Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/104

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100
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Outline Map showing Alternative Lines studied as Possible Crossings of the Hudson River.

New York City will be eighteen miles long. The Ashokan reservoir is at a sufficient elevation to permit water to flow down to the Hill View reservoir, but a number of valleys and streams must be crossed, the most striking, from the point of view of the outsider at least, being the gorge of the Hudson River. More than two hundred borings were made at various points, and it was finally decided to construct the aqueduct under the Hudson between Storm King and Breakneck mountains at the north entrance to the Highlands.

It would be possible to bring the water in iron pipes through the mud and silt, as has been done in the case of. the Pennsylvania Railway in New York City, but a tunnel through the rock will give great strength and permanence. The accompanying illustration shows the borings which have been made at Storm King, revealing the extraordinary depth of the Hudson gorge. It has been known through the maps of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey that the Hudson River is continued by a submerged gorge more a hundred miles across the continental shelf to the deep sea. This gorge at its deepest part is 3,800 feet in depth, and must apparently have been formed

General location Map of the Southern Aqueduct and Associated Parts of the Catskill Supply.