The China Ditch was built by Chinese miners sometime between 1860 and 1880 to carry water from a diversion point three miles up the Methow River for sluicing gold from Columbia River sandbars a mile or two downstream. After the Chinese moved on, settlers used the ditch to irrigate orchards along the Methow and Columbia Rivers until a 1948 flood destroyed two miles of canal and flume. By then, the China Ditch had produced a far greater value in apples than it ever had in gold.