Williams Community Forest Project

Layton Ditch Headworks (Southwest Oregon) 08-Feb-2022

2022-02-082022-02-09Posted in Other Adventures, Southern OregonTagged BLM, Bureau of Land Management, Day Hiking, Hiking, Layton Mine Ditch Oregon, Layton Mine Oregon, Pipe Fork Oregon, Southern Oregon, Williams Community Forest Project, Williams Oregon8 Comments

Between 1874 and 1877, Chinese laborers hand dug a 21-mile (34 km) long ditch to bring water from the Pipe Fork of the East Fork of Williams Creek to J.T. Layton’s hydraulic gold mines in Bamboo and Ferris Gulches. Although profitable (not something you can say for most mines around here), the gold-bearing alluvium feeding these mines eventually played-out. So, by the 1920s, this ditch (and others like it) had been abandoned and mostly forgotten. But its alignment and the ditch tender trail next to it remained. Then the restoration of the Sterling Mine Ditch Trail in the mid-2000s showed how these old ditches could become highly popular hiking and riding venues. For the Layton Ditch, the Williams Community Forest Project teamed with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to restore 13 miles of it as a hiking and riding trail. 😃

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Up the Fork Without a Pipe (Williams, Oregon) 10-Mar-2018

2018-03-102022-01-30Posted in Hiking, Oregon, Southern OregonTagged Applegate River Oregon, Applegate Valley Oregon, Day Hiking, Hiking, Layton Mine Ditch Oregon, Layton Mine Oregon, Oregon, Southern Oregon, Williams Community Forest Project, Williams Oregon

In March of last year, we hiked the recently restored Layton Mine Ditch Trail north from Panther Gap Road to the Chinese Wall. Then, this January, I hiked the ditch from the gap south to its end at the head of the East Fork of Williams Creek. The ditch ends about 120 feet above the creek and it wasn’t immediately obvious how the miners got water from the creek up into the ditch. Post-hike research would reveal that they had installed a 600-foot long inverted siphon (in today’s terminology, a sag pipe) to carry water to the ditch from somewhere up the creek (today’s Pipe Fork). There’s no obvious sign today of headworks or pipe (which was 36 inch in diameter cast iron) at or near the ditch’s end. There may be remains of the siphon up the Pipe Fork. With that in mind, Hike #13 in Roether’s 2006 Williams Area Trail Guide seemed like one way to reconnoiter the drainage. So with The LovedOne away volunteering at the library, I soloed out to Pipe Fork to see what could be seen.

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Layton Ditch Trail South (Williams, Oregon) 31-Jan-2018

2018-01-312022-02-09Posted in Hiking, Oregon, Southern OregonTagged Applegate Valley Oregon, BLM, Bureau of Land Management, Day Hiking, Hiking, Layton Mine Ditch Oregon, Layton Mine Oregon, Oregon, Southern Oregon, Williams Community Forest Project, Williams Oregon3 Comments

In March of 2017, our search for a new (to us) low-altitude hike brought us to the Layton Mine Ditch Trail, recently restored through the efforts of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Williams Community Forest Project. At that time we did the 6-mile (roundtrip) hike north from Panther Gap along the remains of the ditch to the Chinese Wall – one of Williams’ most famous architectural structures. Although it is still a work in progress, I recently learned from the project’s Cheryl Bruner that the trail has been largely restored for the 7 miles south from Panther Gap to the ditch’s end at the head of the East Fork of Williams Creek. So, after waiting out some harsh weather and an even harsher bout with the flu, I finally got the chance to explore this part of the ditch trail. The LovedOne, still recovering from her flu experience, and behind on her library volunteerism, decided to take a pass on this one.

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Layton Ditch Trail North (Williams, Oregon) 08-Mar-2017

2017-03-082022-02-08Posted in Hiking, Oregon, Southern OregonTagged Applegate Valley Oregon, BLM, Bureau of Land Management, Climate City Brewing, Day Hiking, Hiking, Layton Mine Ditch Oregon, Layton Mine Oregon, Oregon, Southern Oregon, Williams Community Forest Project, Williams Oregon2 Comments

Oh, what an extravaganza of storms! Wave after wave after wave of moistness pouring over us, with only brief, usually sun-free, breaks to ease the sogginess. With one such break teed up for this morning, we searched (yet again) for a new (to us) low-altitude hike that we could fit into our allotted few hours of relative dryness. Our first thought was the well-known Sterling Mine Ditch Trail, which is a great trail, but one we’ve hiked many times before (post). We hit gold (pun intended) when Roether’s Williams Area Trail Guide (2006) pointed us toward a 6-mile (round-trip) hike along the remains of the Layton Mine Ditch, a similar, but much less well known, one than the Sterling. The Williams Community Forest Project has been doing the hard work of restoring the ditch trail as a hiking option. A hike north (from Panther Gap) on the Layton culminates at one of the Williams area’s most famous architectural structures – the Chinese Wall. A new hike into another piece of Southern Oregon’s history sounded ideal and so off we went!

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