Floodpath

by Jon Wilkman

Appearing grim-faced and hollow-eyed in official photographs, Mathews acted as a tough and trusted special counsel for nearly thirty years. His soft-spoken style was described as a classic example of “a velvet glove on an iron fist” as he represented the city’s water rights, sought and structured critical bond deals in New York, and lobbied Congress in Washington, D.C. Navigating the city charter and state water legislation, Mathews was Bill Mulholland’s legal guardian. The Chief liked to joke, “I did the work and he kept me out of jail.”18

  Another of the Chief’s important and most influential supporters was physician, socialist reformer, and philanthropist John Randolph Haynes. Two years older than Mulholland, Haynes was another Los Angeles health seeker. He arrived from Philadelphia in 1887, just in time to make a fortune in real estate. As a practicing physician, Haynes had clients who included the elite of the city, most if not all of them unconvinced by his socialist ideals. Medicine was his profession, but curing the ills and injustices of society was his passion, especially as an advocate for the cause of publicly owned and operated water and power.19

  During the new era of Progressive politics, Los Angeles was at the forefront of a national trend on behalf of municipal ownership of utilities. By 1896, 53 percent of urban waterworks were publicly owned. Ten years later, the percentage was 70 percent.20 Although other social and civil rights agendas were included in the agenda, Progressive policies were part of a movement of reform-minded business leaders, most of them Republicans. As one Progressive put it, a city like Los Angeles was “simply a huge corporation … [whose] citizens are the stockholders, and [whose] purpose is not to produce dividends but to promote the well-being of the community and to conserve the interests of the people as a whole.”21

  As the influence of Progressivism spread, the United States was in the midst of wrenching social and cultural changes that would play a role in the story of the St. Francis Dam. In 1900, barely 40 percent of Americans lived in cities. By the end of the 1920s, the proportions were reversed, with city dwellers making up 56 percent of the population. The countryside had the food supply, land, and natural resources. The cities had people, capital, and political clout.

  In 1900s America, the loudest Progressive voice came from the bully pulpit of President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s dedication to the preservation and development of the American West would also play a pivotal role in the stream of events that would lead to the St. Francis Dam. On the local level, Progressives looked for civic leaders who were honest, public-spirited (almost all) men who had the dedication and technical skills to get a job done on time and on budget. In Los Angeles, William Mulholland was a Progressive’s dream come true.22

  Expressing the Progressive spirit, the State of California gave municipalities with more than 3,500 citizens a broad leeway of “home rule” to govern themselves. In 1902, within this purported power-to-the-people context, and with the advocacy of businessmen reformers, W.B. Mathews crafted an amendment to the city charter that established a civil service framework for L.A.’s new municipal water department—an organization that would evolve into the powerful Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The new Department’s motto was “Esprit de Corps,” encouraging organizational loyalty, enthusiasm, and nearly militant devotion to a great cause: an ample and dependable water and power supply to assure the survival and success of Los Angeles.

  A board was appointed by the mayor, but the Department was left free to manage its own budget and even retain revenues in a separate fund. The same concept of a “proprietary city department” was used for the new Harbor Commission and, much later, an airport. In the Water Department, commissioners were usually business and financial leaders such as R.F. Del Valle and wealthy reformer John Randolph Haynes. None had engineering expertise. That was Bill Mulholland’s domain. Over time, this power base allowed the Chief to build his own team, act with relative independence, and exert substantial influence in city affairs.

  With the new municipal water department in place, Mulholland went to work repairing and expanding the neglected supply and distribution systems. One of his earliest acts was to dramatically expand metering to facilitate billing and provide records to manage future needs. As a result, L.A.’s new municipal operation was able to reduce consumer rates and still bring additional income to the city. As further indication that a new era was beginning, after 123 years the Zanja Madre was abandoned as a relic of antiquated and less-thirsty times. The once all-powerful Zanjero was given a lowly desk job as a cashier.23

  Some traditions didn’t change. While the population of Los Angeles continued to grow during the summer of 1903, another drought hit. Rainfall was more than six inches below normal.24 The Water Department announced that almost the entire surface and subsurface flow of the Los Angeles River had been tapped. In July 1904, it was reported that consumption exceeded inflow to the city’s reservoirs by 3.5 million gallons, leaving less than a two-day backup supply.25

  Mulholland didn’t need to be reminded that he had to find water resources beyond what the Los Angeles River could provide. In a report to the Board of Water Commissioners, the Chief hinted where his imagination was headed: “We must turn our attention to remote supplies … with regards to water,” he declared, without adding specifics.26 He was serious, but as he joked later, “It is a question of either getting more water or killing [Chamber of Commerce president Frank] Wiggins.”27 The City Council didn’t need to be joshed into submission. They gave him authority to search for alternatives to the Los Angeles River.

  Mulholland’s friend and waterworks mentor, Fred Eaton, also was on the lookout for new water resources. He had another valley in his sights, far to the north, in California’s Inyo County. Since the 1880s, Eaton and his father enjoyed hunting and fishing trips in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near the Owens Valley, a narrow basin 120 miles long and six miles wide situated between the Sierra on the west and the Inyo and White Mountains on the east. In the nineteenth century, the area’s Cerro Gordo mines produced valuable reserves of silver, lead, and zinc, which were shipped by wagons to Los Angeles. By 1900, with mining operations in decline, Inyo County had a population of little more than 4,500 people concentrated in five small towns. Fred Eaton looked forward to a comfortable retirement as a rancher in the Valley, but he also had more ambitious plans—a scheme that could ensure L.A.’s future and make him a fortune. He would become a prospector for water, not precious metals.

  Eaton knew that each spring, melting snow coursed down the eastern Sierra watershed and filled the Owens River, which flowed south into a shallow lake. Without an outlet, during the summer months much of the lake evaporated, turning surrounding areas into alkaline sumps. Even though the river provided irrigation benefits for approximately six hundred small farms and local ranches, Eaton believed much more could be done. The Valley was water rich, just what L.A. yearned to be. Although Inyo County was more than two hundred miles away, Eaton knew that topographical surveys showed there was a 3,714-foot drop in elevation from the eastern Sierra watershed to the city of Los Angeles.28 That meant it was possible for gravity alone to carry Owens Valley water south. All that was needed was an aqueduct.

  In September 1904, to his surprise and concern, Eaton learned another interested party was eyeing the potential of the Owens Valley—the United States government. In 1901, in his annual message to Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt pledged federal resources for the development of the West. A year later, the National Reclamation Act was passed. Almost immediately, engineers and surveyors from the new U.S. Reclamation Service (later the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) began to look for projects. Among a number of sites, the Owens Valley was added to a list of potential beneficiaries.

  Frederick H. Newell, a veteran administrator with the U.S. Geological Survey, was designated chief engineer of the new federal agency. An advocate for the power of government to do good, writing before the passage of the Reclamation Act, he enthused: “The dead and profitless deserts need only the magic touch
of water … The national government, the owner of these arid lands, is the only power competent to carry this mighty enterprise to conclusion.”29

  One of the men who worked for Newell was Joseph Barlow Lippincott, a surveying engineer with experience in both the public and private sectors. Lippincott was well known in Los Angeles, where he had lived and worked for years. A supporter of municipal water systems, the university-educated engineer was involved with the city’s struggles to regain control of its waterworks.

  In the summer of 1904, during a family vacation in the Owens Valley, Lippincott encountered his old friend Fred Eaton. They talked about Reclamation Service surveys in the area, and Eaton probably shared his aqueduct idea. Caught in the middle—between his public responsibilities and his personal and professional interests in the future of Los Angeles—Lippincott played a double game. He continued his work for the U.S. government in the Owens Valley while he advocated for the interests of Los Angeles with his boss, Frederick Newell.30

  After Fred Eaton learned about government interest in the Owens Valley, he needed to move quickly. As soon as he returned to Los Angeles, he told Bill Mulholland about his aqueduct scheme. The Chief was doubtful, but Eaton insisted his former protégé come to the Owens Valley to learn firsthand that the idea was feasible. As the two men traveled by buckboard through the wastes of the Mojave Desert, mile by mile, they witnessed what an environment without enough water looked like. It was a severe and barren landscape that seemed to offer little but sand and rock and a few signs of plant life that appeared to barely survive. A burst of green announced the presence of water and a place to stop.

  Each night, beside a crackling fire, the two men probably swapped stories about how fast Los Angeles had changed since the old days, and shared their enthusiasm for hydraulic engineering. Enlivening the conversation, Eaton had a weakness for strong drink, and Bill Mulholland enjoyed an Irishman’s taste for a nip or two (he called them “smiles”). To the Chief, the prospect of Los Angeles outgrowing its water supply was serious, if not sobering.

  Before the trip was over, the Chief came to share Fred Eaton’s vision for the water riches of the Owens Valley. Back in the city, to confirm his conclusion, with Lippincott’s help Mulholland received permission to examine the results of Reclamation Service surveys. Indeed, the water was there, and gravity could carry it—all the way to the faucets and farmlands of Los Angeles. And there were other benefits Mulholland had yet to consider.

  During the late 1890s, when L.A.’s leaders were negotiating to buy the private Los Angeles Water Company, another private concern was expanding its services to power the city’s growth: the Edison Electric Company, supplier of electricity and gas, later known as Southern California Edison (SCE). Edison also needed water for steam generators to turn on city lights and propel an extensive network of trolleys, known as the Big Red Cars.

  As demand increased in the 1900s, the electric company had already tapped streams and rivers north of Los Angeles and was reaching into the western Sierra watershed—opposite where Eaton and Mulholland’s aqueduct was expected to take its first gulp. Other local energy and mining companies were exploring options in the region. With competing interests from Los Angeles, the federal government, and private power companies, the ranchers and farmers of the Owens Valley were at the center of a three-way tug-of-war. But they didn’t know it.

  The citizens of Los Angeles also were in the dark. In November 1904, Mulholland met with Reclamation Service Chief Newell, survey engineer J.B. Lippincott, and City Attorney Mathews to discuss L.A.’s interest in Owens Valley water. Newell expressed no immediate objections. His budget was limited, and there were other irrigation projects that deserved federal government support. The members of the Los Angeles Board of Water Commissioners were immediately informed of this promising development and pledged to secrecy. Like poker players with a good hand, city leaders kept their intentions concealed to prevent Owens Valley ranchers and farmers from raising the stakes. However, not everyone in 1900s L.A. played by the rules.

  The population of Los Angeles may have grown at an unprecedented rate, but in many ways the city remained a small town, and secrets were hard to keep. It is possible that Eaton had shared his aqueduct idea with others before informing Mulholland. As in many American cities, the leadership of Los Angeles was dominated by a small group of business leaders. The money, political skills, and media savvy of this L.A. oligarchy attempted to control and define Los Angeles as it sold the city to the rest of America and the world. As L.A. prospered, the oligarchs profited. “Enlightened self-interest” is a generous way to describe how system worked.31

  The most outspoken—if not the most powerful—member of the early Los Angeles oligarchy was mustachioed and barrel-chested Harrison Gray Otis, owner of the Los Angeles Times since 1882. Born in Ohio, Otis was an Abraham Lincoln Republican, fierce free-market capitalist, and virulent enemy of organized labor. He fought in the Civil War, serving as a captain. When he moved to Southern California in 1876, he quickly sized up the place. “It was the fattest land I ever saw,” he said.32 Later, during a stint as a volunteer in the 1898 Spanish-American War, Otis was promoted to brigadier general, a rank he continued in civilian life. Looking like an angry walrus, General Otis used the power of the press as his primary weapon. He called the Los Angeles Times headquarters “the bivouac” and his newspaper staff “the phalanx.” Ironically, as indication of how small the circle of wealthy Angelenos was, fiery right-winger Otis’s doctor was socialist John Randolph Haynes.

  From left to right: J.B. Lippincott, Fred Eaton, and William Mulholland (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power)

  The conservative politics of Harry Chandler, the General’s son-in-law and heir apparent, were more subtle, even though Chandler was equally anti-union. Born in New Hampshire, the baby-faced teetotaler had come to Los Angeles with “weak lungs” in 1883 and was rejuvenated by a combination of Southern California sun and an oxygenated real estate market. By 1899, Chandler owned more than eight hundred thousand acres of ranchland in Baja California. Consummate behind-the-scenes operators Harrison Gray Otis and Harry Chandler played essential roles in all aspects of L.A.’s turn-of-the-century future, especially efforts to expand the city’s water supply.

  Harrison Gray Otis, owner of the Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection)

  Moses H. Sherman was another prominent member of the Los Angeles oligarchy. He was a partner in Chandler’s Mexican land syndicate. A former schoolteacher from Vermont, Sherman started his business career in frontier Arizona. His involvement with the Santa Fe Railroad took him to Los Angeles in 1889, where he made his fortune in local transit. Unlike many eastern cities where train lines followed urban growth, the rail systems of Los Angeles led the way, encouraging people to follow. Mulholland applied the same strategy to water, anticipating need, rather than waiting for it to develop.

  Moses Sherman was one of the first appointees to the board of the new Los Angeles Water Commission. In 1904, while the Owens River Aqueduct was still a secret, the rail-line entrepreneur joined a group of prominent businessmen, including Harrison Gray Otis, in a real estate syndicate, the San Fernando Valley Mission Land Company. Shortly after Chief Engineer Frederick Newell acknowledged that the Reclamation Service might abandon irrigation plans for the Owens Valley, the syndicate acquired options on land in the San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles. The site was the expected terminus for Eaton and Mulholland’s aqueduct—if the project was ever funded and built.

  Meanwhile, Fred Eaton prepared to cut his own deal with the city. His idea was to make the new aqueduct a public-private project, with himself as the private partner. With this in mind, he spent his own money to purchase options for Owens Valley land, acquiring water rights in the process. He planned to keep some of the property for his retirement cattle ranch; the rest he’d sell to Los Angeles. The plan may have been based on subterfuge, but to nineteenth-century businessmen, it was simply shrewd h
orse trading. Unlike the plot of the movie Chinatown, no corrupt conspiracy was needed to move ahead. The growth-oriented goals of the community’s business elite, William Mulholland, and most of the citizens of Los Angeles were similar, if not the same. All would benefit in different ways, but for some, like Otis and his cohorts, the reward would be cash—lots of it. Owens Valley water may have been hundreds of miles away, but essential to the plan, the flow was legally within reach. However, tapping it wouldn’t be easy.

  Reservoirs and the dams that make them possible require land, expanses of it. As Fred Eaton bought property and acquired riverside water rights, he had his eyes on Long Valley, a perfect spot for a dam and reservoir. The U.S. Reclamation Service recognized this, too. Long Valley was part of a 22,380-acre spread owned by cattleman Thomas B. Rickey. Tough, some said ruthless, T.B. Rickey was considered the most powerful man in Inyo and nearby Mono Counties. In a way, he was a holdover from the nineteenth-century range wars that pitted ranchers against farmers and homesteaders—conflicts that provided plot lines for hundreds of Western movies, and a source of clashes that continue today. Intimations that not all property claimed by the Rickey Land and Cattle Company had been acquired on the up-and-up were persistent but difficult to prove.33

  The Owens Valley cattle baron wasn’t a fan of Reclamation Service plans for agricultural irrigation. His cattle needed water, but Rickey also needed ready money. He may not have liked the big government proposal, but he was willing to sell to persuasive Fred Eaton, who appeared to be a fellow rancher. A deal was made for $475,000 and five thousand head of cattle and other livestock and farm equipment.34

  Other Owens Valley landowners were willing to sell, but they were unsure what Eaton was up to. Was he just a city slicker, ready to pay more than their land was worth? Or, since he appeared to be friends with government engineer J.B. Lippincott, were his purchases somehow part of a possible Reclamation Service irrigation project? Despite questions, many Valley farmers and ranchers signed deals and were pleased with the profits. By 1905, Eaton owned options on fifty miles of land near and along the river, including T.B. Rickey’s Long Valley ranch.