Earth Bridge

Maintenance Track Waterworks Valley - 2024 - © wainuiomata.net

An Earth Bridge on Maintenance Road allowed passage over the concrete raceway.

Along a short section of Maintenance Track a now abandoned section of Maintenance Road, there is an earth bridge. Likely constructed in the 1880s, this bridge provided passage above while protecting the buried water raceway beneath. This raceway was essentially a long buried culvert that channeled water from the dam to Colemans Tunnel.

Below the bridge wall, a swamp has formed where a hillside creek flows into it. It was long assumed that a drainage pipe existed to channel the creek beneath the bridge, but that it had become blocked, as evidenced by the silted pool of water that collected behind the earth bridge wall. In 2025, the outlet of this drainage pipe was discovered further down the hillside, revealing a brick facade.

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