Taking two years to construct and opening in August 1876, the Madera Sugar Pine Flume ran 52 miles from the Sugar Pine sawmill to the planing mill and railroad in Madera. This wooden flume transported lumber and loggers to Madera across deep canyons, streams, and mountainsides, an awesome engineering feat. It shut down in the 1890's, then was rebuilt and reopened in 1900. It survived until the Great Depression in 1933, and one of the few remaining pieces of the flume that began near here is still present.