Zanja

Crafton, California - History
1857, they decided to move upstream along the community aqueduct (called the zanja, Spanish for ditch) in order to gain more milling power from the water flow ... intelligent and energetic, had begun to divert too much water from the zanja which carried water from Mill Creek ... time by Crafts, for the purpose of once more defining his right to water in the zanja ...

Zanja Madre - Origins
... The Zanja Madre was placed at a location close to present-day Broadway Street at the foot of the Elysian Hills by the river ... large water wheel, constructed in the 1850s, took water up to the Zanja Madre and onto the main brick reservoir that was located in what is now the Plaza at the end of Olvera Street ... Thus the Zanja Madre only refers to that single ditch portion which flows down from the river along an elevated slope which borders on the northeast of the train yards ...

Zanja Madre - Later Improvements
... since 1878 that several improvements would have to be done to the zanja¹ systems ... In 1888 the city planned to put pipe in most of the existing zanjas, but budgetary shortfalls did not allow the work to be finished ... The tunnel at the headwater of the Zanja Madre was reconstructed and much of the conduit was either brick or concrete lined ...

Zanja Madre - Archaeological Finds
... In 1978 archaeologist Julia Costello discovered a portion of the Zanja Madre during construction of the Plaza de Dolores ... In 2000 two people allegedly dug up a section of the Zanja on the steep slope near a Broadway parking garage and were credited by the L.A ... Weekly and Los Angeles Times as having discovered the Zanja, but as it turned out later, they had merely come across the well-known brick "bulge" between the parking garage and the UP paint barn while trespassing ...