Rivers in the Desert

by Margaret L Davis

  Further, a wooden crate stuffed with soggy dynamite was found by a truck driver in the Santa Clara wash, two miles south of the failed dam where it had apparently been carried by flood waters, and police were tracing its origin.

  “If that dam was dynamited deliberately, it was conceived by a soul ten thousand times blacker and infinitely more cruel than the one that carved up the body of little Marion Parker,” a water official stated, referring to the gruesome murder of a small child that had stunned Los Angeles citizenry. “And if it is proven that the dam was dynamited, then there will be recorded in history the most dastardly crime of this century.”

  15

  Persecution

  Persecuted,

  but not forsaken.

  2 COR. 4:9

  IT IS UNDERSTANDABLE why Mulholland and the Department of Water and Power suspected that sabotage caused the disaster. Coupled with the “new evidence,” the bursting of the St. Francis had occurred on the heels of repeated assaults on the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The bomb blasts of the No Name Siphon and others in the years that followed had interrupted the flow of water to the city, and water officials felt the St. Francis break was an extreme extension of the same violent pattern.

  Months of investigation by Los Angeles police officials eventually uncovered what was thought to be the central ring of the Owens Valley dynamiting conspiracy. Produced in court in the Owens Valley town of Independence were two pieces of evidence against the dynamiters: dynamite powder packing crates and a confession by Bishop citizen Perry Sexton. The arrest of Sexton and the six other suspected conspirators known as the “Inyo Gang” culminated in a preliminary hearing that was in progress on the day of the St. Francis collapse. Despite dramatic testimony regarding details of the aqueduct bombing, the charges were dismissed several days later due to lack of evidence. When asked for a statement by reporters, Mulholland, disgusted at the dismissals, retorted that the only statement he felt like making could not be printed.

  Eleven months before the St. Francis break, the Los Angeles sheriff’s office had responded to anonymous phone calls reporting that a carload of men were on their way from Inyo County with the intention of dynamiting the St. Francis. Within minutes, Department of Water and Power personnel and sheriff’s deputies sped through the San Fernando Valley to apprehend the saboteurs, but they never materialized. Weeks of intensive investigation followed but no arrests were made, and no signs of conspiracy were uncovered. Investigators filed additional reports stating that they overheard threats by Owens Valley citizens that if anyone were to be prosecuted for the dynamitings, the city of Los Angeles would be sorry.

  Respected city councilman Pierson Hall took the accusations against the bombing suspects so seriously that he immediately embarked on his own crusade to determine if the facts could support a claim of dynamite as the cause of the St. Francis disaster, and contacted the Hercules Powder Company in San Francisco to obtain reports on the effect of dynamite on concrete. Hall met with a nationally prominent explosives expert from Texas, Zatu Cushing, who had over twenty-five years of experience in the field. He was so convinced that the dam was dynamited that he paid his own expenses to travel to Los Angeles to investigate. After examining blocks of cement remnants found behind the central piece of the dam, Cushing flatly stated that, in his opinion, the structure had to have been dynamited. The effect of dynamite on concrete was the “same as weather on a log which lies out in the open. It will sound and ring under a hammer at first, but with time it will crumble so that it can be scraped off with the claws of a hammer, or if left long enough, it can be clawed off with one’s bare fingers,” he wrote in a report. Hall contacted other experts who independently verified this conclusion.

  Hall and Mulholland speculated that the task of placing dynamite in the foundations of the dam would have been relatively easy. One individual could have quickly done the job. The San Francisquito canyon had been a popular camping spot, and hundreds of automobiles regularly traveled up the road near the dam without suspicion. The shock of a dynamite explosion would have shaken loose the dam’s wing foundations, and, once loosened, would have allowed the tons of rushing water to tear through the opening and cause the dam to crumble under the pressure. The explosion would have been heard only by a person or persons living immediately below the dam. However, no such witnesses survived the flood, and Hall believed that whoever planted the dynamite on the precarious slopes of the dam canyon might have also perished with it.

  At noon on the day after the break, Dr. Elwood Mead, Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, arrived in Los Angeles to begin the official federal inquiry on behalf of the Los Angeles City Council. He was immediately briefed on the situation by Hall, and driven to the site of the failed dam. Mead and Hall were amazed to see the central, seemingly most vulnerable section of the great arched dam still standing, having miraculously resisted the twelve billion gallons of raging water that had destroyed everything else in its path. The sight lent credibility to Mulholland’s theory that the wings of the structure had been dynamited simultaneously, leaving the center section standing intact.

  The strongest and perhaps strangest evidence supporting sabotage was submitted by an investigating Stanford University zoologist, Edwin C. Starke, who reported finding no live fish in the eddies below the fallen dam. Instead, he was shocked to find innumerable dead fish above the dam, which he theorized had been catapulted there by a colossal explosion. When the fish were dissected, they were found to have ruptured lungs–burst by concussion.

  The fact that no live fish had been found below the dam in the pools of water formed by the flood incited more than passing curiosity. But naysayers argued that the fish died not from a dynamite explosion but from the heavy, silt-laden flood waters. The “Stanford Fish” theory was refuted by newspaper editorials in Owens and Santa Clara Valley newspapers, and the Los Angeles Record declared, “We are inclined to believe that there may be a dead fish involved in the matter–a fish so dead that it smells to high heaven. And we think that this fish may be a red herring the Water Board would like to drag across the trail that leads to those responsible for the Saint Francis Dam disaster.”

  Affected by this and other strong public opinions against the dynamite theory, and fearing reprisals from the Santa Clara Valley, frantic department officials refused to comment further on the evidence or lend credibility to investigations of sabotage.

  While Mulholland busied himself with the defense of the city’s water system against the alleged saboteurs of the St. Francis, Water and Power Commissioners in closed session acted with undue haste under internal pressure from city officials including members of the Board of Control to dismiss him from the Department and relieve him of his official responsibilities. Rising to Mulholland’s defense, Van Norman pleaded passionately against dismissal; ultimately out-numbered, he left the room in tears.

  But Pierson Hall, presiding chairman of the Water and Power Committee of the City Council, and a stalwart Mulholland supporter, spearheaded a counterattack to save Mulholland and implored the Board to reconsider, since formal blame had yet to be fixed. “In my view nobody is in a position to know what caused the failure of the dam. City, state and engineering societies are forming committees to find out what caused the failure. Bill Mulholland has dedicated his life to the city of Los Angeles in securing and maintaining a sufficient water supply and he is known throughout the world. Every single part of this great utility is a creature of his brain. It seems to me it would be precipitate to take such drastic action at this time.”

  So passionate was his plea that the Board reconsidered, and in a complete about-face unanimously voted against firing Mulholland. Members also turned down Mulholland’s request for a leave of absence so as to avoid any further embarrassment for the department. Mulholland remained for a time, in an excruciating dual role as leader and accused.

  The lack of support for Mulholland was due to serious anxieties on the part of beset city leaders. At all costs, city
leaders wanted to make peace with the still-angry residents of the Owens Valley and with the now-devastated Santa Clara Valley. They desperately desired to calm public fears about the potential threat of future terrorism, as wealthy Los Angeles boosters and the Board of Control wanted to promote a continuing influx of people into Los Angeles. And perhaps the most important reason was to safeguard the impending Boulder Dam bill that was now on the verge of passing and would seemingly guarantee for all time the future water supply for Los Angeles. If Mulholland’s enemies could destroy the much smaller St. Francis at such a terrible price in lives and money, what unimaginable havoc could they bring to the Goliath Boulder Dam? To discover that the St. Francis was dynamited would vindicate Mulholland, but it would also surely halt or delay legislation for Boulder Dam.

  When questioned by the district attorney’s office as to why the evidence pointing to dynamiting–the map and the tell-tale rope–were not disclosed sooner, city and Department of Water and Power officials responded with caution. “The city has no desire to escape any moral responsibility,” one department spokesman stated, “and you can readily see that if the city admitted being in possession of strong evidence of dynamiting, the public, particularly those people in the devastated area, might receive the impression that we were trying to dodge just claims against us, or to whitewash probable fault in construction.”

  TO ASA KEYES, the words “probable fault” translated into the name William Mulholland. To protect the fair and all-important name of the city of Los Angeles, another fair but lesser name would have to be defiled. Devising a whitewash of their own and placing blame on Mulholland, Asa Keyes and city leaders may have acted to thwart a thorough investigation.

  “As far as I know,” Asa Keyes told reporters outside the Hall of Justice, “there is no evidence that the St. Francis was dynamited.” Despite the availability of numerous witnesses who could testify as to their knowledge of facts regarding sabotage, Coroner Frank Nance reacted with the same closed mind. “I have no knowledge of any evidence found in support of the dynamiting theory. My investigators have not made any such report to me.”

  No less than five individuals were near the dam within one hour of its failure and were available to testify as to the apparent conditions at the dam site on Monday evening. All five were department employees stationed at Powerhouse Number One, five miles above the dam. Only three of these five witnesses were subpoenaed by Asa Keyes to testify at the coroner’s inquest.

  Elmer Steen and Katherine Span had left their friends’ home at the doomed Powerhouse Number Two at approximately 11:35 P.M., driving up the canyon’s southeast wall and passing the dam’s eastern abutment at roughly 11:45. They testified they had not seen “anything unusual,” but commented that the dam was “quite spooky” and “terribly quiet” in the moonlight as they drove along the unpaved San Francisquito Canyon Road.

  Within minutes, Ace Hopwell, who also worked at Powerhouse Number One above the dam, drove up the canyon by motorcycle, sometime between 11:50 and 11:55 P.M. He recalled seeing headlights up-canyon, presumably those of Steen’s vehicle, but also noticed nothing unusual. Slowly, Hopwell climbed the graded road up past the dam. Only the high, dull glow cast by the moon hidden by the hills, Hopwell recalled, and the car headlights up the canyon broke the monotonous blackness. One mile above the dam, however, Hopwell stopped suddenly when he heard a loud, ominous noise. Sensing an unusual sound or shaking, Hopwell pulled over, dismounted his bike, but kept the engine idling, and lit a cigarette while he listened to strange crashing sounds in the distance. The noise, he assumed, was a mile behind him. Hopwell testified that he thought the sound was a landslide, a frequent occurrence in the area; the rumbling sounded like rocks rolling down the mountain. Assuming the landslide was behind him, Hopwell remounted his motorcycle and drove up the canyon reaching Powerhouse Number One. It was there he learned of the disaster. Hopwell was the last person to see the dam before its collapse and live to tell about it.

  Two other employees from Powerhouse Number One were near the dam the night of the failure, but these individuals were never called to testify, and it is unclear whether Keyes deliberately excluded their testimony or whether he was unaware of their personal knowledge. These witnesses, who later refused to be identified, told a journalist that they had driven the San Francisquito access road between Powerhouses Number One and Two near the time of the dam’s collapse. They had observed that “the road had dropped at least twelve inches, just upstream of the dam’s east abutment,” and, with “bated breaths,” the party rode over the “danger area and back onto firm roadbed.” This eyewitness account, never heard by the coroner’s jury, would become critical in a later investigation.

  By Wednesday, March 21, the second day of the inquiry, sixty more witnesses had been served with subpoenas to testify before the coroner’s committee. Despite Keyes’s strenuous efforts, public speculation regarding sabotage soared. Mayor George Cryer said he was suspicious from the outset that the dam had been tampered with. “I personally inspected the dam sixty days ago and everything was found to be in ship-shape,” Cryer told reporters. “There was no hint of trouble up there and a man’s got to be plain pig-headed not to realize the thing broke at the zero hour when criminals were likely to work.” The mayor became the first elected Los Angeles official to publicly endorse the dynamite theory, joining the ranks of Mulholland intimates Pierson Hall and Harvey Van Norman.

  In retaliation, the anti-Mulholland forces acted, branding the dynamite theory as a “ton of hullabaloo.” “If a dynamite blast had destroyed the dam, surely there would be more physical evidence than merely a piece of rope, a scrap of note paper and numerous dead fish,” they asserted in their newspaper articles.

  The collected evidence remained in the hands of Asa Keyes who now denied its very existence, telling associates that the coroner’s jury would never see it. However, newspapers had already reported the discovery of the evidence, quoting one handwriting expert that the writing on the map matched that of one of the Owens Valley insurgents involved in the 1927 bombings. Nevertheless, Keyes stoutly denied to the press that he ever laid eyes on the rope or map. “It’s just rumor, call it ‘hooey,’ as far as we’re concerned.”

  The dynamite theory was further squelched by statements made by Ventura County Under Sheriff Eugene Biscaluiz, who hotly telephoned the Van Nuys News to deny any truth to the rumors that dynamite caused the St. Francis collapse. “I know nothing of these rumors,” Biscaluiz declared. “I know what I’m talking about, there is nothing to report. We are not here running down dynamite clues, but doing the same thing that we have been doing since the days of the flood, recovering bodies and taking depositions to introduce at the inquest.”

  Vehemently anti-dynamite factions accused “special interest groups” of planting the “plot evidence” at the dam site in order to lead the coroner’s jury astray in fixing blame for the disaster.

  So thorough was Keyes in suppressing the dynamite theory that only one of the 120 witnesses called before the inquest eventually testified about the missing evidence. Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff Harry Wright told jurors that no importance could be attached to the map found in Hollywood. “It might have been dropped there out of the pocket of some man who had been drawing something for his own amusement,” the deputy swore to Keyes’s satisfaction.

  The infamous map had remained in the hands of Hollywood police for some time after it was first submitted by the “concerned citizen” who had found it. Then it was handed over to officials at the Department of Water and Power where it was photographed and examined by Mulholland and Van Norman. The Department held it for twenty-four hours then passed it on to the County Sheriff’s office. After that, its whereabouts became unknown.

  Shocked that the incriminating evidence never found its way into the coroner’s inquest, insiders at the Department of Water and Power moved quickly to protect their legal interests, thus setting off a media war of contrasting viewpoints. J. R. Richards of the
Board of Water and Power Commissioners made a formal demand for a grand jury investigation. “We do not know if explosives were used,” Richards said. “Nobody can say definitely at this time, but we believe the matter should be investigated thoroughly and this includes the map, the fifteen feet of rope and the new affidavits gathered by the department of water and power in the last few days.”

  Upon reading Richards’s demands for the grand jury investigation in the Los Angeles Times, Keyes threw his newspaper down in disgust. After breakfasting at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a short distance from his posh new home on Rodeo Drive, Keyes telephoned his office, and grilled his assistant Dennison for almost twenty minutes about the nature of the affidavits.

  Reporters had obtained copies of the affidavits which apparently strongly substantiated the presumption of terrorism, and printed whole sections of the text in evening editions. One affidavit filed by an employee of an Owens Valley utility company described an incident on March 4, as he was walking toward his car on the main street of Bishop.

  As I got to the rear of my car I heard someone call from one parked near my machine to a man sitting in another car. The person calling said, “Carl, come here.”

  The man addressed got out of the car, approached the car next to my machine and put his head between the curtains. A man’s voice within said, “Carl, do you think 150 sticks of powder is sufficient?” The man addressed as Carl said, “Yes, that is enough if you use it right.”