Tower a remnant of irrigation system
A hundred years ago there were fruit orchards throughout Spokane Valley.
They’re gone now, but in the brief period when they flourished, it was largely thanks to the irrigation system known as the Liberty Lake Canal. That’s gone now, too, but there are a few remainders and reminders in the form of unearthed ceramic pipes and concrete-lined sections that pop up here and there along the northwest route between the lake and Greenacres.
Probably the most visible artifact of the system is an incongruous-looking structure along the south side of Interstate 90 between Sullivan and Flora roads. The 18-foot-high Liberty Lake Canal surge tower looks something like a square-sided concrete pouring spout, which is pretty much what it was in its heyday.
The tower served as a pressure release outlet for the underground irrigation system. If the volume of water was too great or the flow too rapid, it could damage the system. But with a pipe or tower open to the underground system, the water could harmlessly surge up the tower and over the lip, spilling harmlessly on the ground.
The fledgling orchard industry of the early 1900s needed a plentiful supply of fresh water to help the fruit trees survive in Spokane Valley’s gravelly soil, and it depended on open ditch canals to deliver the water, primarily from Liberty Lake. In 1901, the Liberty Lake Canal was put in by the Spokane Valley Land and Water Co. – an unlined canal that was built on a grade too high to guarantee a regular flow of water, according to a cultural resources report prepared in 2006 by Archaeological and Historical Services at Eastern Washington University in advance of the state Department of Transportation’s freeway widening project between Sullivan and Barker roads.
The canal was reconfigured and lined with concrete, but it never did provide an adequate water supply to Greenacres, the report states. A well was added in 1920, and a few years later, farms in the area were connected to an irrigation system which drew water from the Spokane River. Even so, the fruit industry failed and was replaced by commercial and residential development and other forms of agriculture.
However, the report notes that the canal itself may have been used into the 1950s, much of it underground, but was pretty much abandoned by the 1960s.
But the abandoned the Liberty Lake Canal surge tower is still standing amid the shrubbery adjacent to I-90, mostly unnoticed, a commemorative signpost for early Spokane Valley agricultural irrigation.