Rivers in the Desert

by Margaret L Davis

  Despite his substantial portfolio of real estate, stocks, bonds, and leaseholds, Mulholland never exhibited outward signs of his personal wealth, always remaining loyal to his modest immigrant roots.

  IN MARCH 1920, at age forty five, Joe Desmond, the food contractor on the aqueduct, died, and news of his death brought Mulholland together with Raymond Taylor. The death came as a shock to all who knew him, and Desmond’s widow, Alice, held funeral services at the large Desmond home and later at the Cathedral Chapel. Mulholland and Taylor served as pallbearers.

  Desmond had taken much of the brunt of the fraud charges during the Aqueduct Investigation Board’s inquiry in 1912. Taylor had grown fond of the ambitious, flamboyant Desmond during their years together on the aqueduct line despite their differences. After the aqueduct was finished, Desmond had garnered a lucrative twenty-year contract as the hotel and camp concessionaire in Yosemite National Park, where he had formed the Desmond Park Service Company and amassed further wealth. Daniel “Joe” Desmond, a member of one of the oldest families of the city, was born in 1875 at the old family residence on the site now occupied by the Chamber of Commerce building. He attended public schools and then graduated from St. Vincent’s College. As a young man, Desmond had worked as the head of the relief committee sent to San Francisco to feed the homeless following the earthquake and fire in 1906. It was his admirable work there that brought him to the attention of the Bureau of Public Works and General Chaffee, who retained his services as commissary chief for Mulholland’s aqueduct.

  Standing at the grave of his former friend and watching his elaborate flower draped coffin being lowered into the ground, Dr. Taylor recalled a conversation he had shared with General Adna R. Chaffee and Joe Desmond several years earlier. By then, both of the men’s connection to the aqueduct had long since been concluded.

  Chaffee had turned to Taylor and asked, “Doctor, how much money did you make off this job?”

  “General, I can’t tell you exactly, but I think I made about $6,000 a year for five years; in other words, about $30,000 in the clear,” Taylor replied.

  Chaffee then turned to Desmond and asked, “How about you, Joe, how much did you make?”

  “About a quarter of a million,” said Desmond matter-of-factly.

  The general slammed his fist on the table and said, “Damn it Joe, you made too much and the doctor didn’t make enough!”

  When Taylor later recounted the story to Mulholland, Mulholland was shocked to learn that Joe Desmond had made such a fortune. Later, Joe Desmond Jr., Desmond’s only child, inherited a substantial estate, a large part of it proceeds from the Los Angeles aqueduct contract.

  Others besides Desmond profited handsomely from the aqueduct, but Mulholland had devoted much effort to ensuring that the enterprise was built solely for the enrichment of the public. The notion that a man should be compensated fairly for his efforts on behalf of the city, but not made rich, was most apparent in Mulholland’s dealings with Fred Eaton and the endless haggling over the price for Long Valley. Even when it made the most sense to buy the ten thousand acres, Mulholland refused to do it—never giving in to what he perceived as blackmail against the people. Learning about the fortune Desmond had garnered during his years as concessionaire on the line troubled Mulholland.

  During the services, Dr. Taylor thought back to the days when he and Desmond engaged in heated arguments over the food served to the men on the aqueduct, yet he remembered one special dinner Desmond’s cook had served him, complete with a bottle of expensive wine. Taylor and Desmond were professional colleagues, and had shared hardships, but they were never close friends. Like many others, what they had in common was their appreciation for William Mulholland and their big effort in the desert.

  10

  Wars in Heaven

  Whence come wars

  and fighting among you?

  James 4:1

  JOE DESMOND’S FUNERAL had reinforced Mulholland’s own sense of mortality. Mulholland was now sixty-five years old, and the city of Los Angeles had changed drastically since his rise to superintendent of the Los Angeles City Water Company in 1886. The population of Los Angeles was now diverse in its ethnicity; its politics had become complex and the direction of its growth unclear.

  By 1920, the city’s population exceeded half a million. The movie industry was thriving, oil production was booming, and Los Angeles’s harbor imports surpassed those of San Francisco. Los Angeles real estate became a principal commodity, and in the next eight years, over 3,000 subdivisions encompassing 50,000 acres were formed and 250,000 building lots created.

  Land developers and publicists went to work informing the world that “God made southern California—and made it on purpose.” Harry Chandler’s All Year Club lured millions from the Midwest, where thousands of real-estate agents sold them land. By 1920, Santa Monica Boulevard, once a dry and dusty strip, was an elegant, palm-lined corridor. Small towns, orange groves, shops, and industries sprang up where before there had been empty expanses of dusty savannah.

  The movie industry moved West and Hollywood’s outdoor movie sets resembled African jungles while smart, city bungalows featured thick, green lawns. Nighttime Los Angeles was now a “wonderland of light” and “in sheer extent it was a horizontal equivalent of vertical New York”; no other spectacle like it existed anywhere in the world.

  Tourists could ride a mountain trolley sixty-one hundred feet into the air to the top of Mt. Lowe and behold the staggering Los Angeles basin, Pasadena, and fifty-six contiguous cities and suburbs “spread out over a vast sea of illumination.” To anyone who saw it, the vista was “vaguely fascinating, beautiful almost, in that confusion of lights, in those flashing signs and advertisements, in those streams and rivulets of motor headlights on the boulevards, a rhythm in the distant roar of the city … fantastic long slender shafts of light.…” However, the unparalleled growth was not without its detractors. “The community is thus a parasite upon the great industrial centers of other parts of America,” wrote Upton Sinclair. “It is smug and self-satisfied making the sacredness of property the first and last article of its creed.…Its social life is display, its intellectual life is ‘boosting’ and its politics are run by Chambers of Commerce and Real Estate Exchanges.”

  In the six years since Mulholland had finished the aqueduct, Los Angeles had undergone a staggering transformation; its population was soon to double the pre-aqueduct figures. The furious growth was severely straining the new water system’s capacity. Though brilliantly designed, it had one great defect—a lack of storage reservoirs to maintain a predictable flow in drought years. By his own admission, Mulholland had failed to predict the unparalleled growth of the city, and the growth upset the calculations on which he had based his plans for the Los Angeles Aqueduct. “If I had [had] more faith in the growth of the city,” Mulholland said, “I would be better off today.” Relying solely on the Sierra Nevada snowpack for a constant stream of water, the aqueduct was useless in times of severe drought and by the summer of 1923, after a long dry spell, the voracious needs of San Fernando Valley farmers had literally exhausted the aqueduct’s resources. A mere ten years since the big pipe’s construction, the aqueduct could no longer serve both urban Los Angeles and the agricultural empire now annexed in the San Fernando Valley.

  THE WORSENING SCENARIO confronting the city’s water supply did not go unnoticed by Fred Eaton, who knew all along this day would come. Eaton had no doubt that in time, he would receive his full price for Long Valley, and to ensure that end, endeavored to protect himself legally. In 1923 he sought an injunction to prevent the construction by the city of Los Angeles of a proposed 150-foot dam at Long Valley. Eaton’s shrewd easement to the city, finalized in 1905, had permitted a dam only 100 feet high, severely limiting its usefulness as a northern storage facility for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Fearing the city would exceed its legal rights and build the 150-foot dam anyway, Eaton filed a complaint on July 30 in Mono County a
gainst the City of Los Angeles, enjoining it from construction.

  Without Eaton’s Long Valley site to regulate the flow, Mulholland knew Los Angeles was doomed to recurring water shortages. It was also now apparent that as the city was forced to take more and more water, the Owens Valley would slowly die. Mulholland pleaded with Eaton to sell the parcel for less than a million dollars. Eaton refused. This time, Mulholland announced that he was severing all ties with his former friend. “I’ll buy the Long Valley three years after Eaton is dead,” a scowling Mulholland told Van Norman. It was a promise eerily close to prophecy.

  AFTER THE DEFEAT of the “socialist-inspired” attacks and exoneration by the Aqueduct Investigation Board in 1912, the war waged against Mulholland started again. This time, however, the battle was not a propaganda tool by “embittered socialists” to win an election, but was a twenty-year war over water, instigated by Owens Valley ranchers.

  William Mulholland admitted openly that he “savored the combat” of building the great aqueduct. Verbal attacks against the aqueduct by the people of the Owens Valley had begun in 1904, when gossip spread throughout the valley about Mulholland’s plans and citizens were quick to react to the threat it posed to their valley and the Federal Reclamation plan on which they had pinned their hopes. The 380 vociferous signatories who controlled 104,242 acres of the Owens Valley petitioned the Secretary of the Interior to urge that the federal irrigation project be continued.

  Mary Austin, who later left the Owens Valley for a celebrated literary career, was convinced that the valley had died when it sold its first water rights to Los Angeles—and that the city would never stop until it devoured every drop of Owens River water. Many had feared Austin’s analysis was right.

  In 1905, a farm woman from the small town of Poleta, fifteen miles east of Bishop, wrote a vivid letter to President Theodore Roosevelt that expressed the heartbreak and trepidation of the Owens people:

  Pres. Theodore Roosevelt

  Washington, D.C.

  Dear Friend:

  Look on your map of California, along the eastern boundary south of Lake Tahoe and you will find a county named “Inyo.” Running into this county from Nevada through a small corner of Mono County you will see the Carson and Colorado railroad which after it enters Inyo follows along the Owens River until they both come to Owens Lake, an alkaline body of water. It is about this river I write to you.

  This river after it leaves the narrow mountain canyon, runs through a broad and fertile valley for 100 miles. The first 20 miles of which is all or nearly so, in cultivation, further south ranches become more scattern. It has four prosperous towns.

  Indeed the people are very proud of their little valley and what their hard labor has made it. The towns are all kept up by the surrounding farms. Alfalfa is the principle crop. They put up to from two to four ton per acre and it cost from $1.25 to $1.75 to put it up and sell for $4 to $7 per ton, so you see the county is very prosperous. As there is about 200,000 ton raised in the valley if not more every year. Cattle raising is a great industry.

  There has never been any capitalist or rich people come here until lately and all the farms of the Owens valley show the hard labor and toll of people who came here with out much more than their clothes. And many had few of them.

  Now my real reason for wiring this is to tell you that some rich men got the government or “uncle Sam” to hire a man named J. B. Lippincott to represent to the people that he was going to put in a large dam in what is known as Long Valley. But—Lo! and Behold! Imagine the shock the people felt when they learned that Uncle Sam was paying Mr. Lippincott. He was a traitor to the people and was working for a millionaire company. The real reason for so much work was because a man named Eaton and a few more equally low, sneaking rich men wanted to get controlling interest of the water by buying out a few or all of those who owned much water and simply “freeze out” those who hadn’t much and tell them to “Git.”

  Now as President of the U.S. do you think that is right? And is there no way by which our dear valley and our homes can be saved? Is there no way by which 800 or 900 homes can be saved? Is there no way to keep the capitalists from forcing the people to give up their water right and letting the now beautiful alfalfa fields dry up and return to a barren desert waist?

  Is there no way to stop this thievery? As you have proven to be the president for the people and not the rich, I, an old resident who was raised here appeal to you for help and advice.

  My husband and I within the last year have bought us a home and are paying for it in hard labor and economy. So I can tell you it will be hard to have those rich men say “stay there and starve” or “Go.” Where if we keep the water in the valley it won’t be only three years until the place will pay for itself.

  So help the people of the Owens valley!

  I appeal to you in the name of the Flag, The Glorious Stars and Stripes,

  Yours Unto Eternity,

  Lesta V. Parker

  Lesta Parker’s troubles may have seemed trivial against the weight of larger looming political conundrums, and President Roosevelt’s own ambitions and political strategy as it concerned California dictated an administration policy of massive public works to benefit urbanization. “Booming Los Angeles with its municipal water department was a trophy that the hunter’s eye did not miss,” and the eventual demise of the Owens Valley, according to historian John Walton, fell neatly into a groove made for it by the transformation of the state in the Progressive Era.

  Protests in the valley were more silent once Mulholland began construction of the aqueduct in 1908. Some aqueduct camps suffered occasional arsonist attacks, but Mulholland was never certain if they had originated from labor disputes or citizen sabotage. In general, up to 1920 Los Angeles took only excess surface water for the aqueduct, and agriculture in the Owens Valley thrived on booming prices during World War I. Negotiations for valley underground storage water continued from 1913 through 1927, but no agreement was ever finalized.

  In 1919, a series of crippling droughts forced the city to tap Owens Valley ground water and pump it into the aqueduct, depleting the valley’s water table, and the once-lush Owens farmland began to dry up. Forceful criticism against the city began to surface, and even Will Rogers informed the nation: “Ten years ago this was a wonderful valley with one-quarter of a million acres of fruit and alfalfa. But Los Angeles had to have more water for its Chamber of Commerce to drink more toasts to its growth, more water to dilute its orange juice and more water for its geraniums to delight the tourists, while the giant cottonwoods here died. So, now this is a valley of desolation.” What was feared had finally occurred, and families were forced to shut down businesses and farms. The once sprawling Owens Valley was being rapidly transformed into a dustladen wasteland.

  In the face of new uncertainties, both sides adopted more aggressive strategies. Los Angeles began wholesale purchases of land and water rights, and city property acquisitions soared from six per year to over one hundred by 1923. The city used a checkerboard pattern in land purchases, focusing on strategic parcels, leaving others cut off from water sources. Owens Valley property owners and canal companies united in a single association called the Owens Valley Irrigation District to stop Los Angeles city crews from diverting water away from their property. In August 1923, city crews continued reclaiming water for the aqueduct by breaking locally owned dams and canal heads, and early in 1924, Los Angeles sought an injunction in the Inyo Superior Court to prevent the sale of irrigation bonds to finance the Owens Valley Irrigation District. Anger over the city’s efforts to undermine the irrigation district exploded in violence, and what was to be called the “California Water Wars” began.

  IN THE EARLY HOURS of Wednesday, May 21, 1924, the Los Angeles Aqueduct was dynamited just below the Alabama Gate spillway. The force of two hundred pounds of dynamite lifted a huge boulder alongside the channel, but most of the debris fell back in the hole. The blast was less effective than planned, causing twe
nty-five thousand dollars’ worth of damage. Mulholland dispatched maintenance crews that repaired the hole in two days.

  The desert sand surrounding the scene of the crime was covered in tire tracks and footprints indicating that as many as fifty men had participated in the early morning raid. The dynamite was believed to have come from a warehouse owned by two brothers involved in Inyo banking, Wilfred and Mark Watterson. Witnesses reported seeing a caravan of eleven automobiles traveling from Bishop, later passing through Big Pine, gathering supporters en route.

  Fearing local law enforcement to be sympathetic to the saboteurs, Mulholland dispatched private investigators to report on the incident. Private eye Jack Dymond, hired by the Los Angeles district attorney’s office, said that local sentiment was obstructing his investigation, and predicted that the criminals would never be caught because no local grand jury would indict, and no court would convict them. The city offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward for any information leading to conviction. The insurrection had interrupted interstate telephone communications, a federal violation, and city officials hoped the Federal Bureau of Investigation would step in.

  Various theories about the responsible parties covered the pages of Los Angeles newspapers. The Timesendorsed a theory that a “known red leader” fired from the aqueduct was behind the takeover, and privately, water officials suspected “spite worker” involvement based on the dynamiter’s intimate knowledge of the aqueduct. The Los Angeles Examinerdescribed the culprits as “maniacs and anarchists,” urging the District Attorney’s office to dispatch an anti-Wobbly squad to bring the mob to justice.