Riding the Flume: The Most Dangerous Fun Boulder Creek Ever Invented
For ten years Boulder Creek had a water slide to Felton, and the town could not resist it.
The San Lorenzo Valley flume was built to move lumber: a V-shaped wooden trough on trestles carrying moving water from a headworks two miles north of town down to the railhead at Felton. Its length is disputed, nine miles by Robinson's research and about fourteen by the surveyor's own 1875 figure. It did that job from 1875 until the mid-1880s, and our flume history tells that story. This is the other story, the one about what people did with a ribbon of fast water running through their valley: they rode it.
The boats
Almost as soon as the flume opened, riding it in makeshift boats became a local pastime. Local historian Lisa Robinson's history of the flume for the San Lorenzo Valley Museum, The San Lorenzo Valley Flume (3rd edition, 2025), reproduces a photograph of a rider seated in one of these little craft (p. 41), her companion standing on the walkway beside her in a derby hat, starched shirt, and three-piece suit. Nobody dressed down for it. A flume ride was an occasion.
The flume company itself used the water the same way. When its mill camp moved, the crew loaded tents, mattresses, bunks, and blankets into boxes and floated the whole camp downstream. Charles Brimblecom, whose 1875 diary is one of the few day-by-day records of the flume era, watched it happen that May and noted the crew got their boxes too close together, dammed up the water, and nearly stranded their own household goods (Robinson, p. 43). His diary reaches us through Robinson's reproductions rather than the original, as do the newspaper reports quoted further down. He wasn't too worried to enjoy it: "After a while the stove came down in fine style though I did not see that."
Riding wasn't simple even when it worked. At two places, road bridges crossed the flume low enough that a rider couldn't pass under them. The move, Robinson records (p. 43), was to jump out of the boat, sprint across the bridge, and jump back into the moving boat on the far side. There's no record of how often that maneuver failed, which is probably for the best.
The plank walkers
The flume's official foot traffic was the flume walkers, men employed to patrol the line with a stick and break up lumber jams. The V-shape did some of the work on its own, since water backing up behind a jam rose and lifted the boards free, but the walkers were the insurance. The walkway they patrolled was a plank about ten inches wide, sometimes running along trestlework high above the canyon floor (Robinson, p. 45).
In winter the walkers had company they never asked for. The valley's roads churned into knee-deep mud, and ordinary people walking between Boulder Creek and Felton found the flume's ten-inch plank preferable to the road. Brimblecom did it himself and recorded how close it came to going wrong. Crossing high trestlework one wet December Sunday in 1875, he watched his companion nearly go over the edge: "quick as a flash, Harmon's foot slipped and he went down on his knees partly on and partly off the flume," the diary reads. The man caught himself between the board and the trough. They took the road after that.
What it cost
Not everyone caught themselves. Brimblecom recorded a man killed falling from the flume near Felton. A letter in the Santa Cruz Sentinel of January 29, 1876, reported that James Nichols "had crossed the river, and was nearly off the trestle work when he fell." French John was a real man who lived near Lorenzo, and the crossing carried his name.
Two months later the flume lost one of its own superintendents. The Sentinel of 25 March 1876 reported that on the Monday morning before, about five o'clock, Thomas M. Lilly fell from the flume "a distance of about ninety-five feet, and was almost instantly killed, his neck being broken and the skull severely fractured." Nobody found him for a day. The body "not discovered until the next morning, although a man was working all day over the spot where the body lay, was in a half-sitting position, and a number of letters and papers that had been in the coat pocket of the deceased, were scattered on the ground in the vicinity where he lay."
Lilly was not a lumberman. The Sacramento Daily Union of 22 March 1876 carried a wire report from San Jose with the rest of him, though it gives the fall as nine feet against the Santa Cruz paper's ninety-five, and we follow the local report. He had been county assessor over in Santa Clara County, and before that a contractor and builder who served as head foreman on the construction of the State Normal School; he was also known around San Jose as a trainer and driver of trotting stock. He was a native of Pennsylvania, about forty-seven, and left a wife and one son. His lodge brothers buried him in San Jose. Captain Howe was appointed temporary superintendent of the flume to fill the vacancy.
The protest came from Boulder Creek. A correspondent writing from the town on 21 March 1876, in the same issue that carried the death, said the community had been "startled to-day by the sad news," and then put the case plainly: "It is to be hoped that this sad occurrence will cause the Flume Co. to realize that a walk ten inches wide, without railing or guard, over trestle-work ninety feet high, is not just the thing for its employees to be compelled to cross over daily." That is a Boulder Creek voice asking for a handrail, in print, in 1876.
Robinson also recounts two boys' accidents (p. 47). In September 1880, a fourteen-year-old named Kennedy was reported to have shot himself when the gun he was using as a walking stick slipped. An initial report said he had died; a later one suggested he might recover. In March 1883, twelve-year-old Joseph W. Kean reportedly fell fifty feet from the flume but was not badly injured. We have located these accounts in Robinson's book, but not their original newspaper reports.
The men who knew it best
Robinson names a few of the walkers (p. 47). Scott Taylor served as flume foreman. Robert Cowen, a Scot who spent more than forty years as a lumberman, walked the line. William H. Dool went from patrolling the flume's planks to serving as a warden at Big Basin.
Why there's nothing left to ride
The flume's working life ended in stages. The stretch from Lorenzo down to Felton sent its last load in May 1885 and came apart as the railroad advanced up the valley. The Brimblecom account journals record the family's last flume shipments in early February 1888 (Robinson, p. 57); that record does not establish the flume-wide last use. The redwood planks were pulled apart and reused in local construction, so the flume didn't vanish so much as dissolve into the valley's buildings. Our flume history covers the full arc, and the history timeline places it among everything else the 1880s threw at this town.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did people really ride the lumber flume?
Yes. Riding the flume in makeshift boats became a popular pastime almost as soon as it opened in 1875, documented in photographs the San Lorenzo Valley Museum holds.
How dangerous was it?
Deadly. Newspaper reports describe James Nichols and superintendent Thomas M. Lilly dying in falls from the flume in 1876; they do not establish that either man was riding a boat. Robinson also recounts two boys' accidents in 1880 and 1883, but says the boy who fell in 1883 was not badly injured. We have not located the original newspaper reports for those two accounts.
What was a flume walker?
An employee who patrolled the flume on a ten-inch-wide plank, carrying a stick to break up lumber jams. In winter, ordinary travelers used the same planks to avoid muddy roads, which the flume company never intended.
Where did the flume run?
The length is disputed: nine miles in Lisa Robinson's research and about fourteen miles in the surveyor's 1875 figure. It ran from a headworks about two miles north of Boulder Creek down the San Lorenzo Valley to the railhead at Felton.
Can I see any of it today?
No section of the flume survives in place. Its lumber was reused in valley buildings after dismantling. The San Lorenzo Valley Museum keeps photographs and the research that this article draws on.
The San Lorenzo Valley flume covers the engineering and the business behind these stories. If your family kept an account of the flume that we have not seen, we would like to read it.
Sources
- Lisa Robinson, The San Lorenzo Valley Flume (San Lorenzo Valley Museum, 3rd edition, 2025), pages 41, 43, 45, 47 and 57.
- Santa Cruz Sentinel (Weekly), 29 January 1876, page 3.
- Santa Cruz Sentinel (Weekly), 25 March 1876, page 3.
- Sacramento Daily Union, 22 March 1876.
- San Lorenzo Valley Museum.
Link checked 16 August 2026.
