Creek Crossing

Drycreek

Well-Known Member
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Since I can't tell one deer from another, (refer to Same Deer 2016 to 2018 thread), I thought I would just show y'all what I did in my spare time today.

First, I need to tell you that I didn't think to take before pics, my bad ! However, I have provided a visual aid where your imagination can serve to do what I did not. I have five creek crossings on my place, one of which is a concreted crossing that was there when I bought the place. This is a seasonal creek, probably running 9/10 months a year normally. The rest I built myself and all but this one are low water crossings undercut to hard ground, rip-rap rock (9"/12") up to about a foot under the stream bed, then topped out with oversize rock (3"/5"). All rock was walked in with my Caterpillar D5C dozer. It was then topped with fine iron ore gravel that is native to my place. This gives a smooth riding surface. The water runs at the original level. This particular crossing is not made like the others. For some reason I thought it would be nice to hold a little water in the creek for a hundred yards or so, mainly because I like to see wood ducks, and they did frequent the pool that formed. Trouble is, the beavers like it also ! The little creek has a helluva watershed evidently because a 3" rain will have it out of the banks, and I had trouble with my rock washing away. I took my backhoe and drug the rock back from below a half dozen times or more, then decided to fence it with a pipe fence. I used 8 5/8" oilfield casing about four layers deep (horizontally) with 4" pipe driven vertically downstream but against the casing to hold the "fence" in place. It worked pretty well until early fall of this year when we had 11" of rain in about a week.

Now, to the visual aids:) In the pic you will see a red half circle. This was mostly dirt and a LARGE hole was washed out by the flood waters. I lucked up on a place that rails in commercial rock and they had a large pile of demo concrete from various demo jobs in town. They are giving it away to get it gone ! Game on !;) I found a trucker who would haul it, and I put three 12 yd. loads in it plus I topped it out with oversized limestone. The yellow arrow points to the top rail on my pipe "fence". The top is a tad rough to travel, but what the hell, I have a contract to sell the place and we close in a couple weeks.

I just couldn't go off and leave the new owner with a big hole that wasn't there when he first looked at the place and committed to buy it. We are forecast another flood over the next three days.:(

I hope it holds !:D
 
So was the "wash-out" from water coming up and over your crossing? I assume you have culvert pipes or something under all that stone to allow the water to pass... I had an issue some time ago where I had a culvert fail that went under the country road on my place. Made one heck of a mess...it chewed one heck of a trench right through the gravel road bed once the water pushed the pipe out the other end!
 
So was the "wash-out" from water coming up and over your crossing? I assume you have culvert pipes or something under all that stone to allow the water to pass... I had an issue some time ago where I had a culvert fail that went under the country road on my place. Made one heck of a mess...it chewed one heck of a trench right through the gravel road bed once the water pushed the pipe out the other end!

The washout occurred because the pipe was unlevel causing the water to be deeper on the end where the backhoe sits. That directed the deepest flow to that side. There was also a projection of the creek bank that caused the water to swirl at that point, especially after it got a little hole started. The creek then makes a 90* turn to the East which compounded the whole vortex thing in the creek. Each successive rain caused it to get larger and it kept undercutting the bank. What you can't see are two 48" concrete culvert joints that are sitting upright and filled with wet gravel and mud and somewhat pushed into the bottom of the creek. These will serve to keep the bank from sloughing off again, (along with the broken concrete rip-rap). I also leveled the top pipe so that the water will run off somewhat (if not perfectly) level.

There are no culverts under the rock, the water flows over the crossing, hence the name "low water crossing". If I had left it much longer, it would have been a
"no crossing crossing" !:(
 
I looked at my crossing this morning, and it appeared that last night's rain pushed about 15"/18" of water across it. It held up really well ! I drove the backhoe across and detected no holes in the crossing. There was only about 8" of water running this morning and it has washed just a little of the dirt off in the original washout location. All the chunky concrete however was still where I placed it. I think it will be ok !

I'll be going Wednesday to tear down and move my hog trap and maybe think to snap a pic or two with little to no water running over.
 
image.jpeg Went back to my soon-to-belong-to-somebody-else place today and snapped this pic of the crossing. Seems to be in great shape except for mud on the approaches, which happens every time we get a flood. When it dries out a little I just rake the mud off and carry on. There was at least 2' of water running over it at the peak flow. I'm pleased !
 
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