This cache was placed for the BTK event June 2018
“They actually built a flume across one canyon and that’s why it is called Flume Canyon. The flume supported the water flow of the ditch and as it came down the street."
"It makes an abrupt change, turns back east and flows behind the Racquet Club and ultimately came out at a curve," Potter said. "I haven’t followed it past there. It may have gone to the old Wingfield Dairy run by Charles ‘C.W.’ Wingfield, the father of Ike Wingfield. He worked at the Old Mill." Ike Wingfield was Ruidoso's fourth mayor and built a general store.
The map doesn’t show the ditch continuing to the Old Mill on Sudderth Drive, but several historical documents talk about the old mill being fed from the original Wingfield Ditch and from the Carrizo Creek, Potter said
The ditch goes right by the Wingfield house built in 1929 by Ike and Lulu Wingfield. We can go back with this survey and with some help from (surveyors) can find exactly where they were irrigating alfalfa and corn and how big the (fields) were, if they want to explore it that far. I think it would be very interesting to document some of this."
"It looks like he irrigated about 25 acres, if you add up all the little parcels," Potter said. He thinks the site of the old post office near the entrance to Upper Canyon may have been an alfalfa field at one time. The important element was that the ditch could follow the path of least resistance allowing the water to flow with gravity. To facilitate that, at times, those digging had to "bench" the channel, Potter said. They would dig it out and build up the sides. Some of those areas still are visible, as well as a concrete structure with the initial "S" on it, which was the diversion.
The average person would never know the depressions in the earth used to be an irrigation ditch, but a historical marker could be placed, visible from the street to explain its significance, Potter said, adding, "I'd like to make a historical place for people to see throughout the town."