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

by Standiford, Les

  “I did,” Mulholland answered.

  But he couldn’t have been there long enough for a meal, the man protested.

  He wasn’t, Mulholland allowed. “You see, I got up there, and I didn’t know anybody, and I started thinking about all my friends down here, and about the job, and . . . well, my resolve broke.” He shrugged. “I’ll make the fight without the rest,” he assured his assistant.

  If the tale seems the emblem of a workaholic—indeed, then seventeen-year-old daughter Lucile described him as the man who came to dinner with the family “occasionally”—it was not a simple issue in Mulholland’s case. In his eyes, he had been blessed with the opportunity to do work that he loved. If some men dreamed of being free of their work, he looked forward to doing his, just as he enjoyed the chance for a conversation on topics ranging from etymology to the roles of Sarah Bernhardt.

  Questioned by the reporter as to his religious beliefs, Mulholland responded, “The golden rule.”

  As to his politics: “Conscience, progress, a chance for every man.”

  And as to his philosophy: “The inevitable is the inevitable. And work.”

  With his wife, Lillie, in the hospital, he rose each morning at six to call and check on her condition. By seven he was in the office, to dispense with mail and messages long before anyone else arrived. By eight or nine, he was in consultation with his supervisors, and from there the day would fly.

  Even in his late fifties, he was described as powerful, with a broad chest and solid limbs, “a fighter’s jaw, a thinker’s head, eyes that are appraising, searching, thoughtful, sympathetic.” A typical Mulholland entrance was captured by the reporter hurrying along in his wake following a visit to the dam site at San Fernando.

  “You have a banquet engagement at the City Club at six,” his secretary called as Mulholland passed, trailed by several assistants needing just a moment of his time.

  He would not be going to any banquet, Mulholland said. He was only there for a minute, then he would be going to the hospital to see his wife. “You can call that meeting off.”

  “And you don’t have to go to Independence tonight, after all,” the secretary added.

  “I wasn’t going anyway,” Mulholland said.

  The secretary seemed unfazed. The Chief should also be aware, the secretary said, that a certain engineer in a particular district had just fired an obviously familiar worker named Mulvaney.

  Mulholland paused, lifting his battered hat to dust it off. “Drunk again?”

  The secretary nodded.

  “How long since the last time?”

  “Eight months.”

  Mulholland nodded. “See if they have something for him down in Saugus,” he said.

  The secretary made a note. There had also been a call about someone named McGregor, she added, somewhat tentatively. “McGregor said the foreman had no business firing him, that he had a pull with you.”

  “Did the foreman fire him?” Mulholland asked.

  “He did,” the secretary answered.

  “Then McGregor’s fired,” Mulholland said. “I’m going to the hospital.”

  IN THE SHADE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

  THE ARRIVAL OF THE AQUEDUCT WATER IN NOVEMBER 1913 might have been the most significant marker in a long and storied career, and in some ways it was for Mulholland, though his difficulties would scarcely end. In terms of the project itself, there was the hydroelectric work in San Francisquito Canyon to be completed, as well as the major conduit that would link the San Fernando Reservoir with the city’s mains via the Franklin Canyon. In fact, the first Owens River water did not begin flowing through customers’ taps until April 1915, nearly a year and a half after the ceremony at the Cascade.

  The issue of the city’s entry into the power business was also delayed until voters in May approved an allied $6.5 million bond issue to pay for power development, an issue vigorously opposed by long-time aqueduct booster Harrison Gray Otis and the Los Angeles Times. Meantime, the aqueduct itself had also taken a significant blow in February when heavy rains washed out supporting piers beneath a section of raised steel pipeline in the Antelope Valley. When the plates ruptured and the water escaped, an almost two-mile section of the ten-foot-diameter pipeline collapsed nearly flat, reviving critics’ claims that the aqueduct would never function as intended.

  Though some engineers on the project worried that the collapsed section would have to be replaced, at great expense and considerable delay, Mulholland remembered the relative elasticity of the steel pipe from the days of the test of the support system engineering. He simply ordered the break in the line welded shut, the supports replaced beneath the flattened pipe, and the water flow gradually turned back on. Bit by bit, the growing pressure in the line restored the pipe to its original shape, and within a month, the full flow of the water was returned. The total cost of what had been seen by some as a death knell was $3,000, and Mulholland’s unheard-of fix revolutionized practices within the industry.

  On May 12, as work on the sixty-eight-inch main from the San Fernando Reservoir southward was being completed, Mulholland boarded a train for San Francisco, where—variously proclaimed a “Genius,” a “Super-Man,” and “California’s Greatest Man” in news headlines—he was to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. On the eve of his departure for the ceremonies, where George Washington Goethals, the chief engineer of the Panama Canal, and David Jordan, president of Stanford University, would also be honored, a reporter described Mulholland as “a most unconscious recipient of the plaudits,” saying that he had attended that day’s meeting of the Public Service Commission, “gave his attention to matters of trivial and momentous interest, smoked his usual cigar, and departed unruffled for the north.”

  Upon his return to Los Angeles, Mulholland found that two Socialists involved with the Aqueduct Investigation Board had filed a petition with a local judge for an injunction against further use of Owens Valley water on the grounds that it was grossly polluted and unfit for human consumption. Notwithstanding Mulholland’s observation that the aqueduct water had been tested by experts on numerous occasions, not to mention the fact that thousands of men, including himself, had been drinking from it for years, a trial commenced, one that, despite the apparent flimsiness of any evidence, would drag on through various appeals until 1919. Mulholland, convinced that it was simply another veiled attack on the aqueduct by the private power interests, could do little but appear in court when called and patiently answer the vexatious questions of his cross-examiners.

  At one point, an attorney asked if Mulholland could suggest where his clients could find creeks with polluted water in the Owens River Valley. “Oh, I could point you to far more polluted sources than that,” Mulholland assured his questioner.

  “Really?” the attorney asked, intrigued. “And just what would those be?”

  Mulholland shrugged. “Well, you could draw some samples from a privy vault,” he said. “Or you could roll a hog into the water with an apple in its mouth and take a photo of it.”

  Mulholland had never been one to suffer fools, but part of his impatience in such encounters could surely be attributed to his concerns with his wife’s health. By April, Lillie’s condition had worsened. Following a second operation, she lapsed into a coma, and on April 28, at the age of forty-seven, she finally succumbed to the cancer she had battled for years. Mulholland, who had always counted on his wife to manage matters on the home front, was both grief-stricken and baffled. In the end, his eldest daughter, Rose, born in 1891, took over her mother’s role as the keeper of the house, one she would maintain for the remainder of her father’s life.

  Meanwhile, Mulholland threw himself into his work with a vengeance. Throughout the process of the aqueduct’s construction, he had been irked by the waste involved in mixing concrete at the surface of tunnels, then carrying it inside in cars so that it could be shoveled out and used to line the walls. With significant tunnel work still goin
g on in San Francisquito Canyon, a solution presented itself to him: Why not pump mixed concrete through pressurized hoses and spray it directly onto the tunnel walls? And soon that process, one that has become standard in the industry today, was at use in San Francisquito Canyon.

  At another time, while preparing for a talk on the project before the annual meeting of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Mulholland was casting about for a way to dramatize the magnitude of the project for his audience. He hit upon the idea of replicating a topographical map of the aqueduct’s route in three-dimensional form, using vulcanized pasteboard. The result—twenty-six feet long and two and a half feet wide, and exhibited at the 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco—was striking (it remains under glass at DWP offices) and inspired the process still widely employed in the map-making and modeling industry, including the impressive model of the region on display at the Eastern Sierra Interagency Visitor Center in Lone Pine.

  The question of annexation of various communities into Los Angeles also remained on the list of Mulholland’s concerns. By a vote of 681–25, the very few citizens of the dusty San Fernando Valley determined on March 20 to apply to become part of the City of Los Angeles, and on May 4, the citizens of Los Angeles approved, thus making it possible to sell water to irrigate some 100,000 acres, about half of the water the aqueduct would carry.

  Development of municipal power had proceeded under Ezra Scattergood’s direction and with Mulholland’s support, but in fits and starts. An election on a bond issue that would allow completion of Power Plant #2 was defeated in 1917; completion would have to wait until after World War I ended, when voters finally approved the measure in a June 1919 election. In the end it would take until the mid-1930s before the city was firmly in control of its own power distribution.

  On July 11, 1917, an earthquake shook the Owens Valley, one strong enough to cause a significant crack in a portion of the concrete conduit traversing the Alabama Hills. Then, four days later, there came two blowouts on the line, one in the Antelope Valley and another near Little Lake, south of Haiwee. Though there was speculation that the ruptures were caused by dynamite charges planted by opponents of municipal power, no proof of sabotage was ever discovered and no further such incidents occurred—not for a while, that is.

  In the meantime, the glowing predictions of the city’s growth proved to be shortsighted, if anything. Vast quantities of Valencia oranges that thrived in the newly irrigated soil of the San Fernando Valley were now being shipped back East and even to the United Kingdom by way of the Panama Canal. In 1919, nearly 50,000 carloads of citrus went out, along with walnuts, strawberries, wheat, pumpkins, celery, and olives, all of which could be grown throughout the year.

  Sunkist began to market its revolutionary product called “orange juice” in 1916, and by 1918, nearly a quarter of the nation’s supply of oil was being pumped from reserves beneath the city. Ford opened a Model T plant in Los Angeles in 1914, and Goodyear began making tires there in 1920, soon to be followed by Firestone, B. F. Goodrich, and others. The forerunners of aviation giants Lockheed, Douglas, and Boeing were established during the decade, and in 1915, a man by the name of D. W. Griffith shot a full-length feature film called Birth of a Nation, which engendered an industry that would become virtually synonymous with the place.

  By 1920, the population of Los Angeles stood at more than 575,000, making it the nation’s tenth-largest city, surpassing San Francisco (506,000) for the first time. Population in Los Angeles County had grown to more than 900,000 and would pass the 1 million mark in 1921. The area of the city had grown as well. In 1909, the port cities of San Pedro and Wilmington were annexed, and Hollywood was added in 1910, along with Cahuenga Township and a portion of Los Feliz. The annexation of San Fernando Valley lands in 1915 added 170 square miles, nearly tripling the city’s size. In all, nearly 266 square miles of land were annexed to the city between 1915 and 1920. (The total area of Los Angeles would reach 469 square miles by 2004.)

  They were heady times, but growth also brought with it an increased demand on city services, including those of the water department. In fact, by 1923, Mulholland was reassessing his earlier stated certainty that the waters of the Owens River would in fact assure Los Angeles of a sufficient water supply for the foreseeable future. By 1918, all of the available water carried by the aqueduct was being used, much of it going to irrigation, and an inevitable period of cyclical drought was about to begin.

  On October 23, 1923, Mulholland asked the Board of Public Service to authorize a preliminary survey to determine the feasibility of a project to bring water to Los Angeles via an aqueduct from the Colorado River. Though key legislation regarding the plan to build Boulder (since renamed as “Hoover”) Dam, Parker Dam, and the vast feeder system that would one day provide water via the Colorado River to Los Angeles, Long Beach, Orange County, and San Diego would not be approved until 1928, after his retirement from public service, it was Mulholland’s vision that instigated another monumental undertaking.

  Mulholland also sought more practical solutions closer to home. In his “Twenty-second Annual Report,” dated June 30, 1923, Mulholland observed that the previous year had been one of the driest on record, and prudence dictated that steps should be taken: “No engineering corps having the important task of the City’s water supply in mind would be justified in relaxing vigilance,” he said. Since very little snow had fallen in the Sierra and the flow of the Owens River had diminished by nearly 40 percent, Mulholland proposed the purchase of more lands north of the intake point in the Owens Valley so that additional waters allocated to those lands could be diverted to augment the river’s flow and groundwater beneath those lands could also be tapped.

  By this time, property owners in the Owens Valley were well aware of the city’s interest in acquiring additional lands and had formed an association of landowners designed to consolidate their common interests and drive up the price of any lands sold to the city. The most prominent of those associations was headed by two Owens Valley bankers, Wilfred and Mark Watterson, who held a virtual monopoly on credit and development in the area.

  Complicating matters for Mulholland was Fred Eaton, who had held onto his ranch lands in the Long Valley (at the upper end of Owens Valley) in the belief that the city would one day be forced to build a long-discussed dam to capture the more reliable flow there. In order to create an impoundment of practical size, the city would need to buy his lands, and in Eaton’s mind, given the growth of the city and the toll taken by the recent dry spell, the day when he would finally realize a return on his investment was fast approaching. He let it be known that the lands that he had acquired nearly twenty years ago could be had for the price of $1 million. To Mulholland, who had always considered Eaton well compensated for his efforts on behalf of the city, the price was outrageous. “I’ll buy Long Valley three years after Fred Eaton is dead,” Mulholland reportedly said to associates.

  In refusing to deal with Eaton, Mulholland’s high-mindedness put him between something of a rock and a hard place. Theoretically, the building of a 150-foot-high dam at Long Valley could have created a reservoir large enough to meet the city’s needs and provide enough water to supply the irrigation needs of local farmers. Irrigated lands in the valley had increased from about 40,000 acres at the turn of the century to some 65,000 acres by 1910, and talks had been ongoing since that time in an attempt to reach a formal agreement guaranteeing the status quo, so long as valley residents would agree not to press for an expansion of those rights.

  In 1921, the city finally reached an agreement with a citizens’ group originally called the Owens Valley Defense Association, whereby it would construct a dam at Long Valley of sufficient size for the needs of both the city and the Owens Valley. Accordingly, in August 1923, work on the dam finally commenced, but it was to be only 100 feet high in order to avoid the need to purchase additional lands, including those held by Eaton. At that point, the Watterson group, of which Fred Eaton was a member, fil
ed for an injunction to halt the work, though they let it be known that they would drop their opposition if the plans were changed to make it a 150-foot dam. For the time being, at least, stalemate prevailed.

  It was ironic that Eaton, once vilified in the Owens Valley, had become one of its stalwart citizens. As early as March 1906, Eaton had told reporters of his dismay at being characterized as a profiteer in buying up Owens Valley lands. The Los Angeles papers had distorted his windfall of Rickey lands and cattle, Eaton said in an interview with the Riverside Daily Press. He had actually paid $21,000 of his own money for “a bunch of calves that have to be turned into beef,” he said. About the only real money he had made out of the deal, he said, was “about $150” in egg sales from chickens left on the ranch. On the other hand, he said, the city had bought a ranch worth at least $1 million for only $425,000 due to his skills as a negotiator, and all he had received was “a little mountain land that would not be worth 5 cents without the calves.”

  Worse yet was the extent to which his reputation had suffered in a place he cared greatly about. Some hotheads in Bishop had been ready to hang him, Eaton claimed. “They even went so far as to buy the rope.” But he was gratified by how things had turned out since. “I am now thankful that the people up there understand me,” he said. “I have plenty of warm friends throughout the entire valley.” So far as his treatment in the Los Angeles papers had gone, however, Eaton was “disgusted.” As he told his interviewer, “I am going up to the ranch with my calves, and let Los Angeles severely alone.”

  In fact, Eaton made good on his statement, spending nearly two decades raising cattle and chickens in the valley, apparently devoted to enterprises that T. B. Rickey had been happy to rid himself of. Still, argument ensued as to the propriety of the ex–Los Angeles mayor’s motives. To Mulholland, Eaton had acquired his Long Valley Ranch for no more than 20 percent of its actual value while acting as the city’s agent, and, furthermore, he had known of the value of the property as a potential reservoir site from the beginning. Thus, he should be asking a far more reasonable price when the city was finally willing to negotiate. Eaton, on the other hand, believed that Mulholland opposed the sale simply on personal grounds and was making innocent people in the Owens Valley suffer because of it.