by Jon Wilkman
The concrete of the St. Francis Dam was only ten to fifteen feet above the canyon floor when Grunsky, accompanied by his thirty-nine-year-old son and associate, Eugene, took a cursory look at the site and noted Mulholland’s construction methods. The father and son’s primary concern, however, was evaluating the dam’s potential impact on the downstream water supply.43 In his report, submitted in July 1925, Grunsky wrote that he’d been told that the Bureau of Water Works and Supply was interested only in “surplus” to be used in an emergency, but the San Francisco engineer had his doubts: “To insure this, a suitable contract should be entered into with Los Angeles.”44 Santa Clara River Valley farmers and ranchers went on alert. The previous January, another more widely distributed report dealt with the situation in the Owens Valley. It was prepared by California State Engineer W.F. McClure in response to the Alabama Gates incident. McClure was no supporter of big cities that threw their weight around. Filled with angry testimony against Los Angeles, the report made the Santa Clara Valley River Protective Association even more protective—and litigious.45
An upstream view of the partially completed St. Francis Dam (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power)
On March 17, 1925, in the hills above Hollywood, the Chief arrived in an open car for dedication ceremonies for the new Mulholland Dam. In response to any doubts about safety, the confidence of the Los Angeles Times was unshakable: “engineers declare that if the reservoir was filled with molten lead instead of water, the dam would still stand.”46
Forty miles away, another concrete barrier was rising in San Francisquito Canyon. As water use continued to increase in Los Angeles, Mulholland decided to raise the height of the St. Francis Dam a second time, creating a reservoir capable of containing 12.4 billion gallons. Pushing the schedule again, a year later, on March 1, 1926, with more concrete yet to be poured, water was released behind the unfinished barrier. When the flow of San Francisquito Creek was reduced to a trickle, alarmed members of the Santa Clara River Protective Association demanded a hearing with State authorities.
William Mulholland at the dedication of the Mulholland Dam, March 17, 1925 (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power)
Meanwhile, Los Angeles civic leaders were eager to put an end to years of conflict and litigation in the Owens Valley. City Water Commissioners announced that L.A. was prepared to buy every acre needed to control access to the Owens River and the Valley’s water supply. Discussions of thirty thousand acres of “green” space and reparations were off the table. The buyout price tag was estimated to be as high as $6 million—$82 million in 2015.47 It was a lot of money, but a revised Los Angeles City Charter, adopted in 1925, created a new Board of Water and Power Commissioners. The Commission granted the Board authority to manage and raise funds independently if necessary, without resorting to the political uncertainties of a public-approved bond issue.48
The members of the Board of Water and Power Commissioners were appointees of the mayor and City Council and officially in charge of the DWP. In reality, the Department could run itself, based on an independent power structure set up by W.B. Mathews and Bill Mulholland more than twenty years before. Competitors, like private power companies and the Chief’s longtime critic, consulting engineer Frederick Finkle, complained about a “water and power machine,” with money and promotional resources that could influence public policy in Los Angeles, and even statewide.
L.A.’s comprehensive buyout proposal was good news and bad for Owens Valley residents. The city seemed prepared to pay top dollar to bring California’s Little Civil War to an end. A deal appeared to be in sight, but without reparations, as families and businesses continued to leave Owens Valley, those who remained believed the local economy might never recover. Faced with this grim prospect, diehards upped the ante. They pushed for higher prices, backed by intimations of more violence.
On April 3, the silence of a spring day was shattered. A section of the Owens River Aqueduct had been dynamited again. A month later, at the Alabama gates, a ten-foot gash was blasted through a concrete wall. Dynamite hadn’t proved an effective weapon for change when the Los Angeles Times building was bombed in 1910, but this time the destructive tactic seemed to be working. Even the Times argued for compromise.
There were no dynamite attacks in San Francisquito Canyon, but in 1926 William Mulholland faced another kind of assault. The Santa Clara River Protective Association was convinced the St. Francis Dam would interfere with the replenishment of water downstream. Agreeing with the Association’s concerns, California State Engineer W.F. McClure ordered Los Angeles to make sure an adequate supply of water was released from the St. Francis Reservoir to make up for any losses. The exact amount would be decided by a percolation test to determine how much would be absorbed by the gravel bed of San Francisquito Creek before the water reached the Santa Clara River. Impatient with what he considered unnecessary interference with his plans for the St. Francis Dam, the Chief agreed. “That water will go down the canyon so fast,” he announced, “you’ll need horses to keep up with it.”49
The test was scheduled for September 15, 1926, at six A.M. Water equivalent to the average supply drawn from fifty local wells was released from the partially filled St. Francis Reservoir. Harvey Van Norman and other observers from Los Angeles and the Santa Clara River Valley waited downstream. Hours later, there was no water in sight. The flow had apparently disappeared into the sandy riverbed. Reclining under a tree, Van Norman noticed sand fleas scurrying nearby. Remembering the Chief’s colorful description of how fast the flow would move, he quipped, “Well, there go Bill’s horses!”50 The experiment was one of the few times the Chief was publicly proven wrong. Members of the Santa Clara River Protective Association paused to chuckle … and filed a lawsuit. That didn’t stop work on the St. Francis Dam. In a report to the City Engineer, the Chief announced the job was finished on May 4, 1926.51
A portrait of the completed St. Francis Dam, taken by a photographer for the Monolith Cement Company. It was to be used in an advertisement. The ad never ran. (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power)
The same month the St. Francis Dam was completed, in the Owens Valley protestors weren’t waiting for State-sanctioned tests. Again they took the law into their own hands, dynamiting the sag pipe at No Name Canyon. In response, trainloads of armed security officers were dispatched from Los Angeles with orders to shoot to kill.52 A day later, a city power plant near Big Pine was blasted and seriously damaged. The anti-L.A. press had taken to calling William Mulholland “Aqua-Duck Bill.” Local wits referred to the Owens Valley attacks as “Shootin’ the Duck.”
The attacks appeared to take a more ominous turn when news of another target arrived in Los Angeles. A phone call to the Los Angeles County Sheriff warned that “a carload of men were on their way from Inyo County with the intention of dynamiting the St. Francis Dam.” Mulholland immediately ordered a contingent of armed guards to San Francisquito Canyon.53 After a tense ten days, no bombers showed, but in June there were three more dynamite attacks in the Owens Valley. By mid-July 1927, the Aqueduct had been blasted ten times.
On August 4, 1927, just as the series of explosions showed no signs of ending, shocked Owens Valley residents found a printed announcement taped to the doors of Watterson-owned banks: “We find it necessary to close all our banks in Owens Valley,” the flyer read. “The result brought about by the last four years of destructive work carried on by the City of Los Angeles.”54
In the course of investigating the dynamite attacks, detectives for the Pyles National Detective Agency claimed to have uncovered evidence that embezzled funds from Watterson banks and private companies had been siphoned to support dynamite attacks by Owens Valley protestors. Uncle George, whose feud with his nephews had turned bitter, may have had a hand in arousing suspicions about the Watterson brothers’ questionable financial practices.55
When State Bank Examiners looked closely, they found $800,000 missing, along with $400,000 in bond money rai
sed for the proposed irrigation district, and thousands of dollars from local depositors. Many lost everything, or were left deeply in debt, including Fred Eaton.56 Only a short time before, “the Father of the Owens River Aqueduct,” already in financial trouble, had raised the price of his Long Valley land to $2.1 million.57 Mulholland ignored the offer. With new reservoirs closer to Los Angeles, the Chief was satisfied that the Weid Canyon and St. Francis Dams were strong enough to hold back the future.
Within days of the Inyo County bank failures, the Wattersons were arrested and charged with thirty-five counts of embezzlement and one count of making false statements to State auditors.58 The brothers confessed, claiming that they were only attempting to “keep the Valley going.” Some saw evidence of less altruistic motives. With a strategy Harrison Gray Otis would have understood, while the brothers were fierce advocates for the Owens Valley, they also hoped to preserve their overextended business and banking interests.
In Inyo County the trial was viewed as a tragedy. In his courtroom summation, the local district attorney shed tears. As they listened, so did the jury. Even the judge dabbed his eyes.59 Enlightened self-interest or not, the verdict was swift: guilty. The sentence was ten years in San Quentin Prison.
Watterson allies continued to blame overbearing Los Angeles, but others sadly acknowledged that they had been betrayed by men they respected and admired. Whatever the truth, the Owens Valley economy was in a shambles. Acting with unexpected charity, Los Angeles made efforts to help, offering jobs to local workers, and California banks moved in to rescue the fiscal situation. It was hardly enough. A final resolution would take longer than anyone expected.
The Wattersons were behind bars, but dynamiters were still at large. In another surprising development, in February 1928 arrest warrants were issued for six men. Pyles detectives announced that more suspects would be identified, including “highly placed public officials, members of the oldest valley families, and prominent community figures.”60 Like the investigation of the Times bombing, a single confession broke the case.
Perry Sexton, a gray-haired and ruddy-faced disgruntled former Aqueduct employee and Lone Pine sawmill operator, admitted he planted the dynamite that blasted the No Name sag pipe and a DWP power plant near Cottonwood Creek. He hinted there were others involved, including Mark Watterson, but the evidence was thin, and no one else was willing to squeal. When a trial began, Sexton was the only defendant. But it looked like California’s Little Civil War was coming to an end. Los Angeles had won. Soon the city would own the entire Owens Valley—262,102 acres, purchased for nearly $220 million in twenty-first-century dollars.61 In the end, the amount of Valley property owned by Los Angeles was greater than the land area of the city itself. After a bitter and violent fight over the future, the Owens River Aqueduct continued to convey hundreds of thousands of gallons south. In San Francisquito Canyon, the reservoir behind the St. Francis Dam was filled to capacity.
The St. Francis Dam and Reservoir c. 1927 (Ventura County Museum of History and Art)
5.
A Monster in the Dark
Unlike the opening of the Owens River Aqueduct fourteen years before, the completion of the St. Francis Dam in 1927 didn’t make headlines, but on March 20, 1926, during construction, the Los Angeles Times included a proud picture spread on page eight. Almost 60 percent of the storage capacity of the Los Angeles water system was contained in the south, near the city,1 but most Angelenos didn’t know this or, frankly, care.
Newspaper readers may have followed California’s Little Civil War, but a far more devastating water story gripped the nation. After torrential rains, the Mississippi River overflowed levees and ran wild in seven states, killing an estimated 246 people and causing as much as $1 billion in damage.2 Years of engineering efforts proved inadequate in the face of a determined onslaught from nature.
The “Pacific Slope,” as the West Coast was sometimes called, was nearly two thousand miles from the raging Mississippi and separated from New York, Washington, D.C., and even Chicago by more than open spaces. For most Americans, Los Angeles was like a distant galaxy, growing brighter but still an alien place, even as the city’s population grew and economic clout increased. To the cultural arbiters on the East Coast, those who determined the narrative of the American past and present, the rapid rise of Los Angeles was a strange anomaly. Yet in many ways, L.A. was the most American of cities.
In the open West, the City of the Angels exemplified the rise of a new kind of urban power, unfettered by centuries of orientation toward Europe and generations of aristocratic wealth and power found in cities like New York and Boston. Also, L.A.’s imperial exploits in the Owens Valley represented a transfer of regional resources on an unprecedented scale. Like the struggles over the Aqueduct, the story of the St. Francis Dam is a tale of two Americas—rural and urban—as well as the consequences of a technology-driven rush to the future that left many in Los Angeles, as well as the United States, uninformed, indifferent, or overwhelmed. Meanwhile, as they are today, Americans during the Roaring Twenties were captivated by celebrities, crimes, and scandals. Civil engineering wasn’t a hot topic, and the word infrastructure was a recent addition to the dictionary, but rarely used.
Los Angeles, looking east, c. 1928. The new City Hall is the tall white tower in the distance. (Author’s collection)
As the projected face of Los Angeles, Hollywood supplied an alluring dateline for glamour, shallow success, and scandal, overshadowing almost everything about the city. When newspaper readers tired of Hollywood excesses and “sexploits,” reports of grisly crimes kept them turning the pages. In December 1927, a Los Angeles college student, William Edward Hickman, kidnapped and murdered twelve-year-old Marion Parker, the daughter of a Los Angeles banker. Parker’s disemboweled and dismembered body was discovered, wrapped, as it turned out, in newspapers.
Stories of crime and corruption on a national scale—especially the bribery intrigues of the Teapot Dome scandal, involving millionaire Los Angeles oilman Edward L. Doheny—were headline distractions for 1920s Angelenos who attempted to understand the city government’s involvement in the Owens Valley. Most were satisfied that water appeared when they turned on a faucet. As long as the flow kept coming, and utility rates and bond indebtedness remained acceptable, how and where water came from was irrelevant.
In 1927, a new hero was added to a celebrity-addicted era after Charles Lindbergh flew an airplane alone across the Atlantic Ocean. On September 20, during a ninety-three-city cross-country “goodwill” tour, the boyish aviator piloted the Spirit of St. Louis from Reno, Nevada, to Los Angeles, where he was feted in a confetti-strewn parade down Broadway. His seven-hour flight plan followed the route of the Owens River Aqueduct and across water-starved Death Valley.3 As Lindbergh began his descent to Vail Field, eight miles east of the city, the weather was fair. Ahead he could see a low urban landscape spreading in all directions, interspersed by plots of open land and unfinished tract developments, bounded in the west by the expanses of the Pacific Ocean. The most prominent landmark was the nearly completed Los Angeles City Hall.
Los Angeles in the 1920s was a city energized by future-making. With a boost from annexation, between 1910 and 1920 city census numbers surged from 319,198 to 576,673. In 1920, L.A.’s population surpassed that of San Francisco, and the City of the Angels became the economic hub of the West Coast. By 1930, with 1,238,048 residents, Los Angeles was America’s fifth-largest metropolis. Thanks to products shipped through the Panama Canal and docks loaded with lumber, citrus, and barrels of oil, L.A.’s man-made port was second to New York in export tonnage.4
Broadway was the showplace of downtown. There were impressive multistory department stores like Bullock’s, J.W. Robinson, and May Company, and ornate entertainment palaces, including the Million Dollar, the Orpheum, the State, and the Tower. To the west, the Shrine Auditorium held 6,700 people, the largest theater in the United States. Across town on Hollywood Boulevard, theatergoers lined u
p at the exotic Grauman’s Chinese, the Egyptian, and the ornate El Capitan.
In Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, pedestrians crowded sidewalks, and a trolley and suburban train system, among the most extensive in the world, carried Angelenos to the farthest reaches of the city. By the 1920s, Los Angeles also was the undisputed world capital of automobiles. When an auto enthusiast cruised west on Wilshire Boulevard, named for real estate tycoon Gaylord Wilshire, known as the “millionaire Socialist,” he—or she (independent 1920s women were eager to get behind the wheel)—arrived at the Ambassador Hotel. The Ambassador was home to the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, which debuted in 1921, an elegant hot spot for the newly prosperous, movie stars, and fun lovers.
In 1923, the City of the Angels was the sole bidder to host the 1932 Olympics. A new stadium, the Coliseum, was constructed, capable of holding 105,000 sports fans. By 1923, a grand new hotel, the Biltmore, was ready to greet guests from around the world.
As Charles Lindbergh could see from the air, Los Angeles was a different kind of city, still in the making. To the far west, the campus of UCLA was emerging from barren land. During the 1920s, the little community of Beverly Hills resisted the lure of Owens Valley water and independently began to populate nearby slopes with mansions. The small beach resort of Santa Monica also remained “unincorporated,” but Venice, a proto-Disneyland with a carney boardwalk and canals plied by gondoliers, succumbed to annexation in 1926.
Los Angeles was an international capital of entertainment. By the 1920s, 85 percent of the world’s motion pictures were produced in and around the former teetotaling suburb of Hollywood. In 1915, after the San Fernando Valley was watered and annexed by the Owens River Aqueduct, an entire community, Universal City, was built to manufacture motion pictures. Early on, Bureau of Water Works and Supply publicists understood that movies were persuasive as well as entertaining. William Mulholland made a reluctant cameo appearance in a BWWS-produced documentary about the making of the Aqueduct and the importance of water development. Not unexpectedly, the Chief’s private-enterprise critics panned the picture as more promotional than educational, and a waste of taxpayer dollars.5
