I’m sure that one reason I find the North Fork Ditch remnants at Folsom Lake so fascinating is that their history goes all the way back to the mid 1850s. (Ditches were also constructed around the same period along both sides of the South Fork, but I’ve never seen the remains of these.) I’ve shot photos of bits and pieces of the ditch before — for example, at Avery’s Pond — but the shoreline between Horseshoe Bar and Rattlesnake Bar contains more sections of the NFD’s structure than any other place I’ve explored thus far.
Concrete remnant at Avery’s Pond, Rattlesnake Bar, April 2016
In the early 1910s it was determined that the North Fork Ditch was losing a substantial amount of water to leakage through the earth-lined canal. A program was put in place to line the entire ditch with concrete. It is the concrete lining that can be seen today when the lake is low — Kevin Knauss in Hidden History Beneath Folsom Lake
Long sections of the NFD now exist as a dirt trail
El Dorado Hills lies in the distance
