Although not driven for drainage purposes, the Blue Bell tunnel, near Anaconda, is of interest as being the first of the Cripple Creek workings to encounter water. This tunnel, which enters in granite at an elevation of 9,335 feet, or about 15 feet below what seems to have been the average elevation of the original water surface in this part of the district, had a maximum flow of 200 gallons a minute.

Water was issuing from this tunnel in 1894, when Penrose visited it, and the flow persisted for several years. The extent to which the Blue Bell tunnel lowered the original ground-water surface in the western part of the district, before water was reached a year or two later in shafts, can not be determined.

Its effect, however, was probably slight.