The Gunnison Tunnel: Boring Five Miles Through a Mountain to Water a Valley
Near Ridgway, Colorado
The Uncompahgre Valley north of Ridgway is productive farmland today because of an engineering project that ranks among the most ambitious water works undertaken in the early twentieth century. By the eighteen nineties, farmers in the valley had recognized that the Uncompahgre River could not supply enough water to irrigate the arid plateau country. The solution required looking beyond the valley itself.
The Gunnison River, flowing through the Black Canyon to the east, carried far more water than the Uncompahgre. Separating the two rivers was a ridge of granite several miles wide. The United States Bureau of Reclamation, newly established under the Reclamation Act of nineteen oh two, took on the challenge of piercing that ridge.
Workers began drilling the Gunnison Tunnel in nineteen oh five. The tunnel extended five point eight miles through solid rock, one of the longest irrigation tunnels in the United States at the time of its completion. Workers drilled from both ends simultaneously, advancing through the rock with compressed-air drills and dynamite.
The two bore headings met with an alignment precision that impressed engineers worldwide. The tunnel was completed in nineteen oh nine, and President William Howard Taft traveled to Montrose, just north of Ridgway, to formally open it, calling it a signal achievement of the federal reclamation program. The Gunnison Tunnel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been designated an American Society of Civil Engineers Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.
The water it delivers transformed the Uncompahgre Valley into productive agricultural land and made possible the farming communities that still define the landscape between Ridgway and Delta.
