still Creek in Vancouver highlights the conditions of many creeks.
Even in a constrained condition, there are benefits to the visible creeks, in terms of cooling, habitat, and biophilic connections to water and nature. The story also makes the key connection between these lost rivers and contemporary climate change issues like flooding and urban heat islands. As noted:
“Climate change and urbanization are heating and flooding our cities. Restoring buried waterways — and their riverbanks — could be one answer to many problems: cooling heat islands, absorbing carbon dioxide, cleaning the air, reducing flooding and providing a habitat for wildlife and native plants.”
The story is engaging and informative, and more cities deserve that deep dive into the history and potential for exploration of hidden hydrology and potential daylighting and restoration. I also do appreciate the link to my Hidden Hydrology site for more info!
As a companion piece to the news interactive, the CBC podcast What on Earth with Laura Lynch from April 14, 2024 “Buried under cities, rivers are a climate wonder in waiting” a 30-minute exploration by Jaela Bernstien (who co-authored the previous story), and Lynch of some of these same topics in audio format, in Montreal’s Saint-Pierre, Toronto’s Mud Creek and Vancouver’s Still Creek. Through discussions with Kregg Hetherington, Amir Taleghani, and Helen Mills, it captures the beauty of hidden hydrology exploration and discovery and highlights the goals of ecosystem restoration and climate change solutions embedded in restoring lost rivers. Luna Khirfan is also part of the dialogue, discussing her work at the University of Waterloo around stream daylighting, the challenges of daylighting, and other world global cities like Zurich that have championed the idea.
Give both the article a read and the podcast a listen and let me know what you think.
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 04/20/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/20/25.
The article “Tracing Tokyo’s Hidden Rivers” (The Japan Times, March 2024) was a fascinating dive into hidden hydrology mapping and urban exploration through the lens of Japanese culture and added a new term to my lexicon. The concept of ankyo, 暗渠. which at a basic level translates in English to something akin to “culvert”, “conduit” or “subterranean drain”. These features have been removed from the city’s original landscape, yet still reveal themselves in numerous ways. This is the starting point for Hideo Takayama and Nama Yoshimura, who together started “Ankyo Maniacs”, a group focused on exploring these urban remnants of buried and hidden streams in the City of Tokyo.
Tours of the ankyo reveal waterways flowing under manholes (The Japan Times)
The explorers rely on what they call “ankyo signs”, which include a wide range of markers that help clue us into the hidden hydrology, including place names, objects, and drains (such as shown above) which allow the visual and auditory connections to flowing water. There are also urban remnants such as barriers and old bridges that were previously in place to protect from open waterways but were never removed, or prevent access to areas that have been covered over. More obvious are places focusing on water, including baths, pools, and fishing ponds. The Ankyo Maniacs and others have refocused attention on these liminal spaces, as mentioned in the article:
“While they may be out of our sight, Takayama says water still flows through many ankyo, while others have become part of local drainage systems. “It’s as if they’re telling us, ‘We’re still here,’” he says. “By getting to know them, we can appreciate the past dignity of these rivers.”
The basis for the exploration relies on several maps and the history of Tokyo spans many years. The Tokyo Ankyo Sanpo (Tokyo Ankyo Stroll) map, edited by So Honda, provides the go-to for locals exploring the city with ankyo and other features mapped in detail. Another more modern resource is the Tokyo Jisou, or Time Layer Maps, available as an iPhone and iPad app, which is a map viewer that shows maps of the city at different periods, spanning the Meiji to Heisei Eras from the 1800s to present time.
Images from the Tokyo Jisou Maps – by the Japan Map Center (App Store)
Beyond the specifics of mapping and exploration, the language of hidden hydrology is also fascinating, the Japanese term “ankyo” providing a case study of the hidden poetry of the terms. At a basic level, ankyo describes these places in practical terms, as drains and culverts that work to convey water underground. When you look at the underlying meaning of the characters, it hints at ideas like ‘darkness, shade, disappearance’ which allude to the more mysterious nature of the network of underground features that compel us to explore. The Tokyo Ankyo Sanpo map mentioned previously also includes the opposite features “kaikyo” 海峡, which are the still-visible open channels, evoking lighter ideas like ‘cheerful, pleasant, and agreeable’.
An example of one of the tours is found on the Experience Suginami Tokyo site, providing self-guided instructions in the area of Ogikubo Station following the route of the former Momozonogawa River and portions of the Zenpukujigawa River, including “ankyo signs” such as alleys and paths that act as covers to the buried streams, curving walkways mimicking the previous channels, and other hints at the hidden histories underneath.
The heart of the process isn’t just about the learning or processing of information, but about the experience. The prompt by the explorers: “Don’t Think. Walk and Feel!” is imbued with ideas about slow time, and the benefits of connecting to places more deliberately. It also connects to larger ideas about experiencing places, observing and connecting to the signs and features of the urban landscape, expressed in the Japanese concept of ‘wabi-sabi’, allowing appreciation of nature, along the way.
The language barrier does limit my full understanding of the content, (including what seems like some great publications) so if any Japanese speakers have more to add, I would love to hear it. For some bonus content, this short video with Takayama and Yoshimura in Tokyo outlines their work exploring the ankyo.
The idea of revealing the locations of hidden places is compelling for all who study hidden hydrology in its many forms. As summed up in the video: “Ankyo hunters say they enjoy the idea that at any moment you could be standing over a piece of forgotten Tokyo.”
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 04/18/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/18/25.
A project from artist Cristina Iglesias (see a post of some of her previous work here) again dives into the idea of hidden hydrology, this time in New York City. Entitled Landscape and Memory (referencing the title of one of my favorite books by Simon Schama), the work unearths a buried stream in Madison Square Park.
From The Architect’s Newspaper: “Manhattan is crisscrossed by streams and rivers that have since been buried but continue to flow, flooding their banks and the basements above when it rains. For Landscape and Memory, Iglesias will exhume an impression of Cedar Creek, which once flowed beneath where the park now stands today.”
From the Madison Square Park Conservancy, some more info: “Nodding to historian Simon Schama’s major 1995 volume of the same name, which surveyed the history of landscape across time and terrain, Landscape and Memory is informed by Iglesias’ research into the history of the site. For the project, Iglesias located and studied antique maps that documented the water flow beneath Madison Square Park, where the Cedar Creek and Minetta Brook once coursed for two miles before flowing into the Hudson River. With nineteenth-century industrialization, streams like the Cedar and Minetta were buried underground to create additional land for building sites, underground drains, or sewers. Through Landscape and Memory, Iglesias renders this buried history visible again, inviting viewers to contemplate centuries of transformation of urban sites that were once natural.”
Excited to hear more about this and see more images, as the sketch is a bit… sketchy. You can check out the full press release here for more info. Based on some of her previous work it will be wonderful in execution. The work will be installed from May 23, 2022, through December 4, 2022 so those in New York City go check it out and report back.
The recent article in the New York times on the daylighting project at Tibbetts Creek reminded me, based on some of the comments, of the poem by Robert Frost called “A Brook in the City”. I knew of the poem, but hadn’t really made the connection to hidden hydrology, but the tones of industrialization that . Some analysis of the poem explains the context, as the poem “was written somewhat in early 1920 when history was witnessing Industrial Revolution and urbanization. It was at that time man became an evil and the outcome was the devastation and extinction of nature.”
West Running Brook No. 3 – J.J. Lankes (via Book Porn Club) – one of the woodcuts of another Frost collection of poems ‘West Running Brook’.
The brook becomes the symbol for that devastation, and the domination of nature the culprit: “…because of man’s modernization the brook which was a symbol of force is now nothing more then a weak and meek sewer. At night it still flows. A time would come when people would forget that there was a brook which existed. It would only exist on maps. The poet wonders if man could ever ever understand his mistake.”
An interesting piece of poetry that hits at the root of loss, memory, and the essence of hidden hydrology. Sad and beautiful, be still resonant a century after it was written, and somewhat poignant to consider as we daylight and restore the brooks… reversal of some of that old wounds made right. Enjoy.
A Brook in the City – Robert Frost
The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square With the new city street it has to wear A number in. But what about the brook That held the house as in an elbow-crook? I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength And impulse, having dipped a finger length And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed A flower to try its currents where they crossed. The meadow grass could be cemented down From growing under pavements of a town; The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame. Is water wood to serve a brook the same? How else dispose of an immortal force No longer needed? Staunch it at its source With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone In fetid darkness still to live and run— And all for nothing it had ever done Except forget to go in fear perhaps. No one would know except for ancient maps That such a brook ran water. But I wonder If from its being kept forever under, The thoughts may not have risen that so keep This new-built city from both work and sleep.
Header image – excerpt of woodcut from J.J. Lankes from another Frost collection of poem, “West Running Brook” – via Book Porn Club
Dublin is another city with a rich history of lost waterways, so as a quick follow-up to the previous post about Belfast, let’s keep the focus on Ireland for a bit longer. The best source for this is a great article by Arron Henderson, “The Poddle and Dublin’s Hidden Rivers“, which mentions that there were over 60 watercourses flowing at one time. While a few remain such as the Liffey, Dodder, Santry, and Tolka – most are either completely gone or mostly underground. Henderson focuses on the Poddle, “…which runs underground for the majority of its course.”
The Poddle flows under Bridge and over a Weir at Mount Argus (via Dublin)
He points of the importance of these hidden streams, and how learning about them can connect with the history of places, sometimes in the margins, and often long erased from memory.
“It’s clear the Poddle played a crucial role in shaping Dublin’s history over so many hundreds of years. Providing our drinking water, powering mills, providing water for brewing, tanning, distilling and market gardens. This explains why, once they learn about it, people tend to treat this modest little river with interest and affection. An affection which is, after all, no more than it deserves.”
The River Tymon/Poddle near its source, as it flows out from Tymon Park – (via Dublin)
As mentioned in the article, there are many other hidden rivers, including the Swan, and place names emerge, with stories about the shopping center named after Rathmines, one of the tributaries of the Swan. Also some etymology, like the suffix “-iken” which means small, and one of Dublin’s rivers named in homage of another larger river named the Nanny, becoming it’s smaller namesake, the Naniken River.
For some exploration, there’s a map that I found, but can’t figure out the author, showing “dublin river past present and culverted“. A snapshot of the map is here, but it’s explorable via the Google map. Many of the waterways are untitled (and perhaps unnamed), but some are identified. Let me know if anyone knows the creator of this one.
Similarly, this leads to opportunities for students to explore and learn about these hidden local waterways, as shown in this story from Dublin People, “Students explore hidden Northside waterways” and The National Neighborhood efforts to connect school kids to this hidden hydrological history. ” Led by artist Claire Halpin, the students are investigating the hidden rivers of Finglas and the Tolka river valley, and with the help of the National Museum of Ireland Collins’ Barracks Education team, are getting a chance to see first hand how their ancestors got around on the waters of north-west Dublin. “
“Already they have been learning about the secret underground river, Finglas Wood Stream, which flows right beneath their school. “
For further exploration and information, this video from Urban Tales RTÉ One has a good story about Dublin’s Hidden Rivers, covering the history of the rivers, mapping, and even a little subterranean exploration. Worth a watch.
MAPS
There’s great resources via the Ordnance Survey Ireland and a great collection of 19th Century Historical Maps – check out the link to find more like these for areas all over Ireland.
A recent article on Belfast’s River Farset jogged my memory that I’ve got a ton of great info the hidden rivers in many cities around the world, so figured I’d start writing about them. For this post, I’ll focus on Belfast, and return shortly to discuss Dublin to round out Ireland, then move on to other locales. As mentioned in the most recent article, “For 170 years, the river that gave Belfast its name has been buried underground in a hidden tunnel.” It goes on to discuss how, similar to many stories of cities worldwide, the river was slowly changed from vital aquatic resource that fueled manufacturing such as linen mills, to it’s transformation as dumping ground, leading to the eventual encasement: “One million bricks and 40 years later, the last section of the Farset that flowed through the city centre was buried underground in 1848, and it has remained hidden from sight ever since.“
In the 1800s, the Farset helped to power Belfast’s textile mills, factories and distilleries PHOTO: De Luan/Alamy (via Daily Trust)
From the article:
“Belfast, or Béal Feirste (‘the sandy ford at the mouth of the Farset’, in Irish) not only owes its existence to this river, but also its growth and early prosperity. Yet, for the last 170 years, this ancient waterway has been sealed off from the outside world by a series of tunnels, and is largely forgotten by those walking just above it.”
The desire to open up the Farset is a common theme, with plans “…to redevelop land around an exposed part of the river and also produce a full heritage package – including an exhibition, Farset app, public information signs, and tours with trained guides – that will highlight the heritage to local people and also attract tourism.”
Another article echoing this sentiment in the Belfast Telegraph traces “The lost river that gave Belfast its name” and offers an exploration as well: “Old drawings show a bustling river which powered Belfast’s industrial development and ferried traders into what is now High Street. But most locals would be hard-pressed to pinpoint exactly where the Farset flows before it reaches the city centre – because almost the entire route is now hidden beneath our feet in the form of culverts. The Greater Shankill Partnership recently revealed it wants to transform one of the few open stretches of the Farset into a public amenity as part of its long-term Shankill Greenway plan.”
Tracing the source of the Farset river in Belfast from the hills over looking Belfast to its end at the Lagan Weir Shankill cemetery where the river behind – image via Belfast TelegraphTracing the source of the River Farset in Belfast: river ends at the Big Fish at Customs House Square –
This similar theme is expressed in stories from 2015 from the BBC, “Hidden History of Belfast’s lesser-know rivers brought to the surface”, which includes the Farset, as well as the Blackstaff rivers, both of which “determined the shape of the city that grew up around the narrowest bridging point of the Farset, where High Street is today.”
A computer image showing the original course of the rivers Farset and Lagan in Belfast – via BBC
Additionally, the Connswater, which was featured in Van Morrison’s song “Brown-Eyed Girl“, but also has a larger history as a locus of whiskey production, ” In Victorian times, two-thirds of whiskey exported from Ireland came from Belfast, and around half of that came from two distilleries – the Connswater distillery and the Avoneil distillery. “ Today, remnants run under the 400-year old bridge in east Belfast. Portions of the river runs through Orangefield park and supports wildlife, “The river used to run along fences at the back of the houses, which were susceptible to flooding. Instead of building floodwalls, here the river has been ‘moved’ to become a central feature of the park.”
The 400-year-old Connswater Bridge in east Belfast – via BBC
HEADER: Partially hidden view of River Farset in Belfast – via Belfast Telegraph
Building on my recent post about the anniversary of the catastrophic flooding of Vanport, I had the opportunity to visit some of the events at the Vanport Mosaic Festival from May 25-June 5. One highlight was a series of tours being offered as part of the events on Memorial Day weekend. The tour started at the Portland Expo Center and looped through key areas of the site, and it was exciting to get access to a few areas that are typically off-limits to people on a regular basis. It was also available as a self-guided walking tour, so they had maps for referencing key Vanport locations overlaid with current conditions
Vanport Tour Map (via Vanport Mosaic)
The back side of the map is supplemented with imagery of sites along the route, giving a feel for what it was like during the height of Vanport. It’s interesting to see these spaces and activities from 70 years ago, and for the most part discover that few traces of this still exist on-site.
Vanport Tour Map (via Vanport Mosaic)
The tour took a bit over an hour, and was led by Clark College professor of geography Heather McAfee, who layered stories and facts onto the tour, and demonstrated a passion for the need to tell the stories of Vanport more widely. While I wished we were able to hop out and explore a bit more, there were a few stops along the way, including this kiosk at one of the parking areas.
A Place in Time Called Vanport – Kiosk
The trail adjacent to the site led Force Lake, one of the amenities of the original Vanport community that was formerly adjacent to the original Recreation Center, and had beaches at the margins. The perimeter is now overgrown and a large wetland zone that is mostly inaccessible except from some narrow paths or to golfers on the west side.
Force Lake
Those other uses are a part of the story. South of the kiosk is a good orientation to the current land use of the majority of the Vanport site today with the western portions occupied by Heron Lakes Golf Course and portions of the east side of the site occupied by Portland International Raceway (PIR), making most of the site not publicly accessible.
Heron Lakes Golf CourseTrack at Portland International Raceway (PIR)
Both of these uses contribute to the lack of remnants that remain from the original Vanport site. As our tour wove between the two atop short levees, we struggled to look from map to site and make any meaningful connections, so disconnected these areas were from their original site, with staring golfers wondering why a seemingly lost tour bus was lumbering around in the middle of nothingness as they went about their rounds.
One area that was protected, through the advocacy of groups wanting to preserve some remnant, the old foundation of the original Theater is still visible on a small margin adjacent to one of the sloughs, protected from construction of PIR (Another remnant area of roadway, a portion of North Cottonwood Street) was incorporated into the straighaway of the racetrack). While indistinct, even this tracery of crumbling foundation serves as a powerful marker, even more so due to the almost complete erasure. Many on our group walked on the surface, paused in a moment of silence, and then moved on. It seems odd, but it had a power, and seemed almost sacred, becoming a tangible touchstone for the past.
Remnant foundation of original Vanport Theater building
McAfee (here pictured) used this location, pointing up at the top of a tree to show the relative height of the floodwaters, which were between 22-28′ high depending on where on the site one stood. As McAfee mentioned, people came into the theater to warn of the breach, shouting:
“The Dike has Broke!”
Seeing this and imagining a water line many feet above your head, coupled with the fact that there was a direct sightline here to the original railroad embankment breach point along the western edge of the site, it hammered home the immensity of the event. It also left me in amazement that even more people hadn’t perished.
Tree marking the height of flood waters
The southern apex of the tour swung by Drainage Pump No. 1, which was built in 1917 and worked to remove water from the interior of the levee bottoms. While it helped slow the flood a bit, the fact that it pumped water outside into already swollen creeks meant that it was fighting a losing battle. The pumps still work to dewater the interior the areas today as part of the larger drainage system.
Original Drainage Pump Station
The tour looped to the southeast and a second breach point, then wove back by the original site entrance along Denver Court before returning to the EXPO center. One stop adjacent was a larger wetland area, with another public sign adjacent to the dogpark that also tells the story of Vanport.
Informational signage adjacent to dog parkAdditional information marker from Oregon Travel Information Council
The Vanport Wetlands were adjacent to the site, nestled between PIR and the original Vanport site, and the EXPO center to the north. These and are protected today and support a range of wildlife, according to the Travel Oregon site: “This is an excellent site for waterfowl in winter, and southbound shorebirds in late summer, including Pectoral Sandpiper. Summering ducks include Cinnamon and Blue-winged Teal. Many swallows forage over the water in season. Check the wooded edges for warblers, vireos, and tanagers. Yellow-headed Blackbird has nested here. Red-shouldered Hawk appears occasionally, while American Kestrel, Red-tail Hawk, Osprey, and Bald Eagle are expected. Another 0.5 mi NW on Broadacre is Force Lake, a good place to view migrant grebes, ducks, and shorebirds.”
At the EXPO center post-tour, there were a number of exhibits and groups showcasing topics related to Vanport, social & environmental justice, arts, and culture. The Vanport exhibit was a chance to explore many of the themes around Vanport flood, not just as a historical retrospective but as a way to use this to have new conversations around race. From the site:
“Join us for two weeks of memory activism opportunities, to explore and confront our local past and recent history of “othering” and its tragic consequences. Through exhibits, documentary screenings, tours, theater, and dialogues we will celebrate the lessons of resilience and resistance as defined and told by historically oppressed communities.”
“…it’s important to remember because I feel like we are experiencing yet another wave of collective historical and cultural amnesia.”
Vanport Spirit mural
Lots of interesting side stories, including learning more about Levee Ready Columbia, working to protect from flood risk in the context of development and climate change in the slough today, as well as finding all the ways to access some local waterways via the Columbia Slough Watershed Council’s ‘Paddlers Access Guide‘. From the artistic side, a few related events include a documentary of Portland stories around trees, Canopy Stories, and a cool project exploring stores of place through music from the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble “From Maxville to Vanport”. Similar geography, the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center highlights a fascinating slice of Oregon history, and many other stories can be found via the Oregon Heritage Tradition, which “recognizes events that are more than 50 years old, reflect Oregon’s unique character, and have become associated with what it means to be an Oregonian.” Lots more folks at the event, so this is just a snapshot of a few.
Additional Stories
For a more permanent look at some of the art that looks back at Vanport, you take the yellow line north and stop at the Delta Park/Vanport MAX Light Rail Station. From the TriMet site outlining the Public Art on the Yellow Line, there are a number of elements that reference Vanport. Artist Linda Wysong was the primary creator of this stations installation, built in 2004. Elements include foundation remnants embedded in sidewalk, and a range of other specific elements.
These mosaic tile (the original Vanport Mosaic?) of community maps overlay the current Delta Park site onto the city grid of Vanport. Another map shows local river context within the location of the station.
Vanport MosaicClose-up of Mosaic
There are also these beautiful bronze railings, which are a nice touchand easy to miss if you’re not looking, featuring “cast artifacts from the Chinookan culture, Vanport and the Portland International Raceway.”
Bronze railingClose-up of artifacts
Another piece that slipped my attention was some “CorTen steel sculptures recall rooftops adrift in the 1948 floodwaters”. There are also works by Douglas Lynch and Timothy Scott Dalbow are reproduced in porcelain enamel on steel, and “…a cast-bronze scupper channels stormwater into the bioswale below.” Lots I missed as it also seems like there an adjacent water quality pond a sculpture called “Waterlines” which had “Massive steel arcs allude to the engineered landscape and Liberty ships made by Vanport residents” as well as a “glowing monolith of stone, steel and acrylic symbolizes the unity of human and natural worlds.” Guess I need to make another visit.
The stories of Vanport are told in multiple locations, with the help of groups like Vanport Mosaic and local artists. However, as mentioned in the OPB story, our “collective amnesia” about historical events, especially those that involve racial inequities and displacement, requires us to first understand and next confront these narratives. As I talked with people around Portland, it was a mixed bag of whether people even knew about Vanport (many had not) or had any real knowledge of the significant (many, myself included, had not). Hopefully the Vanport Mosaic Festival continues, and energy around more ways to discuss, celebrate, and interpret this spatially, so that these hidden histories and made more visible and persist.
HEADER: Force Lake – image by Jason King (all images in post by Jason King unless otherwise noted).
I’ve been wanting to write this one for a bit, as I often stumble upon interesting articles that veer widely away from the core subject matter but still have a resonance with the hidden hydrology project (or at least my expansive view of it). While cosmic in nature, are there clues to be gleaned from other worlds and applied to our planet that can inform our relationship with water? Even if not, if you’re interested in water, it’s pretty fun to explore the most distant and hidden hydrological processes, even in brief, from the Moon, Mars, and some of the interstellar stories around our solar system.
CLOSE TO HOME: MOON
Our Moon is unique is having been studied extensively, and due to proximity, having had humans visit and walk on the surface. There has been speculation on water on the Moon, and when viewed from afar, a long history of people seeing ‘rivers’ on the moon. These may be features like this depression, seen here via the Earth Science Picture of the Day, showing Rima Hadley, “…an ancient rille… [which] may be the remnant of a collapsed lava tube. Lava from an erupting fissure may assume drainage patterns similar to overland water flow.”
More recent work is augmenting these hydrological stories with data about the actual presence of water. Some of this, via Express: “NASA’S scientists have found proof to suggest surface waters on the Moon have been hidden in plain sight for decades, according to a shocking lunar meteor impact study.” The water vapor released by the impacts explains a bit of the mystery of water on the Moon, which accumulates at the polar caps, which had been posited to have come from other sources like solar winds. The water vapor lasted a short time, which is indicative of the relatively small amounts of lunar water, around 200-500 parts per million. Or, by another measure, per the article: “It is so dry that one would need to process more than a metric ton of regolith in order to collect 16 ounces of water.“
RED PLANET/BLUE PLANET: MARS
Similarly, the presence of subsurface water is also changing our perceptions of Mars. Most recently, a parade of articles discussed evidence of, water on the red planet, with some speculating on this a proof of alien life, others speculating about gushing rivers that were wider than the Mississippi. The consistent theme as mentioned in the Independent, is the presence of “…a vast and active system of water running underneath the surface of Mars.” While it is broadly a reference to our further our understanding of Mars as a planet, scientists say it could also yield some clues for Earth hydrology, as it is speculated that the water was coming from “a deep pressurized source from where water is pushed up.” This is a similar to desert systems here on our planet.
From the image above: “The bright top line represents the icy surface of Mars in this region. The south polar layered deposits – layers of ice and dust – are seen to a depth of about 1.5 km. Below is a base layer that in some areas is brighter than the surface reflections, highlighted in blue, while in other places is rather diffuse. The details of the reflected signals from the base layer yield properties that correspond to liquid water. “
Analysis of the specifics show the water ‘carving’ the landscape, and creating valleys, with additional topographic analysis revealing complex watershed on the surfaces.
” This colour-coded topographic view shows the relative heights of the terrain in and around the network of dried-up valleys on Mars. Lower parts of the surface are shown in blues and purples, while higher altitudes show up in whites, yellows, and reds, as indicated on the scale to the top right. ” via Independent
A similar story from Space.com explains the theories that “Mars Had Big Rivers for Billions of Years“, which discusses the persistence of flows after loss of atmosphere, up until a billion years ago. Scientists conducted: “a global survey of Mars’ ancient waterways, characterizing more than 200 such systems using imagery and other data captured from orbit. They derived age estimates for these rivers by counting craters in the surrounding terrain. The team’s work suggests that Martian rivers flowed intermittently but intensely over much of the planet’s 4.5-billion-year history, driven by precipitation-fed runoff. The rivers’ impressive width — in many cases, more than twice that of comparable Earth catchments — is a testament to that intensity. It’s unclear how much water Martian rivers carried, because their depth is hard to estimate. Determining depth generally requires up-close analysis of riverbed rocks and pebbles, Kite said, and such work has only been done in a few locations on Mars, such as Gale Crater, which NASA’s Curiosity rover has been exploring since 2012.”
There are also lakes, which are indicated by reflectivity, adjacent to larger areas of frozen ice near the poles of Mars. The Guardian, from a 2018 article “Mars: huge underground lake raises prospects of life on planet, astronomers say.” which makes the connection not to Martians in the sci-fi sense, but rather to the conditions for simple life forms:
“It is the first time that researchers have identified a stable body of liquid water on the red planet. The finding raises the likelihood that any microbial life that arose on Mars may continue to eke out a rather bleak existence deep beneath the surface. “
A deeper dive worth reading is also this article from published in the Planetary Society in 2017, “Unraveling a Martian enigma: The hidden rivers of Arabia Terra” which provide more investigation of remnant traces of what may be “Mars’ largest flood plain”.
Speculation on the climate of Mars as potentially hotter and wetter, which may . The author posits that frozen ice sheets in the northern segments regularly thawed from heating events, and this liquid water would flow and create river systems. Strangely enough, these former rivers express themselves in inverted channels, which are described below:
“A river preserved as a ridge seems like a bit of a paradox, but inverted channels are fairly common on Mars. They occur when the river sediment within the channel becomes resistant to erosion (this can happen chemically, due to interaction with water, or by the deposition of large pebbles and boulders within the channel). Once the channel ceases to flow, the material adjacent to the channel—perhaps flood plain deposits—gets eroded at a faster rate than the channel, leaving the channel upstanding in the landscape. Inverted channels are also found in desert environments on the Earth, such as in Oman or Utah, where low rates of erosion can aid with their preservation. “
Inverted channel on Mars (Aram Dorsum) – via Planetary.orgInverted channel on Earth (Green River, Utah) – via Planetary.org
EUROPA SPACE GEYSERS: JUPITER
The beauty of these flows are represented similarly on Europa, a moon of Jupiter that has had an icy surface that shows a varying mosaic on its surface. From CNET: “New analysis of measurements taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft over 20 years ago provides more evidence that water from an ocean beneath Europa’s icy shell is shooting out into space via at least one large geyser.” The story goes on to add:
“Europa’s hidden waters have become a prime target in the search for extraterrestrial life…”
The layering of imagery from Galileo from 1997, combined with more detailed analysis. Below, the striations and flows are highlighted, and in the second shown with “The blue-white terrains indicate relatively pure water ice, whereas the reddish areas contain water ice mixed with hydrated salts, potentially magnesium sulfate or sulfuric acid.”
The space geysers are also reinforced with more recent views from the Hubble Telescope, which has necessitated a future mission to gather more info. A recent fly-by by Cassini of Saturn, which has moons of similar type with a large under-ice ocean, has also led to even alien life. This combination of heated water under ice, in a interstellar ocean of Europa, and a similar Saturn moon, Enceladus, could, as posited here, also be the building blocks for life on other planets.
RAIN ON TITAN: SATURN
Beyond Mars and the Moon, more distant planets also have also liquid stories. A 2017 article in Universe Today, pointed out that Titan, the largest moon of Saturn “…is the only other world in our Solar System that has stable liquid on its surface.” This liquid surface is not water, but made up of methane and ethane, along with nitrogen, and the Cassini mission provided interesting info on the constantly fluctuating surface, including a disappearing and reappearing island, along with speculation of wave action. It’s also pretty interesting to note that there is precipitation as well:
On Titan, it rains. But the rain is composed of extremely cold methane. As that methane falls to the surface, it absorbs significant amounts of nitrogen from the atmosphere. The rain hits Titan’s surface and collects in the lakes on the moon’s polar regions.
This is most evident in polar lakes, referred to as ‘mare‘, from the latin for sea, which, like the moon, reference their being seen as water bodies similar to earth.
Ligeia Mare, a large polar water body on Titan – image via Universe Today
To take this idea to the logical extreme, a map of the Ligeia Mare with the adjacent drainage shows that hydrology (In this case not hidden, just very distance), whether it be Earth-based on a distant moon of Saturn, and consisting of water or a brew of methane, still follows those similar characteristics of gravity, topography, and flow.
A Map of Ligeia Mare by an amateur cartographer (Peter Minton) – via Wikipedia
HEADER: Image of Mars taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express satellite show the marks that an ancient network of rivers have left on the planet’s surface – via Independent
