. UNDERGROUND WATER. 
235 
TUNNEL DRAINAGE. 
Although not driven for drainage purposes, the Blue Bell tunnel, near Ana¬ 
conda, is of interest as being the first of the Cripple Creek workings to encounter 
water. This tunnel, which enters in granite at an elevation of 9,335 feet, or about 
15 feet below what seems to have been the average elevation of the original water 
surface in this part of the district, had a maximum flow of 200 gallons a minute. 
Water was issuing from this tunnel in 1894, when Penrose visited it, and the flow 
persisted for several years. The extent to which the Blue Bell tunnel lowered the 
original ground-water surface in the western part of the district, before water was 
reached a year or two later in shafts, can not be determined. Its effect, however, 
was probably slight. 
The Ophelia tunnel enters the granite at the west base of Gold Hill at an 
elevation of 9,268 feet. In December, 1896, this tunnel was 2,600 feet in length, 
with a discharge estimated at from 2,000 to 2,100 gallons a minute. Practically 
all of this water came from the breccia, which the tunnel entered about this time, 
or from open fissure zones that were evidently connected with the main volcanic 
neck. The tunnel maintained this flow for over a year, becoming dry in 1898, 
when the Standard tunnel began to drain the district. 
The Standard tunnel, begun in January, 1896, has its portal in the granite 
of Gold Run, west of Beacon Hill, at an elevation of 9,027 feet. Its objective 
point was not the main volcanic neck, but the phonolite plug of Beacon Hill. In 
February, 1896, the tunnel cut the El Paso vein, whence issued a flow of 250 gallons 
a minute. The water became more abundant as the contact between the granite 
and phonolite was approached, and in 1898, when the phonolite was reached, 
the flow amounted to 1,000 gallons a minute. This rapidly increased as the tunnel 
penetrated the phonolite and in 1899 the maximum flow of from 12,000 to 18,000 
gallons a minute was attained. Work was finally abandoned in June, 1899, when 
the tunnel had been driven 2,800 feet. By the end of 1901 the tunnel was dry, 
having lowered the water levels in the Beacon Hill, Gold Hill, and Raven Hill 
mines, and probably also, to a less recognizable extent, those of the mines in the 
eastern part of the district. 
The Newell tunnel enters Grouse Hill from Arequa Gulch, its portal being at 
an elevation of 8,930 feet. It has not reached the Beacon Hill phonolite nor the 
main volcanic neck, and although its face is 119 feet lower than that of the Standard 
tunnel, it has never encountered any important flow of water. 
The El Paso tunnel, the lowest and most recent drainage tunnel in the district, 
has its portal at an elevation of 8,783 feet, on Cripple Creek, just below the mouth 
of Arequa Gulch and a little less than a mile southwest of the El Paso shaft, with 
which it connects. Work was begun on this tunnel in January, 1903, and on 
September 6 of the same year connection was completed with the lowest level of 
the El Paso mine. 
