Welcome to the Brooks Aqueduct

In the early 1900s, the Canadian Pacific Railroad began a huge irrigation project in Alberta comprising over a million hectares, or 3 million acres, and part of this original block land grant to the railway is now known as the Eastern Irrigation District. The Bassano Dam and the Brooks Aqueduct were two of the major engineering works needed to bring the eastern section of the CPR's project into operation. An elevated canal was required to carry Bow River water across a wide but shallow valley to supply irrigation for nearly one quarter of the land within what would become the Eastern Irrigation District. Construction of the Brooks Aqueduct began in 1912, was completed in the fall of 1914, and carried irrigation water in the spring of 1915. Stretching over three kilometers, it was the longest concrete structure of its kind in the world and included the technical innovation of an inverted siphon that carried water under the CPR mainline track and back up to grade. Although the aqueduct carried water for 63 years, rising maintenance costs and recurring operational problems led the Eastern Irrigation District to replace it with a more efficient earthen canal in 1979. The Brooks Aqueduct was designated a Provincial Historic Resource in 1980, a National Historic Site in 1983, and in 1987 was declared one of ten engineering milestones in Alberta by the Engineering Centennial.

Alberta · Canada