Water in the West

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Speaker 2 In Eastern California, there's a valley with two names.

Speaker 2 It's traditionally known as Payahunadu, a Paiute word.

Speaker 2 But when white settlers arrived, they gave it a different name, the Owens Valley.

Speaker 3 The Sierra Nevada Mountains tower over the valley, snow-capped and majestic. And a river runs through the middle, a river that has changed the entire course of the American West.

Speaker 2 Earlier this year, we sent Through Line producer Anya Steinberg to this valley to see it for herself and learn the story of what happened here.

Speaker 3 I'm Ramteen Arab Louis.

Speaker 2 And I'm Rand Abdir Fattah.

Speaker 2 And from here, we're handing it over to Anya.

Speaker 2 I finally made it.

Speaker 2 After six hours of gripping my steering wheel, winding around mountain roads so precarious that I almost made myself car sick, I am in the Owens Valley. And today is going to be a scorcher.

Speaker 2 This is the creek at the park.

Speaker 2 So I'm spending a few precious last seconds in the shade while I wait to meet up with someone who's lived here for most of his life.

Speaker 2 Hey,

Speaker 2 morning.

Speaker 5 Good, how are you?

Speaker 2 Noah Williams pulls up in a white SUV and hops out.

Speaker 2 He's a member of the Bishop Paiute tribe and works as a water program coordinator for the Big Pine Paiute Tribe, two of the tribal nations in the valley.

Speaker 6 Okay, um you ready?

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 2 Payahunadu, the Paiute name for the valley, translates to the land of the flowing water.

Speaker 2 But looking around me in the dusty morning sun, it's hard to see how it got that name.

Speaker 7 But this one's a little bit kind of harder to see.

Speaker 5 You can hear it in the crunch of our footsteps.

Speaker 2 It's dry out here.

Speaker 2 We're hiking out into the desert, not on any sort of trail.

Speaker 8 And what we're doing is we're actually standing in one of the ditches right now.

Speaker 2 Noah's showing me ancient ditches that Paiute and Shoshone people dug hundreds of years ago to guide snowmelt running off the mountains through the valley.

Speaker 8 Yeah, there's a gradual little dip.

Speaker 2 At first, it doesn't look like much to me. It does.

Speaker 9 It goes.

Speaker 8 Curves back around.

Speaker 5 Almost like a horseshoe.

Speaker 2 But as we keep walking, ditches start to pop out of the landscape.

Speaker 8 But again, you can see ditch.

Speaker 5 So it would have been ditched, ditch ditch ditch ditch ditch

Speaker 2 i'm starting to grasp just how extensive this irrigation network must have been like they keep it

Speaker 8 at like a slope that the water could still flow down but we were kind of moving uphill the actual wash itself like but again just showing like

Speaker 2 kind of the engineering feat that these you know tribal people must have had and i mean look at the size of some of these rocks noah says his ancestors dug these ditches to follow the contours of the land, spreading water across the valley.

Speaker 2 And up until 1863, when the U.S. Army forcibly marched Paiute and Shoshone people from the valley, this is how they worked with the water the valley had.

Speaker 2 Since then, much has changed for the valley's native people. But these techniques of moving water across the land remain alive.

Speaker 8 And we knew when we had this understanding that, you know, when you spread the water, you spread the life.

Speaker 2 When you spread the water, you spread the life.

Speaker 10 I imagine, yeah, you would have found a lot more willow, you would have found a lot more, you know, grass, meadow-type vegetation.

Speaker 8 I would imagine you've probably been hearing a lot more birds or maybe even grasshoppers.

Speaker 10 you just would hear you know and feel like a lot more life you would likely it would be a lot more cool standing here

Speaker 2 But that's just the thing.

Speaker 2 This valley is totally different now from the way Noah's ancestors would have seen it.

Speaker 2 The breeze is hot and dry, and many of the natural meadows are gone. Because for over a hundred years, most of the water in the river has left its natural course through the valley.

Speaker 2 The reason why is a story of greed and betrayal, of men driven by their obsessions, glory, money, and what they saw as the greater good.

Speaker 2 I'm Anya Steinberg, and today on Through Line from NPR: What the Water Made Possible

Speaker 2 and What the Water Destroyed.

Speaker 11 Hi, this is Adam Clapp in Waco, Texas. You're listening to Through Line.

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Speaker 4 Part 1.

Speaker 11 New World Water.

Speaker 2 In 1874, a ship arrived in New York City.

Speaker 2 On board was an 18-year-old Irish sailor looking for a new life.

Speaker 2 His name was William Mulholland.

Speaker 2 And what he found in the United States wasn't just a dream, but an obsession. An obsession that would turn a dusty town into a paradise city.

Speaker 14 Never set foot in Ireland again after getting off a ship?

Speaker 2 Mulholland had his eyes set on the west. He made the long, arduous journey from New York to San Francisco.

Speaker 14 Then he bought horses and rode to Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 The Los Angeles William Mulholland arrived in was nothing like the metropolis it is today. It was a dry, tough, small place.

Speaker 2 A place suited for his personality.

Speaker 11 He was a pretty large man. I mean, a very,

Speaker 11 you know, gruff, kind of short-tempered.

Speaker 11 You know, he didn't take gruff from pretty much anybody.

Speaker 2 He fell in love with Los Angeles, and soon he found a profession there.

Speaker 14 He was a Zanhero.

Speaker 2 Zanjero, a ditch digger.

Speaker 14 For the LA City Water Company, a private company that was leasing the water system and running it, operating it for the city.

Speaker 14 He kept the ditches, a portion of the ditches clean so the water would flow.

Speaker 2 The ditches were the lifeblood of the city because finding and distributing water was a major problem in LA. Their main source of water, the Los Angeles River, had a mind of its own.

Speaker 2 Sometimes it would swell with rain and flood. Other times it would dry up to a trickle.

Speaker 2 Mulholland, the ditch digger, was on the front lines of the city's battle for water and he was good at what he did.

Speaker 14 Today we'd call him a worshaholic. He was so dedicated to the city and to getting the water for everybody.

Speaker 2 This is Fred Barker, an unofficial historian of LA's Department of Water and Power. He says it was clear to everyone that Mulholland was ambitious.

Speaker 2 In less than a decade, he'd gone from digging ditches to a middle management position at the Los Angeles Water Company.

Speaker 2 And his new boss, the superintendent of the company, would become one of the most important friendships of his life.

Speaker 14 The superintendent was Fred Eaton. Mulholland was hired and Fred Eaton was the boss.

Speaker 11 Fred Eaton took him under his wing as a protege and taught him everything he knew about water, hydraulics, engineering.

Speaker 2 That's Richard Patachin, former National Park Service ranger in the Owens Valley. He says Eaton and Mulholland hit it off.
They soon discovered they shared big dreams for the future of Los Angeles.

Speaker 14 It was a vision of a beautiful place with trees and water.

Speaker 11 They wanted to green the desert to make way for the growth and development of a great metropolis on the Pacific coast. Basically,

Speaker 2 Mulholland believed that if he could figure out a way to get more water to Los Angeles, then it could become one of America's most important cities.

Speaker 11 It really

Speaker 11 moved him to provide the water to fuel that growth.

Speaker 2 Luckily for Maholland, his friend and boss, Fred Eaton, knew exactly where to find that water.

Speaker 15 I saw more water going to waste than is contained in all the streams and rivers of San Bernardino, San Diego, and Los Angeles counties combined.

Speaker 2 This is from an interview Eaton gave to the Riverside Press in 1892.

Speaker 11 He took a very faithful trip up into the Owens Valley in the 1890s on a camping trip, and he looked down and he saw the Owens River winding its way through the valley.

Speaker 11 What a waste of water, you know, he thought.

Speaker 2 That trip gave him an idea.

Speaker 2 Maybe he could build an aqueduct, a massive chain of tunnels and ditches that would use gravity to bring the water from the high altitudes of the Owens Valley south, 250 miles, to just about sea level, to Los Angeles.

Speaker 15 I propose to devote all of my energies to this great enterprise. It must come to Los Angeles, for it has no other outlet.

Speaker 11 And so he spent...

Speaker 11 A good 10 years or so trying to convince anybody he could of what a great scheme and idea this was.

Speaker 2 But no one listened. That is, until he met William Mulholland and took him to the Owens Valley to see for himself.

Speaker 14 The whole idea was for Eaton to take Mulholland to the Owens Valley, show him the river, and say, this is LA's future right here.

Speaker 14 This water and this river is what's going to permit LA to grow and all of us to prosper.

Speaker 2 For Mulholland, it was a revelation. He looked out at the rolling hills, the river, the abundant water.

Speaker 14 This was the answer to their dream.

Speaker 2 By now, it was 1904, and Eaton, who'd done a short stint as LA's mayor a few years earlier, no longer worked for the water company, which, by the way, the city of Los Angeles now owned.

Speaker 2 Mulholland had taken over as superintendent, and he got that job at a time when LA was having big issues with water.

Speaker 14 There was a period of about 10 years where every year the rain was below normal. The reservoirs were dropping.
Things were getting kind of dicey for LA's water supply.

Speaker 2 City officials were looking to the water company to do something.

Speaker 14 So there was pressure on Mulholland to find more water. That was his job.

Speaker 2 So Mulholland and Eaton devised a plan. Eaton would go to the Owens Valley and buy up property and water rights.

Speaker 2 And Mulholland would draw up the design for an aqueduct to bring Owens Valley water to LA.

Speaker 2 They were imagining something that didn't seem possible, a feat of engineering that took a certain amount of arrogance even to envision, and they needed a lot of money to pull it off.

Speaker 2 So they made their case to the LA City Council.

Speaker 14 They convinced the council, the water department, and others that this was a feasible project and necessary, not just feasible, but necessary for LA to continue to grow.

Speaker 2 They began executing the plan.

Speaker 11 Fred Eaton went to the Owens Valley and began acquiring land and water rights.

Speaker 2 This was easier for him than you might think, because what he probably hadn't told the city is that he'd been personally buying up land rights in key areas of the Owens Valley with his own money for himself.

Speaker 5 Why?

Speaker 2 Because he knew that if one day LA built an aqueduct, then they'd have to buy those lands from him at a premium, making him very rich.

Speaker 11 He was first and foremost a capitalist and an entrepreneur, so he was definitely looking out for himself too, and what kind of profit he could accrue from a project like this.

Speaker 2 The main obstacle Eaton faced, as he saw it, was the fact that there were others who had plans of their own for the valley.

Speaker 2 Native Paiute and Shoshone people and white settlers also needed the valley's water.

Speaker 2 The valley's ranchers in particular had hoped for years that the federal government would fund an irrigation development project there. And they'd actually been getting some traction.

Speaker 14 Federal engineers, federal surveyors were looking at their region, their little pocket, for potential federal project. And of course they were thrilled.

Speaker 14 The federal government's going to come in here and do something for us.

Speaker 2 People in the Owens Valley relied on the valley's water. They didn't want it to go anywhere.
But Los Angeles was determined to take it.

Speaker 14 So we have a conflict, the city versus the federal government, the Owens Valley versus the city.

Speaker 2 Because of this conflict, Fred Eaton intentionally misled locals about what he was really doing in the Owens Valley.

Speaker 11 Some reports mention that he came posing as a cattle buyer, you know, to build this huge cattle empire.

Speaker 2 There were also reports that he gave people the impression he was there working for the federal government. All the while, he was buying up land rights for Los Angeles fast.

Speaker 2 But eventually, people started figuring out what he was up to. And suddenly, the conflict was all over the news.

Speaker 2 Agents representing Los Angeles City have secured options on about 40 miles of frontage on the Owens River north of Owens Lake.

Speaker 11 The newspapers began sounding the alarm and the LA Times comes out with the story, you know, Titanic project to bring Los Angeles a river.

Speaker 2 Fred Eaton, ex-mayor of Los Angeles, bought the holdings of the Rickey Cattle Company, comprising about 50,000 acres of water-bearing land.

Speaker 11 But finally, the cat was out of the bag. This is the big project.

Speaker 11 LA is excited. Owens Valley is like, oh my, what happened?

Speaker 2 Mulholland and Eaton had almost reached their goal. The only question that remained was whether the federal government would allow the project to go forward.

Speaker 2 In the end, that question went all the way up to the president.

Speaker 14 President Roosevelt, Secretary of the Interior, other people looked at this and said, how do we decide? Should the water stay in the Owens Valley or should the water go to LA?

Speaker 2 This was their dilemma.

Speaker 14 Are you going to leave this water here for 5,000 people in this

Speaker 14 isolated mountain valley? Or are you going to let it go to Los Angeles where 100 or 200,000 people are going to make use of it and we're going to have a metropolis? Which would you choose?

Speaker 14 If your principle is utilitarianism, using a resource for the most people for the most good, then it's an easy call to say Los Angeles, you're going to get the water.

Speaker 11 And finally, Roosevelt proclaimed, I see the water used for the greatest good for the greatest number.

Speaker 2 The greatest good for the greatest number.

Speaker 14 And so the Owens Valleys were told, sorry folks, more people down there, they have the money, they own the water already. We are going to permit LA to do this.
And so that's what happened.

Speaker 2 Now the Los Angeles Aqueduct was a go.

Speaker 2 Construction began in 1907. and William Maholland was put in charge.
If he succeeded, it would be a feat of engineering.

Speaker 14 We're talking about you have to build roads, you have to build rail lines, you have to put in power, you have to find water for the workers.

Speaker 2 The construction of the aqueduct was one of the largest projects in American history up to that point.

Speaker 2 It was brutal.

Speaker 2 Over 4,000 workers toiled for years to blast through rugged mountains, pour tons of concrete, and build massive ditches. 43 workers died in the process.

Speaker 2 It took more than five grinding years and in 1913 it was finally completed.

Speaker 14 So in 1913 they planned the grand opening, the dedication of the aqueduct. They had singers, they had bands, they had dignitaries.

Speaker 2 The plan was that towards the end of the ceremony, Moholland would give the signal and water would flow from the aqueduct for the first time.

Speaker 14 30,000 to 40,000 people to see this thing happen, to see this water come down the hillside.

Speaker 2 Thousands of people.

Speaker 2 But one important person was missing.

Speaker 14 I assume Eaton was invited,

Speaker 14 but he was not there. Freddie did not attend the opening.

Speaker 2 In a shocking turn, William Mulholland advised the city not to buy much of the land Fred Eaton had personally purchased in the Owens Valley.

Speaker 2 At least, not for the price he wanted, effectively killing his dreams of making a fortune from the project.

Speaker 14 So they cut Eaton out, and Eaton was not happy because Eaton saw his dreams of enormous wealth from this water, sawing the water go up in smoke.

Speaker 2 But back at the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the show went on.

Speaker 14 Before the water is released, there are speeches.

Speaker 2 Maholland gave the most important one.

Speaker 3 You have come here today to ask us to render an account of our stewardship, and we come ready to do it.

Speaker 14 Almost the first words out of his mouth that day were,

Speaker 14 this was Fred Eaton's idea.

Speaker 3 If there is a father of the aqueduct, it is the man who went out and found the supply, who made the preliminary plans, and who turned the project over to the city. Former Mayor Fred Eaton.

Speaker 14 And I give him full credit. I don't take any credit for the idea.

Speaker 3 He planned it. We simply put together the bricks and mortar.

Speaker 14 Then.

Speaker 2 Then

Speaker 2 Moholland gave a signal.

Speaker 14 Up on the mountainside, they men turned these big giant wheels and opened the gates.

Speaker 11 The water came down the mountainside

Speaker 14 down to the reservoir a couple miles away

Speaker 14 so for 10 or 20 minutes people were going nuts and it was kind of beddling over people were just so excited

Speaker 14 so Mulholland the water's coming down now we're on going fast and the The bear is standing next to him.

Speaker 14 So he turns to the mayor and says, there it is.

Speaker 3 Take it.

Speaker 14 There it is, take it. Five words.

Speaker 14 People went nuts. They were so thrilled to see this water.
They knew this was going to change everything for Los Angeles. Everybody knew that.

Speaker 2 Mulholland had made his dream a reality. Los Angeles had water coming out of every tap.
The dusty city had become an oasis. But the people of the Owens Valley weren't about to give up without a fight.

Speaker 2 That's coming up.

Speaker 16 I am Paul Eckloff from Petaluma, California. You're listening to Through Line from NPR.

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Speaker 2 Part 2:

Speaker 2 Water Wars.

Speaker 5 Whoa, Roadrunner.

Speaker 5 Yeah, there he is. I didn't know they were real.
They are real.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 20 he's an original.

Speaker 21 That's an amazing. Oh, that's cool.
It's always a great omen.

Speaker 2 I'm in the Owens Valley with Richard Patachian, sitting shotgun in his red pickup truck, driving towards the site where the LA Aqueduct begins.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure what to expect, but we're both dressed for an adventure. Me, uncharacteristically slathered in sunscreen and wearing a baseball cap.

Speaker 2 Richard in a bucket hat, hiking pants, and a long-sleeved tie-dead shirt that says furry hippie on it.

Speaker 2 But it all might be for nothing because as we pull up, a fence with a chain wrapped around it blocks our way.

Speaker 5 Well, wait a minute, let me see. Unless they have a.

Speaker 5 Maybe they don't have a lock on it.

Speaker 20 Yeah, sometimes it's a dummy lock.

Speaker 2 Only one way to find out.

Speaker 2 It's not even locked.

Speaker 5 What about that?

Speaker 2 After a little fence hopping, Richard and I make it to our destination.

Speaker 2 The Los Angeles Aqueduct Intake. Not much of a looker.

Speaker 2 It's no Hoover Dam. There's nothing grandstanding about it.

Speaker 2 It's a small bridge-like structure that allows water to feed through underneath it. Water that comes from the Owens River.

Speaker 21 Here it is. This is the river.

Speaker 20 The Owens River.

Speaker 21 And so this is where

Speaker 21 the aqueduct actually begins.

Speaker 20 The gates are open, so water's flowing on through. The aqueduct is pretty full right now, so they're taking quite a bit.

Speaker 2 Richard jokingly calls this place where the Owens River turns into the Los Angeles River.

Speaker 2 It's right here that this natural flowing river was forever changed when Mulholland opened the LA Aqueduct in 1913.

Speaker 2 By 1920, LA's population had reached half a million people, and more were coming every day.

Speaker 2 The water from the aqueduct couldn't keep up with the city's growing thirst. Plus, the Owens Valley, the aqueduct's source, was facing a drought.

Speaker 11 And the water in the aqueduct is reduced to basically a trickle.

Speaker 11 This is where we get into the real meat of the water war.

Speaker 11 Mulholland begins to think that, well, we're not going to go anywhere else. We need to maximize our water interest in the Owens Valley.

Speaker 11 Basically, we have to go up there and begin acquiring additional water rights and land. And that's what they started to do

Speaker 11 roughly around 1923.

Speaker 14 They began to remove more water.

Speaker 4 Again, Fred Barker.

Speaker 14 They began to buy more ranches and farms and take more water out.

Speaker 11 And so it's really the beginning of this very tumultuous conflict.

Speaker 14 We've been talking about the benefits of this water supply for Los Series, but what about the people that lost their water?

Speaker 14 What about those folks up in the Owens Valley?

Speaker 2 As LA had grown into a thriving metropolis, the Owens Valley had struggled. LA was now buying up huge swaths of land in order to get its hands on the water rights.

Speaker 2 And the more water that left the valley, the drier it got, making it harder for farmers and ranchers to make a living. Paiute and Shoshone people were suffering too.

Speaker 2 Their ranching jobs were disappearing. The land they had lived on for generations was drying up, and their traditional ways of life were getting harder to maintain.

Speaker 2 They also faced growing pressure to sell their own lands, often for less money than white landowners got.

Speaker 11 The resentment is just growing

Speaker 11 as each property gets acquired. It's beginning to look like the city is going to take over the whole valley.

Speaker 2 Some people in the Owens Valley were ready to take action, including a pair of brothers, white settlers, aptly named Watterson.

Speaker 11 Wattersons

Speaker 11 have been involved in Owens Valley since the 1880s.

Speaker 2 Mark and Wilfred Watterson were pillars of the community. They were invested in the valley, literally.
They owned several banks there and were generous with their loans.

Speaker 11 And naturally, they become the leaders of the resistance movement towards Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 The Watterson brothers wanted to stop Los Angeles from buying up the valley, but the city had the upper hand and were not going to negotiate. Tensions between both sides just kept ramping up.

Speaker 11 There's real feelings that there's going to be serious violence in Owens Valley.

Speaker 11 One night,

Speaker 11 a group of men

Speaker 11 steal quite a bit of dynamite.

Speaker 2 They blew up the aqueduct.

Speaker 11 The first shot in this war

Speaker 22 reward of $10,000 was offered by the city council today for apprehension of the parties who sometime last night destroyed with dynamite portions of the city's $21 million aqueduct.

Speaker 22 Imperial Valley Press, May 21st, 1924.

Speaker 11 And of course the city's outraged

Speaker 11 so they begin sending up policemen and troopers to protect the aqueduct.

Speaker 11 That's when the ranchers and farmers decide enough's enough.

Speaker 2 Six months later, 70 ranchers and farmers under the leadership of Mark Watterson drove out to the aqueduct in a caravan of model tea cars.

Speaker 2 Their mission was simple. open the valves of the aqueduct and release its waters.

Speaker 11 The occupiers dismissed the night watchman and then opened those valves.

Speaker 11 And the water came rushing down the spillway and eventually found its way back into the Owens River.

Speaker 2 Back where they felt it belonged.

Speaker 11 I could imagine the jubilation to hear that water rushing down.

Speaker 18 Civil war and possible bloodshed is likely to result over the controversy, which has risen over the Los Angeles aqueduct in this county.

Speaker 2 The occupation made national news, like this account from the Associated Press.

Speaker 18 The sheriff says he is powerless to dislodge the ranchers, and he knows they have arms sufficient to equip 175 men and women, all of whom can shoot straight and get their man.

Speaker 11 The sheriff showed up and basically knew everybody and was told to just leave,

Speaker 11 just go away.

Speaker 7 Big cities fooled us ranchers long enough, taking the water from the land and letting the land lie waste.

Speaker 2 After the first day of occupation, more people in the Owens Valley got wind of it and decided to join.

Speaker 11 The crowd grew into a huge group of like seven to eight hundred people.

Speaker 2 In the main intersection of a nearby town, there was a painted billboard that read, if I am not on the job, you can find me at the aqueduct.

Speaker 11 There was smoke pouring off from the barbecues and

Speaker 11 the meat that was being barbecued that had been donated by local ranchers. There was music in the air.
The wives were preparing

Speaker 11 picnics and feasts and that type of thing. And people were in a very joyful, jubilant mood, like they had slew Goliath.

Speaker 7 We're going to stay on these gates until Los Angeles City comes to terms, and there's nobody who can put us off, at least nobody but the militia.

Speaker 11 I think that was probably the high point of their feelings that we could exact some small measure of justice.

Speaker 2 Back in LA, William Maholland was reading the news and getting angrier and angrier. When the press asked him about the ranchers, he did not mince words.

Speaker 11 Basically, there's not enough trees to hang those people on.

Speaker 11 I think he just got very disgruntled, particularly because the aqueduct he built was being attacked and damaged.

Speaker 2 After that, whatever patience Mulholland had for the residents of the Owens Valley was gone.

Speaker 11 He never showed a great deal of compassion for their struggles or what his policies were doing, not only to the valley's economy, but the environment as well.

Speaker 2 Mulholland was losing control over the water in the Owens Valley, and he needed to find a solution. So the city was forced to open up negotiations with the Watterson brothers.

Speaker 11 Wilford Watterson went to Los Angeles to try to negotiate a settlement that could preserve some of the Owens Valley agriculture, but still provide a water supply for Los Angeles.

Speaker 11 So with that reassurance, four days later, the quote anarchists left the gates, they were closed again, and water flowed south down the aqueduct.

Speaker 11 But those negotiations fell apart again.

Speaker 2 LA had outplayed the Owens Valley.

Speaker 11 They were very crafty in acquiring properties at the intakes to some of these canals and ditches and basically isolating the other farmers and ranchers from that water supply.

Speaker 2 It had all been a ruse. LA was never going to really negotiate because they didn't have to.
They owned all the land around the farmers and ranchers. They had them surrounded.

Speaker 2 And there wasn't much the Owens Valley could legally do about it.

Speaker 2 And to make matters worse, the Watterson brothers, their champions, were convicted of embezzlement and sent to prison in San Quentin.

Speaker 11 And basically, that shatters, you know, any opposition and resistance.

Speaker 11 And unfortunately, it's a really sad story because

Speaker 11 many of the people who sold their farms and ranches to the city put their money in the Watterson banks.

Speaker 11 And so they suffered tremendously.

Speaker 11 They felt completely betrayed.

Speaker 2 The people left in the Owens Valley were forced to surrender themselves to William Mulholland's dream.

Speaker 2 In the end, the city bought nearly all of the land in the valley.

Speaker 11 And that's pretty much the end of that first round of the water war.

Speaker 2 Coming up,

Speaker 2 Mulholland reaches his limits.

Speaker 14 My name is Thomas Delafuente. I'm from Potts Creek, Texas, and you're listening to Thru Life.
I really enjoy y'all show.

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Speaker 4 Part 3.

Speaker 2 Remember the Owens Valley.

Speaker 2 Letter to the Editor, Daily News, Sunday, January 11th, 1925.

Speaker 2 There is no man available who can better serve the people of Los Angeles.

Speaker 16 William Maholland, who cut away the mountain and opened the gates to a new empire of wealth, would make the sort of mayor this city needs.

Speaker 14 His stature rises.

Speaker 24 Members of the Hollywood Foothills Improvement Association are now selecting a suitable site for the erection of a statue of William Moholland.

Speaker 2 Los Angeles Evening Post record. The Moholland Scenic Highway through Santa Monica Mountains should be thrown open to the public within a year.

Speaker 11 He was worshipped as a god because he was the Moses that brought the water to the people.

Speaker 14 He can do no wrong.

Speaker 2 Mulholland was now like a living legend in LA, but he wasn't yet free to rest on his laurels. Los Angeles needed its Moses to do even more.

Speaker 2 The water wars in the Owens Valley taught Mulholland that LA's water supply was as vulnerable to human intervention as it was to nature's whims. He needed a way to keep the taps on no matter what.

Speaker 14 If you have a varying water supply, you have to put it somewhere when you have too much so they have enough when you don't have as much. So Mohan had to build reservoirs elsewhere to store water.

Speaker 11 And so he took on the St. Francis Dam project.

Speaker 11 And he built it very quickly with very little geologic or engineering oversight, pretty much relying on his own wits.

Speaker 14 The St. Francis Dam was finished in 1926.

Speaker 2 Mission accomplished, and Mulholland was able to turn his sites elsewhere, which was perfect because he was a busy man.

Speaker 2 He was making business trips and planning his next big thing: building another aqueduct that would bring water all the way from the Colorado River to Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 But first, the dam.

Speaker 2 On March 12th, 1928, Moholland was called to the site of the St. Francis Dam, about 40 miles from downtown LA.

Speaker 14 It was being filled almost to the brim for the first time.

Speaker 14 There was water seeping out from the bottom of the dam. The dam keeper said, it's making me nervous, Mr.
Moholland. Please come and look at it.

Speaker 14 So Moholland and his right-hand man went up there that day, looked at the dam, walked it, looked at the seepage. They felt it was safe.

Speaker 11 He brushed that off.

Speaker 11 All dams leak a little bit.

Speaker 14 And about one o'clock in the afternoon, they went back downtown.

Speaker 14 They called Moholland's house in the middle of the night.

Speaker 2 It was Moholland's daughter who picked up the phone. She went to wake up her father.

Speaker 14 And he knew what the call was.

Speaker 3 He stumbled towards the phone, repeating, please, God, don't let people be killed.

Speaker 14 The dam has gone out.

Speaker 11 A huge tidal wave. I mean, literally a tsunami of water.

Speaker 11 Just completely sweeping up everything in its wake.

Speaker 14 You know, they called him probably within the first hour and a half or so.

Speaker 11 By the time this wave exhausted itself in the Pacific Ocean,

Speaker 11 well, there were over 400 people who had died.

Speaker 14 The death was still happening until about five in the morning.

Speaker 2 The Los Angeles County Coroner immediately launched an inquest into the cause of the dam failure. A slew of experts testified.

Speaker 2 Geologists, autopsy surgeons, engineers, filmmakers, residents, and the man at the center of it all.

Speaker 25 Please state your name.

Speaker 3 William Moholland.

Speaker 25 Were you chief engineer of the water department at the time that the St. Francis Dam was built?

Speaker 8 I was.

Speaker 2 The coroner questioned Moholland on every aspect of the dam construction. How the land was selected, how it was purchased, the geology of the rock beneath the dam, the design of the dam.

Speaker 3 We overlook something here.

Speaker 3 This inquiry is a very painful thing for me to have to attend.

Speaker 3 The only ones I envy about this thing are the ones who are dead.

Speaker 2 Ultimately, the inquest cleared Mulholland of any crimes, but blamed him for an error in engineering judgment. He'd built the dam in a bad site.
It had been doomed from the start.

Speaker 14 He retired. He was not a happy person in his old age.
He did not rest on his laurels. His laurels had been burnt to the ground.

Speaker 2 On July 22nd, 1935, Mulholland died after suffering a stroke a few months earlier. Some believed that it was the tragedy of the St.

Speaker 2 Francis Dam and the guilt he carried for it that really led to his end.

Speaker 14 He died a broken man.

Speaker 2 Despite his legacy being tarnished, after his death and disgrace, Water still flowed through the aqueduct to Los Angeles.

Speaker 14 It's sort of mind-boggling to think of the domino effect of one aqueduct leading to the growth of a city, the growth of a region, growth of the Western United States.

Speaker 14 I mean, it's just kind of hard to get your head around.

Speaker 2 The LA aqueduct became a blueprint that cities would replicate across the West. Where there's water, harness it.
And where there isn't water, bring it there.

Speaker 2 Cities like San Francisco, Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, and Denver all have elaborate aqueduct or water diversion systems.

Speaker 2 And many of these cities continue to face the existential threat of water scarcity.

Speaker 11 So it's ongoing, and the cry always goes out,

Speaker 11 remember the Owens Valley.

Speaker 9 How was everybody's evenings?

Speaker 9 It's good.

Speaker 9 Did you see the sky last night?

Speaker 2 It's only 10 a.m., but already the sun is beating down on me and the other couple dozen people gathered in the parking lot of the Fish Springs Hatchery in the Owens Valley.

Speaker 2 Most people are here from Los Angeles. They've traveled hundreds of miles along the path of the aqueduct to learn where their water comes from.

Speaker 2 I'm here to meet the folks in charge of the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission, an organization formed to negotiate ongoing water rights disputes with the LA Department of Water and Power, the LADWP, on behalf of some of the valley's tribal nations.

Speaker 2 The event is called Walking Water, but we're not just here to go for a stroll.

Speaker 2 We're here to experience the landscape and to hear from the native people who live here now, whose ancestors lived here too, about how LADWP's presence continues to shape the valley today.

Speaker 9 So we've got about two and a half miles and it's a slight gradient which you may not feel very obviously but it will you will feel it.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 2 I scoot up to the front of the pack where Noah Williams, who we met at the start of the episode, is leading the charge. He uses a tall walking stick as we make our way down the road.

Speaker 2 Where we're walking, the land is nearly empty of buildings, and the vast majority of it is property of the LADWP.

Speaker 8 Really, it's a modern-day water colony.

Speaker 8 Yeah, they make it very well known that it's Los Angeles Department of Water and Power land. I mean, you see it off of every single

Speaker 8 dirt road you go off of. You know, there's going to be a sign that, you know, says owned and managed by LA DP.

Speaker 2 LADWP says they keep portions of the lands they own open as public space and employ many people in the valley, some of whom go back to the original settlers.

Speaker 2 Noah says the company's power in the valley is almost unmatched.

Speaker 8 Whatever they're spending, and I mean,

Speaker 8 it's like one of the second or third largest employer in the entire valley, so

Speaker 8 you got the votes even in the county.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you're not going to bite the hand that feeds you if there are votes or you know, legislation.

Speaker 2 that's the legacy of the aqueduct, of William Mulholland's big dream. The people in the Owens Valley and the people in Los Angeles are tied together.

Speaker 2 And the fate of each place depends on the other.

Speaker 2 And that's it for this week's show. I'm Randabil Fattah.

Speaker 3 I'm Ramteen Arab Louis, and you've been listening to Through Line from NPR.

Speaker 2 This episode was produced by me.

Speaker 2 And me, and Lawrence Wu, Julie Kane, Anya Steinberg, Casey Minor, Christina Kim, Devin Katayama, Sarah Wyman, Ying Te, Kiana Paklion, Rachel Harowitz, Lina Mohammed, Irene Naguchi.

Speaker 3 Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel.

Speaker 2 This episode was mixed by Gilly Moon.

Speaker 3 Thank you to Kiana Malay, Kathy Bancroft, Terry Redow, and the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission.

Speaker 3 Sally Manning, Daniel Pritchett, Pam Vaughan, Ken Partridge, Johannes Durkee, Edith Chapin, and Colin Campbell.

Speaker 2 And special thanks to Nkem Obi-Malekwe, Kuriel Lalatnikov, Leah Mengistu, Lawrence Wu, Max Zarkowski, Devin Katayama, Andy Su, Mark Roth, Samantha Solis, Rachel Horowitz, Ellis Oriola, and Bonnie Feldberg for their voiceover work.

Speaker 2 Music for this episode was composed by Ramteen and his band Drop Electric, which includes Naveed Marvy, Sho Fujiwara.

Speaker 4 Anya Mizani.

Speaker 3 And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at throughline at npr.org.

Speaker 2 Thanks for listening.

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Speaker 5 Before we

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