When the miners and pioneers first arrived in the West, iron and other metals were scarce. They turned to wood for piping. One man whose name has been lost over time made a living traveling with a portable lathe auger all over Siskiyou County, Calif.
He cut to length straight, wooden poles up to 10 feet long. The lathe auger could bore 10-foot lengths of pipe with an inside dimension of up to four inches. To make the pipe on site, the operator placed a pole on the lathe and bored a hole through it.
Wooden pipes, coupled together with a metal joint that looked like a hub, stretched out to several hundred feet, transporting water from source to destination.
Many years later, Siskiyou County ranchers found obsolete couplings on their property. The Forest House near Yreka was one of the ranches that used a lot of wood piping, delivering water to irrigate trees and plants in an enormous orchard and garden. Visitors were amazed by the amount of water transported across the historic property.
Source: Burton, Fred W. "The Pipe Maker." The Siskiyou Pioneer 3.8 (1965): 27. Print.
