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

by Standiford, Les

  In time, the bodies of Stoble and O’Donnell were uncovered from the muck. Although O’Donnell’s clothing had been blown from his body by the explosion’s force, a man found his watch nearby, the hands stilled. In that manner, the time of the blast was officially determined. Lewis Gray was the son of John Gray, chief engineer of the division where the blast had taken place. O’Donnell had come up from San Bernardino, grateful to have found work. As for Garside, not only had his corporeal being vanished, no details of a family or a past could be ascertained. It was the worst accident to strike the project in its time.

  There was one footnote to the tragedy worth mentioning. In the aftermath, as bodies were being carried off and the injured tended to, one of the rescuers heard a strange sound issuing from the mouth of the tunnel. He walked closer, then turned to a companion. “It’s Maude,” he said, and soon members of the crew were dashing back inside the tunnel behind him.

  Maude was the miners’ pet mule, part of the original four-legged crew that pulled the muck-laden cars out of the tunnel before the arrival of electricity rendered her an anachronism. The miners, though, had made a favorite of the even-tempered and tireless Maude. They allowed the mule, who often had to be forced out of the tunnel at the end of a shift, to keep on working. She had been back inside the shaft that day, patiently awaiting the resumption of her duties when the blast came and knocked her unconscious. In the darkness and confusion, rescuers had forgotten about Maude until they heard her braying.

  Finally, they found her deep inside the passage, bruised and filthy, but otherwise intact. When the men tried to lead her out of the tunnel, however, Maude splayed her legs in the fashion of her kind and would not budge. The men had to bring food and water down to her until the car line could be cleared and Maude herself could be hauled back up top.

  As a result of the mishap, which a coroner’s report would declare an accident, Mulholland immediately declared the institution of stricter safety measures regarding blasting operations. At a Chamber of Commerce dinner on June 18, he assured an audience of 2,500 that ongoing work was of the highest quality, that Owens River water was “beyond question,” and that the quality of cement used to line the aqueduct was unquestionable. As to the report of cracks in the line, Mulholland responded that it was “an absolute impossibility to build mile after mile of concrete work in burning heat and freezing cold” without expecting cracks. “Yes, there are cracks,” he said, “but all the water which seeps through those cracks will not give the smallest desert dicky bird a respectable bath.”

  There had been water flowing in forty-five miles of concrete-lined conduit for as long as two and a half years, he said, and there was no appreciable loss of water. As for the failure of the caterpillar engines, he would have to admit it was a mistake. But now that the water department’s 1,200 “hayburners” (including Maude, one presumes) were back on the job, they were making up for lost time.

  Despite the loss of another laborer in a Saugus Division collapse scarcely a week later, work continued steadily. By July 7, Mulholland told a reporter for the Los Angeles Times that only 18.99 miles of construction remained, though dredging operations had slowed in the Alabama Hills when operators struck “an unexpected pocket of gravel.”

  On August 10, J. B. Lippincott told reporters that the last tunnel on the project had finally been “holed through” at a spot about 50 miles north of Mojave, in the Grapevine Division, completing a total of 42.69 miles of tunnel work. Allowing for the Alabama Hills delay, the project was now expected to be completed by April of the following year. There were now one hundred miles of continuous line completed, and forty-eight miles of that had been filled with water and tested, Lippincott said; there remained only three steel siphons in the Saugus Division (the Soledad Canyon Siphon was the largest of them) to complete. The department had also established a storage and warehouse facility at the intersection of Slauson and Compton Avenues where it was already engaged in selling off surplus property, he said.

  In an exhaustive rundown of cost savings and purchasing practices, Mulholland’s assistant had earlier pointed out that virtually no detail had been overlooked in trying to keep operations under budget. “Moca and Java coffee which costs the ordinary mortal about 30 cents a pound is sold to the aqueduct for 18 cents,” he said proudly.

  In light of the steady progress, discussion had already begun regarding the most appropriate way to celebrate the arrival of the water, with some calling for a statue of Mulholland to top a memorial fountain in Exposition Park, just south of the USC campus. The fountain would fittingly be dedicated as Owens River waters first shot up from its jets, the culmination of a month’s worth of activities and exhibitions that might cost as much as $200,000. Though this particular fountain would never be built, the very notion gives an idea of the excitement that Mulholland had engendered in the community.

  But there was also discussion of a more urgent nature taking place in anticipation of the water’s arrival, and that concerned the disposition of the excess water that the aqueduct would carry. Groups from Pasadena, Santa Monica, Glendale, San Pedro, Long Beach, Glendora, Covina, and San Dimas—not to mention the San Fernando Valley—were petitioning to share in the new supply, though Mulholland remained opposed to the city’s building supply systems anywhere outside its limits. The water was city property in his eyes, and though Los Angeles was within its rights to sell to other municipalities, it was by no means obligated to bear the cost of building some other town’s water works. If a community wanted to be part of the city water system, the solution to Mulholland was simple: become part of the city, pay city taxes, and enjoy city services.

  Obviously, many of the petitioners were opposed to annexation on one ground or another, and few had the wherewithal or public support for the cost of constructing elaborate distribution systems. Also in opposition to Mulholland was new water commissioner S. C. Graham, who took a more entrepreneurial approach. Graham wanted to build what became known as the “high line,” a supply system that would run to the eastern San Gabriel Valley. In addition, Graham proposed that the city would recover its costs simply by charging higher rates for the water delivered. Additionally, if the city ever did find that it needed the water for use within its own boundaries, it could raise the rates charged to the outlying districts along the high line beyond their ability to pay, lending an unintended irony to his project’s nickname.

  Graham’s plan may have been elegant in design, but in Mulholland’s view, it was Machiavellian in intent. The water was worth the same to everyone, Mulholland believed, but he was far more interested in seeing the city grow than he was in getting into the water sales business. Certainly it did not seem fair to him to entice a community into a contract that could be revoked long after that community had become dependent upon a water supply.

  To counter the Chief’s opposition, Graham crafted a compromise proposal that required outlying districts to pay for their own distribution systems while agreeing to a fifteen-year contract to buy water from the city for $10 an acre-foot. Graham touted the plan as a sure money maker that would also require the dastardly interests in the San Fernando Valley to pay through the nose for any Owens Valley water they received, but the city’s charter would have to be amended to allow for such sales, so a special election was called for November. Once again, Mulholland found his views spurned by voters, who, on November 5, approved the Graham Proposal by a margin of 2 to 1.

  Negotiations began almost immediately between the city and towns along Graham’s proposed “high line.” The City of Pasadena proposed to buy one-fortieth of the total aqueduct water supply—or 500 inches of water—enough to ensure its supply for at least five years. Left up in the air was the question of whether Pasadena would be asked to pay either a proportionate share of the cost of the aqueduct as a part of the deal or simply to contribute a proportionate share of the cost of the high line itself.

  All such euphoric talk was soon tempered by the fact that the city’s attorneys
determined that the high line could not be built with funds from the outlying districts but instead would have to be paid for by a bond issue, which would require yet another election, set for February 11, 1913. Until voters approved those bonds, all talk of a high line would remain speculation. Mulholland had not actively campaigned against the Graham Proposal in advance of the November election, but this time would be different. In a letter of January 25, 1913, to the chairman of the Public Service Commission and widely reprinted, Mulholland denounced Graham’s plan for its “rapacious audacity,” and also declared that he was as firmly opposed to the building of any line to service the northerly slope and west end of the San Fernando Valley as he was to building the high line into the San Gabriel Valley. “The city should not pay for either of them,” he said.

  He envisioned a total serviceable area bounded roughly by the northern slope of the San Fernando Valley, the westward intersection of the Coastal Range and the Pacific, the eastern boundary of Pasadena, and a wavering line drawn southward from there to San Pedro, comprising a total of about 195,000 acres. To think of extending water service beyond those bounds was completely impractical, he said, and Graham’s ill-defined high line could cost in excess of a quarter of the amount it took to build the entire aqueduct. And even if the board could decide to withdraw water service from the high line one day, the city would be stuck with an $8 or $9 million “dead pipe” for which it had no use.

  It seemed close to irrationality in Mulholland’s eyes for voters to be stampeded into making a commitment to a project as open ended and ill defined as the Graham Proposal, in which not so much as a firm termination point had been established. Mulholland warned that the proposal could give control of “about one-half of the total flow of the aqueduct to a region that has never sought, but always resisted, any talk of annexation to the city of Los Angeles, and from which not a single drop of return water can ever be recovered to the future use of this municipality.”

  In taking this stance, Mulholland was pitting himself not against amorphous outside forces but against his very employers, the Public Service Commission and the Water Commissioners. By insisting that water should be sold to all at a fair price, that once water service was given it should never be taken away, and that the citizens of Los Angeles were the owners of the aqueduct waters, he presented himself squarely as a defender of the public interest. But in asking voters to make a choice between principles and the chance to make a quick return on their investment promised by Graham, he was taking a big chance.

  LAST MILE

  WHILE POLITICS WERE PLAYING OUT, THERE WAS still work to be completed up and down the line, and that work remained dangerous and demanding. On the evening of January 19, 1913, three men, identified by the Inyo Independent as “two Mexicans and one American” ventured inside a section of steel pipe on the Jawbone Division, carrying buckets of asphalt oil paint used to coat the inner as well as the outer surfaces of the pipes. It was not particularly pleasant work, owing to the close quarters and the noxious odor of the material they were working with, but laborers on such a project were rarely deterred by such considerations. They were being paid well, there were days off in Mojave to look forward to, and there were plenty of men waiting to slap that tar if they chose not to.

  It is not unlikely that the trio assigned to paint the inside of the siphon had heard of the story recounted recently by the Los Angeles Times, the tale of how a man named Ratich, “a Slovanian,” who, lacking the price of rail fare, had attempted to walk from Los Angeles, by way of Saugus, up to the aqueduct camp at Mojave where he hoped to find work. Ratich lost his bearings and ended up wandering the desert near China Lake, where someone riding a passenger train noticed him. At the next stop, alerts were wired back up the line and a search party set out around 2:00 P.M., when the heat was at its peak. By 6:00 P.M., a section foreman named O’Malley patrolling the dusty back roads in his car was ready to give up and go in when he spotted a lone figure in the wastelands nearby.

  O’Malley stopped and approached the man, who stared back warily. He eyes were bulging, his tongue was dangling, and blood dripped from the tips of his fingers. O’Malley had seen it before: the man had torn off his nails digging desperately in the sands for water. When O’Malley told Ratich who he was and that he had come to help, Ratich responded by charging him in a fury. After some moments of struggle in the dusty desert floor, O’Malley was able to get himself atop the weakened man and half-dragged, half-carried him through the desert to the nearby rail station. It would take two more men to subdue Ratich when he spotted the water cooler sweating beneath the eaves.

  Given stories such as these, it seems unlikely that any of the men who clambered inside the Jawbone Siphon on the evening of January 19, 1913, ever expected that life would be easy, though none of them probably assumed it would necessarily be short. In any case, theirs became so when one of them lit a candle or a cigarette or somehow struck a spark shortly after the painting had begun. There would have been scarcely an instant between the swipe of a match across denim, perhaps time for someone’s glance of shock or surprise or curse, and then the white light of explosion that culminated in a headline: “AQUEDUCT GAS KILLS THREE—NAMES AND OTHER DETAILS LACKING.” As one report laconically concluded, “The fire warmed some of the plates of the siphon slightly but not enough to do any harm.”

  In all, there were forty-three men killed in accidents during the course of the aqueduct’s construction, according to Dr. Taylor’s figures. One accident resulting in “permanent injury” had taken place, and there were a total of 1,282 incidents where treatment was recorded. Two men were reported to have died from disease, though the medical statistics are known to be incomplete. As to the number who might have succumbed to forces unknown on the dark streets of Mojave where a rum-running sheriff kept the tally, who can say?

  Typical among Taylor’s cases was that of the cement plant superintendent who happened to be passing one of the machines that ground the tufa rock into powder that could be mixed with cement. The grinders were driven by wide belts, one of which snapped just as the man happened past. The broken end whipped off its spool and struck the superintendent in the back, driving him into a nearby steel framework where a pipe broke his skull.

  The badly injured man was placed on a stretcher and taken to the nearby Southern Pacific station where an emergency train was sent from Mojave to transport him to the California Hospital in Los Angeles. There Taylor and another surgeon awaited. “We found that the whole dome of his forehead had been caved in and quite a number of pieces of the frontal bone . . . had been pushed into the cranial cavity,” Taylor recalls. “His brain had been very definitely damaged . . . portions of it spilling down onto his face.”

  The two doctors “removed some pieces of bone, replaced what we could, sewed him up, and put him to bed.” Though they were uncertain as to his prospects for survival and expected that he would be seriously compromised at the very least, the man “never had a rise in temperature or untoward symptoms, not even a headache,” Taylor says. In fact, he regained consciousness quickly and was back at work within a few weeks. Years later, Taylor saw the man, who had returned to Los Angeles after a sojourn running a cement mill for a New York firm in Argentina. “I asked him if he had any bad effects from his brain injury,” Taylor recalls.

  “None whatsoever,” the man responded. “Except for the one thing.”

  And what was that? Taylor wanted to know.

  “I did lose my libido, and my wife left me,” the man said. Whether the latter was a bad thing remained unsaid.

  THROUGHOUT THE FIRST QUARTER of 1913, Mulholland was overseeing work on the aqueduct, on the construction of the San Fernando Valley Reservoir, and on the Franklin Canyon pipeline and reservoir. His opposition to the Graham Proposal prompted the mayor to ask the City Council to reschedule the bond-issue election from February to April 15 so that the matter could be “more carefully discussed.”

  With a mayoral election coming up in May,
some Progressive Party members began to press Mulholland to consider running for the post. While his bon mot in response to this suggestion—“I would sooner give birth to a porcupine backward”—has been given wide currency, Catherine Mulholland passes along a quote from Mulholland’s correspondence of the period that gives something of a deeper insight into the man. In a letter to longtime Los Angeles politico Charles Willard written on January 24, Mulholland said that those who were urging him to run should “recognize my temperamental unfitness for the position of Mayor.” Perhaps he had managed to hide it, he continued, “but it is nevertheless a fact that in the execution of my work I have tendencies that are absolutely autocratic and at times unreasonably domineering.”

  Even if he had been successful at concealing this trait, Mulholland continued, “This I could not do, of course, in the position of Mayor of the City where events move so rapidly that my impetuosity under necessarily quick action would reveal my weakness.” He was proud of the fact that he had always been able to win the loyalty and devotion of coworkers, Mulholland concluded, but he was sure that “in the discharge of the multifarious duties of Mayor I would utterly fail in this particular.”

  Soon after he delivered this piece of self-analysis, a Times story appeared (February 9, 1913) to tout the work being done on the San Fernando Reservoir in the valley about a mile and a half south of the terminus of the aqueduct near the Newhall Pass. The dam, 740 feet wide at its base and 140 feet high, would be the second-largest in the world at the time, creating a lake a mile and a half long and a mile wide.

  Fill for the dam was being put in place using the hydraulic methods that Mulholland had perfected. “First the dirt is loosened by charges of powder, a carload of which is used every month and the ‘back fire’ of water is then permitted to run into the disintegrated particles of sandy loam,” the story explained. Then water piped down from Soledad Canyon was used to jet the soupy mix into place: “When the hydraulic streams are turned on from in front there is not much left for that particular hill to do but move out,” the reporter said.