Brooks Aqueduct National Historic Site of Canada

The Brooks Aqueduct was designated a national historic site of Canada in 1983 because:

• constructed between 1912 and 1914 it was a major engineering feat, a reinforced concrete aqueduct over 3.1 kilometers in length featuring a catenary-shaped flume mounted on 1,030 columns, and an inverted siphon under the CPR main line.

The Brooks Aqueduct was constructed by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) between 1912 and 1914 as part of an extensive irrigation project intended to make land in the south-eastern region of Alberta suitable for farming. The aqueduct transported water from Lake Newell and the Bow River across a shallow valley running north to south in order to facilitate the irrigation of 55,000 hectares of land in the area east of Brooks. The structure was a major engineering achievement, and features a catenary-shaped flume mounted on 1,030 columns, and an inverted siphon to carry water under the CPR main line. When the Brooks Aqueduct was completed in 1914, it was the largest aqueduct of its type in the world, reaching over 3.1 kilometres in length. Stresses on the concrete from the freeze-thaw cycle, however, caused a deterioration of the aqueduct, which required annual repairs. In 1979, sixty-five years after its inauguration, a more efficient and larger capacity canal replaced the aqueduct.