Coso Bridge-Aqueduct
About
A very recent (March 2026) find at the corner of Coso and Calle Espartero: a concrete arcade that carried Huerva river water across the old Coso ravine into the colony while also functioning as a bridge. Press coverage dates it to the colony's earliest decades (roughly Augustan-Tiberian). Flagged low confidence — the identification is preliminary, not yet peer-reviewed, no source gives precise coordinates beyond the street corner, and no disuse date is known.
What happened here
Water arrives day and night and never stops. The channel runs mostly underground, following a shallow gradient measured out with a levelling instrument over tens of miles, and it goes up on arches only where the ground drops away. Inspection shafts sit at intervals; gangs work the line constantly, cutting out the lime crust that thickens on the walls and narrows the flow. At the town end the water is divided in a distribution tank — public fountains first by law, then baths, then private houses whose owners have paid for a pipe of a fixed and stamped size. Illegal tappings are a permanent scandal. What arrives is not stored but runs continuously, and the overflow flushes the drains.
Sources
Nearby
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