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

by Standiford, Les

  Near the Red Rock Summit, Mulholland led the group on a hike up to a spot that he told them he had named “Point Despair.” During the original surveying, he said, his confidence was shaken when he got to this rugged division between the Salt Wells Valley and the Antelope Valley below. The drop in elevation there was so steep that he could never get the water up and over the ensuing side, he said, with a wave over the vast declivity. The only way to maintain the necessary elevation was to go through that, Mulholland said, pointing at a sheer cliff to their west. It was the place at which the series of unprecedented tunnels and siphons of the Jawbone Division had begun. Moments later, Mulholland had the party clambering down a steep trail and into a cool bore that now pierced the way completely through the rock.

  That night, at Haiwee, Fred Eaton joined the party, having journeyed down the Owens Valley on the new rail line, and he and Mulholland regaled the dinner party with tales of their original trip over the route and their eventual agreement that the impossible thing could in fact be done. Finally, Eaton slipped away, bound on the night train back to Independence where he would ready a party for the group on the third night of their journey. The others sat on boxes and barrels in the aqueduct’s offices, listening to yet more tales, including one by former Los Angeles sheriff Billy Rowland, the man who captured the legendary Tiburcio Vasquez, a bandit who preyed on miners plying the lonely route down from the Nevada gold mines.

  As Rowland explained to the group, they “might none of them be there” that evening if it were not for the legendary luck of the Irish. Back in his days as a ditch tender for the water company, the sheriff explained, Mulholland was returning to his shack beside the Los Angeles River below the Glendale Narrows one night when he came across a group of rustlers who were slaughtering a stolen cow. Mulholland had the good sense to simply wave and say “Hello, boys,” as if nothing were wrong.

  He rode on to his cabin, went inside, and lit a lantern to make it appear to anyone who could have followed that he was getting ready for bed. After a few moments, he slipped out the back door and walked all the way to downtown Los Angeles to tell Rowland he’d spotted the group suspected of a series of cattle thefts in the area. By the time Rowland and his men got back to the spot, though, there was little left but skin and hooves.

  The following morning, the sheriff was back, passing by Mulholland’s cabin with his posse. Mulholland saddled up and rode along to watch. Not far from Elysian Park, the posse spotted the rustlers on their way toward the wastes of San Fernando Valley, and suddenly the chase was on.

  Mulholland’s horse was a good one, Rowland said, maybe too good. Soon the mare had outpaced the sheriff and his posse, and Mulholland was helpless to rein her in. Some of the thieves turned to fire at their pursuers, and members of the posse began firing back. An unarmed Mulholland, caught in the middle, flung his arms around his mare’s neck and held on for dear life while the shots whizzed back and forth. Finally, one of the sheriff’s men shot a rustler dead off his horse and the others gave up the game. The long and short of it was, as Rowland assured his listeners, Bill Mulholland was no cattle thief but he damn near got shot for one. On that note, the party retired to bed.

  The tour was to conclude with a visit to the Cottonwood Power Plant the next day, followed by ensuing nights in Independence and Bishop where citizens greeted the party with enthusiasm, according to reporters, going so far as to serve up a dinner of wild game at a local club on the last evening. By the end, the trip had covered 650 miles and made a firm supporter for the project out of Mayor Alexander, who assured reporters that he had found “the work of building the aqueduct all it has been reported to be.” One event brought a rebuke from Mulholland upon his return. On November 1, it had been reported that a general strike was underway by workers at both the North and South Portals of the Elizabeth Tunnels as a protest against the hike of five cents in meal prices—from twenty-five cents to thirty—at the Desmond commissaries. The food was bad enough at the former price, many said. Until their pay was raised accordingly, sources said, the men would stay out.

  Mulholland dismissed the allegations of any organized unrest, telling reporters that he had spoken to the superintendents at both stations “not two hours ago.” He said that while some 200 men had left the 3,000-plus workforce over the last few weeks, it was not an unusual number. “When cold weather begins to approach, a number of them prepare to go elsewhere.” Mayor Alexander joined in the rebuttal, assuring reporters that he had seen no evidence of any strike or protest during his tour.

  Given the restiveness created by the still-unsolved bombing of the Times, and the efforts by unions to make headway in what had always been an open-shop city, speculation as to possible labor troubles in any arena was at a peak. But Mulholland was confident that the aqueduct pay scale was more than adequate to maintain an eager workforce despite any union efforts. Laborers were being paid $2.00 to $2.50 per day and an additional $1.00 for their meals; miners were making $3.50 per day plus board and could add as much as 40 percent to their base salaries with bonuses. In the current economy, those were generous figures.

  The pay scale published by the Board of Public Works in 1911 listed the pay of blacksmiths and carpenters at $3.00 to $4.00 per day, shift bosses at $3.50 to $4.00, concrete workers at $3.50 per day or $160 per month, electricians at up to $175 per month, clerks starting at $70, shovel operators at $130, and engineers ranging from $100 all the way to $833 per month.

  Of more importance to Mulholland was the need to raise the $1.25 million necessary to pay for the steel pipe to complete the siphons. To do that, the rate of bond sales would have to pick up, but, as news reports laid out, in order to induce the New York syndicate to revise its contract and exercise its option on the nearly $3 million in bonds remaining during the calendar year of 1911, the city would have to relinquish about $62,000 in premiums it was due under the current agreement.

  Not surprisingly, the City Council voted in accordance with Mulholland’s recommendation, but the following day Mayor Alexander announced that he had personal reservations about the deal. Not only would the city lose out on the premiums previously negotiated, he said, it would also have to agree to various restrictions on the use and accounting of funds, matters that the mayor considered of significant detriment.

  Meantime, confirmation of organized stoppages along the line arrived, with 350 men reported to be on strike at various locations, though work was not significantly impeded at any division except Haiwee, where the miners involved in the extraction of tufa material used for cement making had shut that operation down. According to the division chief there, the stoppage was in fact working to the project’s advantage, as they had far more of the volcanic rock piled up than could presently be used. In addition, miners who had been ordered off by their unions were reported to have returned to the job as laborers, and Mulholland seemed unconcerned for the moment. He told reporters that he would simply use any savings from payroll to put some of the idled steam shovels back to work.

  FITS AND STARTS

  IN THE END, THE FUNDING SLOWDOWN ACTUALLY WORKED in Mulholland’s favor. With much of the hardest tasks behind him, any walkouts simply meant fewer men to pay, and he was confident that once funding was fully restored to the project, he could put enough men to work to bring the aqueduct in on time and under budget.

  Joe Desmond’s operations had long been the subject of workers’ complaints, though even if he had been a more experienced commissary man, supplying fresh food over such distances in those days presented great challenges. As young laborer Erwin Widney put it, “When you are in the desert, 150 miles from the producer, with no ice, no fresh vegetables or fruit, no butter, eggs or fresh milk, you are somewhat limited in your bill of fare.”

  Still, the cooks, at least in the independent camps, did their best. Principal items on the menu at Camp 30-A included “fresh meat which had not lost its body heat, beans, much gravy, potatoes, onions, bread, stewed raisins or prunes, pie, and coffee
and tea.” The latter two, Widney claimed, were indistinguishable, “except for the red string tied to the coffee pot.” Likewise, Widney found little to appreciate in the ambiance surrounding mealtime, for as he put it, “Eating was a duty, not a social event,” with little of substance passing between himself and his fellow diners beyond the occasional “Let’s have the potatoes.”

  Surveyor’s helper Frederick Cross also remembered the food in the smaller crew tents as being good, but at Desmond’s mess in Cinco, the food was “execrable.” He recalls that two enterprising Frenchmen at one point brought a tent onto unspoken-for lands in the desert near the camp and set up a veritable dining emporium, giving workmen “an opportunity to rejuvenate their stomachs.” However, when Desmond learned of the competition, he had the workforce reminded in no uncertain terms that subsistence would be deducted from everyone’s pay whether they took their meals in his tents or not.

  Cross also remembers that one day Desmond had made the “cardinal error” of having himself chauffeured into the camp at Cinco in an elegant new Mitchell touring automobile just as the men were changing shifts. The result, Cross says, “was a volley of abuse as only Irishmen know how to direct.”

  Not the least of Desmond’s difficulties involved recruiting able cooks and keeping them on the job under trying conditions. One of the standing jokes was that it took three crews of cooks and helpers to man every mess house: one working, one coming up the line to go to work, and one on the way home.

  As he traveled to his first assignment on the aqueduct, Widney was in fact accompanied by one of Desmond’s crew chiefs who was escorting four new cooks bound for work in the commissaries. These were the toughest cooks in the cooking business, the crew chief announced, but he was going to see that they made it to their assigned stations if he had to kill them all with his bare hands.

  “Each had a quart bottle of whiskey,” Widney said of the cooks, describing them as “the hardest boiled characters unhung.” But he admitted that they could not be said to have been drinking. More precisely, he said, “They merely put the neck of the bottle down their throats and the whiskey flowed down without a swallow.”

  Medical Services director Raymond Taylor had been doing what he could to encourage Desmond to upgrade the food, but even he admitted that his fellow contractor was facing a difficult task. For one thing, “There was no ice to be had,” Taylor said, “and shipping ice from Mojave by train or trying to get it out by automobile was a pretty poor proposition . . . if he sent it on the train . . . two-thirds would melt or be stolen before it got to its destination.”

  Of equal concern to Taylor was the question of sanitation, including the near-futile attempt to keep flies out of the latrines, cookhouses, and mess halls. Screens were employed, and helped, but doors were always being propped open and panels kicked out, and the ubiquitous presence of the mules ensured a chronic problem. After some effort, Taylor managed to see that the corrals were situated downwind from the cookhouses, a practice that he said seemed groundbreaking to many of the camp chiefs.

  As for the problem in the latrines, Taylor came up with another inventive solution. He had observed that flies do not generally congregate in dark places and so convinced the camp engineers to erect privies with doors facing south, and baffles creating a kind of two-turn maze at the entrances. It left men enough light to get inside and find the toilets, but the problem of flies was greatly decreased. In the end, Taylor said, only one outbreak of typhoid struck the workforce in the years during construction. Though fourteen men were diagnosed, all of them were cared for at the hospital in Cinco, and no case proved fatal.

  The year 1911 began auspiciously with a Los Angeles Times story on January 12 declaring, “The outlook on the Los Angeles aqueduct was never brighter.” The City Council had appropriated $500,000 of its own monies to circumvent the flap over the bond renegotiations, and the strike seemed a thing of the past. There remained only 1,295 feet of rock to be dug to complete the tunnel beneath Lake Elizabeth, and Mulholland’s continual innovations suggested that he should consider turning author as soon as he finished with the job that had caught widespread attention.

  Among other things, Mulholland had been the one to suggest that the volcanic tufa deposits on lands adjacent to the rail line at Haiwee could be ground up and mixed half-and-half with more expensive Portland cement being manufactured at the city’s plant near Mojave. While it took a bit longer for the mixture to set up, the end result—a form of which had been used by the Romans in their road and aqueduct building—was even stronger than cement alone, Mulholland insisted. Furthermore, since it cost a dollar a barrel to haul cement from the plant to work sites up the valley, using the tufa already in place at Haiwee to mix with the cement cut the freight cost in half. All in all, Mulholland said, tufa mining would save $200,000 before the job was done.

  More notably, the Times reported, the big steam shovel that had been operating in the Alabama Hills above Olancha was no longer a “steam” shovel at all. The pistons of the machine were now being driven by compressed air, generated by free power from the project’s station at Cottonwood Creek. In addition, the dam at Haiwee was now excavated down to bedrock, and Mulholland announced that much of the dam’s core would be formed by a novel process whereby clay and dirt would be forced into place through the use of hydraulic jets instead of laborious hauling and filling.

  Finding ways to cut waste and increase the efficiency of his crews had become a fixation with Mulholland. Once he was called away briefly to testify before a hearing of the State Railroad Commission regarding the application of a Marin County water company to increase its rates. The hike was necessary, the company claimed, owing to the high cost projected in building a new earthen dam.

  During cross-examination, the company’s attorney approached Mulholland in the witness box and asked, “Now, Mr. Mulholland, considering the location of this dam and all the surrounding difficulties of construction, would you not think it might reasonably have cost 80 cents a yard?”

  Mulholland paused, apparently giving the question careful consideration. Finally, he leaned forward. “Well,” he said, “if you had had a parcel of old women, carrying that dirt up on the dam in their aprons and stomping it down with their feet, it might have cost 80 cents per cubic yard.”

  As for the present aqueduct project, the Times assured readers, the situation was sanguine. “Money and men, with plenty of both in sight, are all that is required to complete one of the most gigantic undertakings of a modern city.”

  At the beginning of 1911, only 1,300 feet separated the two crews working beneath Lake Elizabeth, and the principal part of the tunneling through the Jawbone and Grapevine Divisions was finished. Much of the steel siphon work in both rugged divisions remained to be done, owing to the expense of the pipe and the necessity for it to be ordered about a year ahead of its actual placement in the field. Nonetheless, Mulholland had nearly $1 million in the coffers, almost enough to get through the coming year, with close to $3 million of bonds left to sell.

  The cutbacks of the previous summer had made it necessary to shut down some of the big steam shovels along the route, but a number of these machines were still at work on the Olancha Division near Haiwee and at other points along the Mojave portion of the aqueduct. For many of those who had gone on the trip, one of the highlights of the previous fall’s tour—in addition to the thrill of driving an automobile through part of the pipeline—was the opportunity to watch the relatively unfamiliar machines at work. There had been steam shovels before, but Mulholland was responsible for the size of these beasts, as well as a number of advancements in their technology.

  When the board first advertised for bids for machines that could operate according to Mulholland’s specifications, most manufacturers regarded the standards as impractical and refused to submit proposals. Mulholland finally met with representatives of the Marion Steam Shovel Company, an Ohio company that had been in the business since the mid-1880s. Engineers for the com
pany told Mulholland that they would build machines of the size and power he stipulated, but they couldn’t guarantee that they could actually do the amount of work he expected.

  Mulholland’s response was what one could expect. “You build the shovels,” he said. “I’ll take care of the guarantee.” In the end, the company went along, the shovels worked as efficiently as Mulholland intended them to, and soon the company had placed several similar machines at work in the digging of the Panama Canal, as it would in many vast earthmoving projects to come. It was just one more instance of Mulholland’s work making its permanent mark far beyond the bounds of his adopted home.

  While papers carried stories that steam shovel operators affiliated with the Western Federation of Mines walked off the job early in February, they were quickly replaced by non-union men. Given the far-flung, decentralized nature of the work along the aqueduct, it was nearly impossible to organize a picket line, or for that matter, to get union organizers into the camps at all.

  Meanwhile, the shovel operators’ strike was overshadowed by the news that on February 27, 1911, tunnel crews finally broke through the rock to meet at a point about 250 feet beneath Lake Elizabeth after forty months of work, two-thirds of the time initially projected. Crews had driven 13,500 feet from the South Portal and 13,370 feet from the North, and might have met considerably earlier except for the fact that at 1,117 feet inside the mountain, miners blasted into an ancient fissure filled with sand and water.

  The mishap sent men scrambling back up the tunnel; fortunately, no lives were lost. The hole had to be plugged, however, the water pumped out, and a method determined for getting around the roadblock. Finally, Mulholland ordered a shaft driven down some 3,000 feet from above, culminating in a spot beyond where the fissure ran. From there, miners inched their way back northward toward the fissure, driving overlapping steel plates to support the tunnel ceiling as they went. Finally, they were able to run their sheeting through the fissure to the place they had reached before the blowout, and progress could begin again.