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

by Standiford, Les

  The Mojave and Antelope Divisions would divide the task of carrying the line across the Antelope Valley to Fairmont Reservoir, which was designed to ensure an uninterrupted supply of water in case of any breaks in the line above (though it would also be capable of providing a steady flow to a power plant that Mulholland suggested could be added in San Francisquito Canyon, taking advantage of the great drop in elevation through the San Gabriel Mountains). The Elizabeth Division’s responsibility would be the digging of the great tunnel through the San Gabriel Mountains beneath Lake Elizabeth, and the Saugus Division would carry the water on through the San Gabriels into the San Fernando Valley, including the boring of a formidable tunnel north of the Newhall Pass.

  In addition to the construction work itself, Mulholland was also faced with the question of how to bring supplies to the line. Train service was in place as far as Mojave, but north of that settlement there existed only the rugged stagecoach and wagon track that Mulholland and Eaton had used on their initial foray. The building of a railroad between Mojave and the Owens Valley would be a boon to all, Mulholland said. At present, any freight out of the valley had to be carried by what he termed “very defective transportation facilities,” a limited system of narrow-gauge rail lines that made a circuitous connection of some 600 miles to San Francisco, crossing passes as high as 7,000 feet. In Mulholland’s opinion, this was the actual obstacle that had blocked development in Inyo County and the Owens Valley. A proper railroad running southward out of the valley would be only 230 miles long, with a downhill run to Los Angeles most of the way.

  There was also particular need of a spur line to the area south of the Red Rock Summit where the massive sections of steel pipe for the Jawbone and Pine Canyon Siphons would have to be transported, but Mulholland understood that it was unlikely that the city would be willing or able to put itself in the railroad business. He was already negotiating with the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific companies to build that supply line as well as to provide favorable freight rates to the city for carrying materials to the work camps.

  One ancillary business would have to be begun by the city in order to build the line, Mulholland said, referring to the necessary construction of a cement plant somewhere along the route. Accordingly, he identified the 3,000-acre Cuddleback Ranch near Mojave as a site containing sufficient deposits of lime and clay for making cement. The city would have to purchase that property and build a mill, which would cost about $300,000, but given the amount of cement they would need—about 1.3 million barrels—along with the savings in transportation costs by having supplies virtually on site, even that additional outlay would ultimately result in savings. He had already had test batches of cement made from materials taken from the property, he told commissioners in his proposal, and cement expert Edwin Duryea, hired on from the Reclamation Service for the purpose, had pronounced the product “superior.”

  All of Mulholland’s preparations were eventually compiled in a document entitled “First Annual Report of the Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Aqueduct” that was presented to a new city agency, the Board of Public Works, created on March 1, 1906, in accordance with a revision to the city’s charter. The new board was, in Mulholland’s words, to take charge “of all expenditures of money derived from the sale of municipal bonds.” Since the Los Angeles Aqueduct would be funded by bonds, it would become the official body overseeing the project, and all positions on the aqueduct would be filled under Civil Service Commission regulations and approved by the Board of Public Works.

  During the construction process, Mulholland would essentially wear two hats. He would continue on as chief engineer and manager of the City Water Department, reporting to the Board of Water Commissioners; but he would also function as chief engineer for the aqueduct, reporting in that capacity to the Board of Public Works. To ensure that all went smoothly, an Advisory Committee was formed, composed of the presidents of the Water and Public Works Boards, Mulholland, his chief assistant for the aqueduct, J. B. Lippincott, and city attorney William Mathews.

  By March 31, 1907, when Mulholland presented his first report to the new board, all was up and running. Three surveying parties were in the field, a commissary was already in place at Mojave, and a construction camp was established in the Owens Valley, with a power shovel at work digging the main canal.

  An April 1 report by Aqueduct Disbursing Officer W. M. Nelson showed that $1,294,251 of the $1,512,246 realized in the initial bond sale had been spent, leaving only about $243,000 in the kitty. What the city had to show for its expenditures consisted primarily of 76,581 acres of land. That outlay totaled $1,035,073.77, including $13,014.90 in commissions, $10,666 of which went to Fred Eaton.

  Only about $160,000 of the total had been expended for actual construction on the aqueduct itself, the report stated, including the digging and grading of five miles of the main canal in the Owens Valley and six miles of wagon road. The rest had gone for the completion of some 700 miles of surveys and studies of route conditions, the purchase of an undeclared amount of right-of-way, machinery, equipment, and tools, along with, in one reporter’s words, “100 other things leading up to active work on the construction of the aqueduct as soon as voters make their decision on the bond issue Wednesday, June 12.”

  The latter was the last real impediment to full-scale work on the project, though there was not much concerted resistance standing in the way. As a Los Angeles Herald story (April 1, 1907) released in tandem with news of the disbursement report opined: “The past week opened one of the most remarkable campaigns for one of the most remarkable projects that any city, ancient or modern, has ever undertaken.” A committee formed by the Chamber of Commerce, the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, and the Municipal League had opened an office and begun to circulate calls for every good citizen to turn out to vote in favor of the bond issue so that construction could begin in earnest. Democrats, Republicans, and even the unaffiliated were allied in support of the measure, the report claimed, along with labor and capital, prohibition and anti-prohibition organizations, and the city’s “five great newspapers,” presumably the Herald, the Times, the Examiner, the Record, and the Evening Express.

  Nor were supporters of the aqueduct asking voters to lend support to a completely unfamiliar undertaking. Any schoolchild would have heard at least passing mention of the thirteen aqueducts of ancient Rome, a 500-mile system largely credited with turning that city into civilization’s center. The largest of those, the Aqua Marcia, measured a “mere” fifty-six miles in length, delivering about 50 million gallons a day. Compared to what Mulholland was proposing, the Aqua Marcia was little more than a section of garden hose.

  To help galvanize support, the joint committee of backers prepared a campaign pamphlet based upon Mulholland’s report to the Board of Public Works. Among other things, the “Owens Valley Water Primer” reiterated that there was no other sufficient supply of water available to ensure the city’s continued growth, which unless augmented would be exhausted in “five, or six years.” In countering some claims by those who had described the waters of Owens Lake as undrinkable, the primer pointed out that the waters of the river were being diverted at a point fifty miles upstream from the lake, where they were pristine. Samples drawn at that point had been tested by the federal government, the primer stated, as well as by three other agencies, all of whom had reported favorably.

  As to the feasibility of the project to which they were being asked to commit so many of their tax dollars, taxpayers were assured that experts were in agreement. It would take five years to complete the construction, at a cost of about $21 per foot. Furthermore, in a nod to Mulholland’s popularity, voters were reminded that there was a firm hand at the controls of the project. Since the water company had been acquired by the city, rates had been reduced by 10 percent and were less than half the rates charged by those supplying San Francisco, Oakland, Alameda, and Berkeley. In five years, the City of Los Angeles had greatly enlarged its system and in 1906 e
arned net revenues of $652,416. The aqueduct, while expensive, would eventually pay for itself, just as the city’s system was flourishing.

  As for the power question, Mulholland had been downplaying the matter. He pointed out that there was no mention of paying for power plants in the bond issue—the people could determine that matter at some later date. The prospectus did point out that while the cost of building power plants and transmission lines from San Francisquito Canyon to the city would be about $4.5 million, it was a potential add-on that would easily pay for itself. In 1906, the city had paid $156,000 to private companies for its street lighting alone.

  The primer also reminded voters that all of the bonds would not be sold immediately, but would instead be parceled out as the work on the aqueduct progressed, thereby saving on the costs of servicing the bonds’ debt. There would be no payment on the principal until the project was complete, and the cost to the average homeowner in the interim would amount to about $2.66 per year, based upon an assessment of $1,600 for a $3,000 home, the operating standard of the day. Supporters of the bond issue also stressed that 90 percent of the monies to be expended on the project—with the exception of the purchase of the steel pipe and the heavy machinery to be contracted for back East—would circulate through the local economy. Already, the document stated, there were upward of 120 local men employed in the undertaking.

  The primer might have proved informative for some, but as might have been expected, it also became a convenient target for opponents. Soon a parody was circulating, aping the question-and-answer format devised by the Chamber of Commerce. While the original had answered the question “What is the proposed Los Angeles Aqueduct?” with a straightforward rundown of statistics, the parody described it otherwise: A: “It is a piece of gigantic folly that will cost the taxpayer fifty millions of dollars or more.”

  One writer for Out West summarized the various objections that popped up, some of which had circulated since the days of the initial bond offering campaign: the project was patently impossible, and even if it were possible, it would take twenty years and at least $50 million to build. There wasn’t really as much water in the Owens River as Mulholland said there was, and even if there was, most of it would evaporate before it ever made it all the way to Los Angeles. Opponents argued essentially that only the mind of a duck could conceive that this phantasmagorical water could flow downhill from the stipulated location—it would necessarily have to be pumped over the many mountains and ridgelines that intervened. Furthermore, there would have to be two lines built in case one should be destroyed by the earthquakes common to the territory, and if that were not possible, at least the one line should be built out of sturdy steel pipe.

  Though the private power companies were vigorously opposed to the bond issue and contributed on the sly to opposition efforts, they kept quiet publicly because their self-interest would hardly have been persuasive to voters. (The companies claimed to be opposed to the prospect of the city’s distributing power more than generating it, arguing that the expense of erecting a duplicate distribution system was a waste of taxpayers’ money.)

  Mulholland wisely took advantage of the silence of the companies, declaring in his First Report, “the power situation is considered as wholly independent of the proposition of supplying water, and should stand on its own merits.” To underscore his position, Mulholland had hired consultant Ezra Scattergood as chief electrical engineer for the aqueduct project. The project would very likely need its own generating facilities to power operations in the distant desert, but all things electrical would be under Scattergood’s purview. By the end of May, Los Angeles newspapers reported that both the Los Angeles Gas and Electric Company and Edison Electric had endorsed the proposed bond issue, and with that the matter of the bonds’ passage was essentially settled.

  On Wednesday, June 12, 1907, more than 24,000 voters went to the polls and approved the measure in every precinct. The final tally showed nearly 22,000 in favor and slightly over 2,000 opposed, a margin of almost 11 to 1. It was time, it seemed, to go to work in earnest.

  BRICK UPON BRICK

  I WANTED THIS FIGHT,” MULHOLLAND WOULD LATER TELL A reporter, referring to the massive undertaking that ensued. “When I saw it staring me in the face, I couldn’t back away from it. . . . I didn’t want to buckle down and have to admit that I was afraid of the thing, because I never have been—not for a second.”

  Yet Mulholland would find that more obstacles still stood in his way. Though city attorney Mathews quickly set off to New York City to sell the new issue to what he hoped were eager investment firms, he would have known that he was facing a difficult task. The stock market was in the midst of a slide that had begun in late 1906 when speculation in railroad securities began to drop.

  By the time Mathews reached New York, the market was down by 20 percent overall, and a number of banks, as well as the New York Stock Exchange itself, were teetering on the edge of collapse. The “Panic of 1907” was finally halted by the storied intervention of steel magnate and investor J. P. Morgan, and would ultimately lead to the formation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. But the effects of the crisis were profound, and Mathews was soon cabling that it was “impossible to dispose of the bonds” at their current rate. He advised that the City Commission authorize an increase from 4 percent to 4½ percent, an action that they took immediately, to negligible effect.

  Yet Mulholland needed money and he needed it right away. Suppliers would wait only so long to be paid, and if he wasn’t able to meet his payroll, workers would simply walk off the job. Appeals to local banks, insurance companies, and private investors resulted in little investment. The effects of the downturn had spread westward, and the city was even having trouble paying its police and firemen.

  There was some good news during the period, for Mulholland was able to strike a deal with the Southern Pacific Railroad to build a rail line between Mojave and the Owens Valley as well as to extend preferred rates for carrying supplies along the construction line. The same economic downturn that closed any number of mining operations across the West also meant that Mulholland would have little trouble recruiting an experienced workforce for his digging and tunneling operations, so long as he could find a way to pay them. He was eventually able to secure waivers exempting most laboring classifications from Civil Service requirements, freeing him to hire men whose skill with picks, shovels, mule teams, and blasting caps far exceeded their abilities as test takers.

  Even with the financial constraints placed upon him, by year’s end Mulholland had 327 men at work on the project. There were twenty miles of road constructed in the area around Haiwee Reservoir, and work was underway at the North and South Portals of the Elizabeth Tunnel, assumed to be the most difficult of all the sections of the work. Mulholland had also negotiated a favorable contract for the 800 miles of copper wire he would need to string electrical supply and telephone lines along the construction route. Still, as J. B. Lippincott informed Mulholland, the last of the monies from the 1905 bond issue had been expended, and the aqueduct project was overdrawn. Though city commissioners voted grudgingly to transfer $10,000 from the water department’s general fund to the aqueduct account, it was clear that a work stoppage loomed. And then fate intervened on December 27, when the State of California announced that it would buy $510,000 worth of bonds, a gesture of faith in the project and one calculated to aid the ailing economy.

  Though only a drop in the proverbial bucket, the state purchase was the first major infusion of cash to the project in more than two years, and it unlocked something of a flow. Over the first half of 1908 came further purchases from local institutions and investors that brought total bond sales to a bit more than $1 million, allowing Mulholland to pay the backload of debtors’ claims and begin operations in earnest.

  By the middle of 1908 there were more than a thousand men at work, though most were involved in tasks related to providing the necessary infrastructure before the building of the aqueduc
t itself could begin: improvement of roads, the laying of power, phone, and water supply lines; completion of the cement plant at Monolith, sixteen miles west of Mojave; building generating facilities in the Owens Valley sufficient to power operations up and down the aqueduct; assisting the Southern Pacific in the completion of the rail line; the building of work camps, cookhouses, machine shops, barns, and corrals; and the assembly of heavy equipment, steel plate, timber, coal, and livestock from hundreds, even thousands of miles away.

  All of this was taking place in a region where almost nothing had existed before, a vast, often blistering terrain where yearly rainfall averaged less than six inches and temperatures rose to 120 degrees in the summer and fell below zero in the winter. At the time Mulholland began his work, it could take as many as five days for a letter to be carried from Bishop to Los Angeles. It was an area that even the Native American populations had deserted centuries before. And now he was leading a modern army of construction trying to do what nature herself seemed to have decided against: providing a water supply to a desert place along the Southern California coast.

  One reporter, sent out for a look at what Mulholland had managed, gazed from a cliff top out over the landscape of the Jawbone Division and marveled “as much at the ingenuity” of the engineers he saw at work, “as at the effrontery of Mulholland in daring to return from his trip of inspection and report to the Water Board that the thing was possible of accomplishment.” Furthermore, it was nearing the middle of 1908, and for all the impressive strides Mulholland had made, the money had nearly run out again.