Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles

by Standiford, Les

  In essence, Mulholland would simply be restoring the original flow of the Owens River, although he would have to modify the rate of descent to get waters all the way to Los Angeles without the use of cost-prohibitive pumps. Instead of dumping out onto the plains a hundred miles south at China Lake (elevation 2,200 feet), the “new” Owens River would be diverted at Charley’s Butte at a point about 3,900 feet above sea level, to empty eventually into a pair of reservoirs (elevation 1,200 feet) in the northern San Fernando Valley below the Newhall Pass, about 225 miles away. From that point, the diverted waters would basically follow the same course as the traditional flow of the Los Angeles River.

  As simple as the basic “downhill all the way” plan might sound, there was a great deal more involved. Because the Chamber of Commerce had, presumably as a result of its discussions with William Randolph Hearst, pledged that the city would not expend any more money than was necessary to preserve their interests in the land “until they shall have secured the approval of the entire plans by disinterested experts of the highest character,” Mulholland would have to modify his plans in consultation with the panel.

  In the end, the detail that Mulholland eventually came up with involved digging a gradually descending canal for sixty miles along the valley floor from the intake point above Independence near Charley’s Butte through the Alabama Hills, skirting the site of Owens Lake and culminating in a seven-mile-long reservoir at Haiwee, elevation 3,760 feet. The waters would thus be stored at the head of Nine-Mile Canyon, the impoundment acting as a hedge against seasonal variations in runoff and allowing for the natural sedimentation process to aid in clarifying the water.

  From Haiwee, the water would enter a covered conduit and drop far more precipitously—about 400 feet in 15 miles or so—to a series of tunnels bored through the rugged escarpments at the south terminus of Rose Valley. Once through the tunnels, water would be carried through a series of eight huge steel pipe “siphons,” some eleven feet in diameter, down and back up the sides of a series of steep canyons, the very names of which give some sense of their character: Five-Mile, Deadfoot, Nine-Mile, and Sand Canyon.

  Though the drop within a canyon and the ensuing climb could be as great as 850 feet, as at Jawbone Canyon, the water would be forced down and back up by the simple fact that the ultimate exit point of the line at the San Fernando Reservoir would be about 2,400 feet lower than the point of entry at Haiwee. Simply put, “water seeks its level,” and though the great pipes were initially called “siphons” and later “inverted siphons” (because they resembled traditional siphons turned upside down), no priming suction was needed. Currently preferred terms for such structures, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, include “sag pipe, sag line, sag culvert and depressed pipe,” but perhaps Mulholland can be forgiven: “Jawbone Depressed Pipe” just wouldn’t have the same ring.

  Below the twenty-five-mile stretch punctuated by that series of siphons would run a relatively placid section of some twenty miles of covered conduit along the Salt Wells Valley to the Red Rock Summit, at about 3,200 feet. For about twenty miles south of that point, the aqueduct would leave Inyo County and pass into Kern County, crossing some of the most rugged terrain in its path and requiring another series of tunnels and siphons, including the massive undertaking at Jawbone Canyon. Once past Jawbone and Pine Canyons, the aqueduct would make a relatively mild descent of forty miles or so in covered conduit and pipe across the Antelope Valley to the Los Angeles County line southwest of Mojave, and then another twenty-plus miles over the southern valley floor to the Fairmont Reservoir west of Lancaster, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains below Lake Elizabeth.

  The elevation of the Fairmont Reservoir would lie at about 3,000 feet, and with the reservoirs at the planned terminus at less than 1,300 feet, the drop over the aqueduct’s last thirty-two miles or so would be by far the steepest, just about twice as great as the water’s descent over the 190 miles to that point, from an average of about five feet per mile to more than fifty feet per mile. As anyone who has navigated the Newhall Pass and the twisting roads of San Francisquito Canyon knows, the terrain of that thirty-two-mile stretch is anything but gentle. To cross those lands would require another daunting series of tunnels and siphons crossing Soledad Canyon, Deadman Canyon, and more. Most ambitious of all the links in the aqueduct’s route was the five-mile-long tunnel that would have to be bored through the solid granite of the San Gabriel Mountains beneath Lake Elizabeth.

  The notion of the Elizabeth Tunnel constituted a significant change in plans for Mulholland, for he had originally conceived of a pair of six-mile-long tunnels farther east in the mountains near Acton. Daunting as the Elizabeth Tunnel undertaking was, however, it would shorten the length of the aqueduct by twenty miles.

  In all, the final plan called for a system 225.87 miles long, from Charley’s Butte to the San Fernando Reservoir, with roughly 22 miles of unlined conduit or canal, 164 miles of concrete lined or covered conduit, 28 miles of bored tunnels, and 12 miles of steel pipe and siphons. And it could all be completed for $24.5 million dollars, Mulholland vowed, including the $1.5 million already expended for the land.

  By way of comparison, plans were going forward in New York for construction of the Catskill Aqueduct, a 163-mile-long addition to the Croton System that had been in operation since the 1840s (and rebuilt in 1890). Construction on the Catskill project was to commence in 1907 (it would be largely completed in 1916, by which time about $140 million had been spent) and would end in toto at $177 million, principally owing to costs in acquiring the necessary right-of-way. The Catskill Aqueduct was a vast undertaking, to be sure—one of the two grand water projects of the time, but in terms of size and the daunting nature of the terrain to be traversed, Mulholland’s task was positively monumental and questions of budget were crucial.

  In addition to the cost-saving change regarding the Elizabeth Tunnel, Mulholland had also been forced by the consulting panel to abandon any thought of an impoundment dam at Long Valley. There would therefore be no way of regulating the seasonal vagaries of the Owens River above the diversion point at Charley’s Butte, but the savings—Reclamation Service engineer Clausen had pegged the cost of such a dam at $750,000—demanded the cut.At the same time that Mulholland was refining his vast plan, he was also working to secure the necessary grants of right-of-way for any federal lands that would be necessary for the project to cross. California Senator Frank Flint had supported the concept from the beginning and in the summer of 1906 he introduced a bill that would allow for the acquisition of any public lands necessary for the project at $1.25 an acre. The bill sailed through the Senate, but when it reached the House, Representative Sylvester Smith of Inyo County, a member of the Public Lands Committee, proposed an amendment demanding that the residents of the Owens Valley retain rights to the river waters. According to Smith’s proposal, only the water left over after the valley’s irrigation needs were met could be diverted to Los Angeles—and only for domestic use, not for irrigation.

  The city itself had stated that it could possibly require an additional supply of 2,500 “inches” of water in twenty years, Representative Smith claimed (Mulholland had in fact suggested about three times as much). But the aqueduct was being designed to carry 20,000 inches. Surely an allotment to the city of 10,000 inches would be sufficient, he said, leaving the Owens Valley with more than enough water for the plans of the Reclamation Service. Debate ensued.

  Mulholland traveled to Washington to confer with Senator Flint and suggested that perhaps the city could live with Smith’s compromise. Flint, however, thought that Gifford Pinchot, chief of the Forest Service and a close friend of President Roosevelt’s, might be willing to intercede on the city’s behalf, making compromise unnecessary. At a meeting on the evening of June 23, Roosevelt listened as Flint, Pinchot, and Charles Walcott, director of the US Geological Survey, held forth on the matter, which was by then before the House Committee on Public Lands.

 
; Among other issues, Roosevelt’s visitors stressed that the population of all of Inyo County—of which the Owens Valley constituted only a part—was less than 3,000 in 1880 and stood at 4,377 in 1900. During that same period Los Angeles had grown from 11,000 to more than 102,000, and in 1906, Los Angeles County had a population of more than 350,000. The valuation of all property in Inyo County for 1906 was $2.6 million. The valuation of property in Los Angeles alone that year was $203 million. There were somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 acres of land being irrigated in the Owens Valley at the time, principally in alfalfa grown to feed livestock, and while Jacob Clausen estimated that a reclamation project could bring more than 106,000 additional acres under irrigation, it was the city’s estimate that no more than 60,000 to 80,000 could be feasibly added.

  Though Roosevelt would enjoy an enduring reputation as a trust-busting friend of the people and the environment, he was also a Republican, an expansionist, and was motivated above all to encourage development of a vital national economy. When all had finished, the president found himself looking on the one hand at the prospects of bringing 80,000 to 100,000 acres of far-flung land under irrigation versus the future needs of a city of 250,000 that seemed destined to grow to immense size. It did not take him long to decide. Two days later, the president called in Ethan Hitchcock, secretary of the interior, and in the presence of Hitchcock, Flint, Walcott, and Pinchot, dictated a letter so that there could be, as Roosevelt put it, “a record of our attitude in the Los Angeles Water Supply Bill.”

  Roosevelt said that he understood Hitchcock’s concerns that without Representative Smith’s amendment it was feared that Los Angeles might use the water in excess of its current needs “for some irrigation scheme.” However, Roosevelt, said, he was convinced by Senator Flint’s counterargument that while there could indeed be some present surplus in the waters obtained from the Owens River, the city was seeking to ensure a sufficient water supply for a half century to come; it would therefore have to draw the full amount of water from the very outset or risk its being absorbed by other interests in the meantime.

  “It is a hundred or a thousand fold more important to the state and more valuable to the people as a whole if used by the City than if used by the people of Owens Valley,” Roosevelt said, echoing Flint’s urgings. In referring to a subplot that had complicated matters all along, Roosevelt also dismissed the objections of various electrical power companies, including the formidable Edison interests in Los Angeles, who feared that the city would develop the power resources attendant to the streams in the Owens Valley and along the route of the aqueduct, depriving them of future business opportunities.

  “The people at the head of these power companies are doubtless respectable citizens,” Roosevelt said, and he agreed that there was no law against their seeking their own pecuniary advantage. “Nevertheless,” the president continued, “their opposition seems to me to afford one of the strongest arguments for passing the [Flint] law, inasmuch as it ought not to be within the power of private individuals to control such a necessary of life as against the municipality itself.”

  Thus, Roosevelt concluded, he was asking that Flint’s bill be approved without the encumbrance of the Smith amendment. In an apparent slap against the interests of the San Fernando Valley syndicate, Roosevelt did request that the bill include a prohibition against the city’s ever selling or leasing to any corporation or individual—except for a fellow municipality—the rights to Owens Valley water for irrigation purposes. He acknowledged that the interests of the “few settlers in Owens Valley” were genuine, but that interest “must unfortunately be disregarded in view of the infinitely greater interest to be served by putting the water in Los Angeles.”

  When he was finished, Roosevelt glanced about the room, then felt compelled to add a postscript. “Having read the above aloud,” he said, “I now find that everybody agrees to it—you Mr. Secretary, as well as Senator Flint, Director Walcott and Mr. Pinchot, and therefore I submit it with a far more satisfied heart than when I started to dictate.”

  For the Owens Valley, being told by the president that its interests were insignificant would likely have seemed as much a personal blow as an economic one. (Local residents are still rankled by Roosevelt’s order of May 25, 1907, creating the Inyo National Forest out of the largely treeless public land in the region in order to facilitate the withdrawal of public lands necessary for the aqueduct right-of-way.)

  But for Mulholland, Roosevelt’s stance was not only a justification but also one more necessary step toward making the aqueduct possible. Eaton’s purchases above the intake point provided in the aggregate about 15,000 inches of water rights, based upon the appropriations that were the property of the previous owners. In addition, the city had acquired virtually the entirety of the fifty miles of largely scrub land bracketing the river banks from the intake point southward to Owens Lake, which would provide another 5,000 inches of runoff water by Mulholland’s estimate.

  With the rights to the water secured and the federal rights-of-way assured, all that remained was to secure the passage of the bond issue for construction. And of course there was also the small matter of doing the work itself.

  HAVE WATER OR QUIT GROWING

  WHEN WILLIAM MULHOLLAND WAS INTRODUCED TO share the details of his project at the Municipal League banquet on August 15, 1906, reporters noted that it took several minutes for the applause to die down before the superintendent could speak. “What can I say of him except that he is Will Mulholland,” toastmaster E. H. Lee began, before a chorus of cheers erupted. Lee finally gave up further attempts at introduction and called Mulholland to the podium.

  Mulholland quieted the crowd and began his first public appeal with a declaration: “We must have the Owens Valley water,” he said. “The chance to acquire such a supply is the greatest opportunity ever presented to Los Angeles.” He touted the runoff from the Sierra as more pure than that of the Los Angeles River, “clear, colorless, and attractive,” and containing only a third of the minerals of the present city supply. Though there was some sediment and pollution introduced from existing farming and irrigation practices in the Owens Valley, Mulholland explained that sedimentation and natural bacterial action during storage in the Haiwee and Fairmont Reservoirs planned along the route would remove any such contaminants. Once the water left its second storage point at Fairmont, it would remain in covered pipes and conduit until it emerged from a customer’s tap.

  While the subject of water treatment is beyond the scope of this book, it may be worth pointing out that chlorination of municipal water supplies was a practice nonexistent in the United States at the time (the first such application took place in New Jersey in 1908), and Louis Pasteur’s so-called germ theory of disease transmission was a concept still in its infancy. It was not until 1914 that the US Public Health Service published standards for bacteriological quality of drinking water. Meantime, scientists had begun to realize that suspended particulates in water—including fecal matter—could house harmful pathogens, including typhoid, dysentery, and cholera, so that efforts had begun to decrease “turbidity” in drinking water supplies, allowing particulates to settle out. But while there were a very few sand-filtration installations in the East, the accepted standard for water “treatment” at the time was a period of storage in reservoirs, where sunlight, oxygenation, and other natural processes could assist in the purification process.

  Following Mulholland’s discourse on the purity of Owens River water (he had been drinking plenty of it, he reminded everyone), he admitted to a questioner that the project was indeed a big one. But if he harbored any serious qualms, he was certainly not going to admit them publicly. This project was in the end a simple one, he assured the audience of some 175 movers and shakers (oil tycoon E. L. Doheny, after whom the state’s first public beach would be named, was present, as was developer I. N. Van Nuys).

  Though it is uncertain just how familiar Mulholland would have been with it, another unprecedent
ed engineering project was just getting underway on the other side of the continent: self-made Florida railroad titan Henry Flagler’s effort to build an “impossible” rail line across 153 miles of largely open ocean from Miami to Key West. Faced with similar questions from those who wondered how such a thing could be accomplished, Flagler famously responded that it was simple: “First you build one arch, and then another. And before you know it, you’re in Key West.”

  Likewise, Mulholland had his own ready explanation: “The man who has made one brick can make two bricks,” the superintendent said. “That is the bigness of this engineering problem. It is big, but it is simply big.”

  Mulholland organized the “bigness” into separate divisions, of which there would ultimately be eleven: the first, the Owens Valley, was to be concerned with digging the canal from the diversion point near Charley’s Butte to the Haiwee Reservoir; the reservoir itself was to be the work of the Olancha Division; the next was charged with the construction of the conduit down the Rose Valley from Haiwee; then came the work through the badlands below Little Lake; the Grapevine would handle the difficult building of the tunnels and siphons that would carry the project through that rugged terrain to Salt Wells Valley, where the Freeman Division would be in charge of the relatively straightforward work on eighteen miles of gently sloping covered conduit; the Jawbone Division would take over from Red Rock Summit, where another series of daunting tunnels and conduits were required, including the eponymous Jawbone Siphon.