YOU TAKE THE HIGHLINE AND I'LL TAKE THE LOW

Around 1905, what was then the American Falls Canal was still trying, after ten years, to finish its path from Blackfoot to American Falls. Just north of Grandview was a crucial drainage that required 3/4 of a mile of fill material to move water from one high spot to the next. Initially, the planners considered a wooden flume, then later a steel flume, before settling for soil as a conduit to continue the canal's path. It took two years and likely over a million horse-hours to do the job. The area was also a natural drainage, once thought to be a fifteen mile spring until settlers had enough experience to know the water was just runoff from desert snows. That natural drainage, though, would provide part of the path for the Lowline Canal which diverted from the main canal. It's a thirty foot drop, as you can see in the picture above.

The gravel needed for the cement for this drop was hauled by wagon from Landon Rich's property south of Springfield—not far from where what is now called Crystal Springs now dumps into the reservoir and where county residents, until the late 1960s, once dumped their trash.