The Los Angeles Aqueducts

The Los Angeles Aqueducts:
Los Angeles has one of the most cool looking Aqueduct systems in the world. In the city itself the rivers flow through a concrete channel on a fixed course. This canal system forms one of Los Angeles most important city features and is wel known all over the world. There are 2 big river cannals running trough Los Angeles; the Los Angeles river, and the San Gabriel River. The Los Angeles river starts here, and runs as 1 river canal until this point (After this point it splits up in 2 canals). This river canal gives Los Angeles it's famous urban features:






In the dry season when no water is flowing trough the canal it becomes a recreation area:

The San Gabriel River is the other big river canal running trough Los Angeles. It starts here and runs in it it's concrete structure until here. This river canal is also the most spectacular one because at certain points it is almost 100 meters broad. This picture below was made after a winter storm. As you can see the water of this river is not very clean:


These rivers were the primary source of water of Los Angeles until the Los Angeles aqueducts were build. Although the Los Angeles region still gets some of its water from the river and other local sources, most comes from several aqueducts serving the area. The aqueducts deliver water from the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains into the city of Los Angeles. Most of these aquaducts consists of pipe lines running hundreds of miles trough the landscape. From time to time these pipe lines have to deal with very high mountain hills. The most spectacular of these "syphons" is at Jawbone Canyon. In the picture below you can see the water running up a very steep hill in this Jawbone Canyon:


The end of the aqueduct is a familiar site for LA commuters. Here you can see the original "cascades" which sometimes has water running down from it. This was the original outflow from the aqueduct: