Rivers in the Desert Read online

  IF MULHOLLAND’S BUMPY RIDE up to the valley from Los Angeles had been enlivened with liquor, his ride back was spent ruminating over more sobering thoughts. He realized that the problems of bringing water to Los Angeles would be immense, and the physical enterprise of the construction of an aqueduct would be staggering. It would be a momentous undertaking.

  Though the Panama Canal, the New York Aqueduct, and the Erie Canal were larger and vastly more expensive, this project would be unique in water engineering because of its barren mountain and desert terrains. The Owens Valley Aqueduct would be the fourth-largest engineering project to date in American history, and the longest aqueduct in the Western Hemisphere. “It was as if Boston had decided to draw its water from the St. Lawrence River, or Washington, D.C., were reaching out to the Ohio, or St. Louis were reaching across the state of Illinois to Lake Michigan, author Kevin Starr would write years later, affixing the project’s rightful place as one of the wonders of the budding twentieth century.

  More important than the challenging engineering problems, Mulholland realized that such a monumental undertaking posed equally formidable political difficulties; the city council would have to approve it, though Mulholland believed they might now endorse any scheme that held promise. The thorny legal issues of water rights, city and federal approvals, and, naturally, sufficient capital would remain Mulholland’s greatest obstacles. He braced himself for the countless problems that would have to be solved before construction could even begin. Surprisingly, the most formidable barrier to the project would turn out to be the one obstacle Mulholland never considered—and would never have thought possible.

  Following Mulholland and Eaton’s return to Los Angeles from their excursion in the Owens Valley, the two men embraced and said their good-byes. Eaton told Mulholland that he was traveling to San Francisco to visit his daughter. Mulholland assured Eaton that he would meet with the members of the Board of Water Commissioners and begin the battle to secure permission to build the great aqueduct.

  Unbeknownst to Mulholland, Eaton boarded a train bound for New York. There he hoped to raise sufficient capital from investment bankers to secretly purchase the necessary water rights along the aqueduct route before the city had time to act. Eaton intended to sell the much-needed water to Los Angeles. The scheme, he calculated, could earn him estimated annual fees of $1.5 million. Fred Eaton’s plan was to save the city of his birth and enrich himself immeasurably at the same time.

  As Mulholland met in closed-door sessions with members of the Board of Water Commissioners, he was informed of Eaton’s sudden ambition to gain control of the massive project. Mulholland was dumbfounded. Technically, there was nothing illegal in the proposal, but Eaton’s apparent betrayal gave Mulholland pause. He viewed Eaton’s deception as a personal assault and an egregious abandonment of the public trust. Mulholland feared the scheme would render the city’s water supply hostage to the interests of private owners, and jeopardize construction of the mammoth project.

  Mulholland’s dream was of a vast, citizen-owned water and power system that would foster unlimited industrial and residential growth. For Mulholland, not profit but the unparalleled challenge of constructing the waterway and delivering the city from drought would be his enduring reward. For Eaton, the exploitation of Owens Valley water was an enterprise designed for financial gain.

  Until now, Eaton and his protégé in the Water Department had maintained their close relationship. As a result of Eaton’s plan, their twenty-five-year-long friendship would begin to unravel, and each man would come to view the other as his most dangerous adversary.

  2

  Hand of Betrayal

  Take heed

  that ye not be deceived.

  LUKE 21:8

  THE BOARD OF WATER COMMISSIONERS and officials from the Water Department greeted Mulholland’s revelation of the bountiful water supply in the Owens Valley with enthusiasm if not hosannas. But when they learned of Eaton’s intentions to feather his own nest from the project at the city’s expense, they were appalled that one of their own, a former city mayor, had decided to unfairly impede the city’s progress.

  Mulholland quickly contacted City Attorney and Water Department Chief Counsel William B. Mathews, who, by happenstance, was in New York City, and asked him to meet with Eaton and persuade him to call off his plan.

  Mathews quickly learned it was too late. Eaton had already secured options on key tracts of Owens Valley land. Eaton announced that the Owens River water was now exclusively in his hands and that he intended to develop and control all hydroelectric power generated from the proposed aqueduct. Mathews relayed Eaton’s grandiose ambitions to an outraged Mulholland.

  To resolve the stalemate, Mulholland called upon a longtime colleague, Joseph Lippincott, a man who could change loyalties like a chameleon changes color, to act on the city’s behalf and talk sense to Eaton. Lippincott had been in the Owens Valley as an official of the U.S. Reclamation Service, examining the feasibility there of a giant federal irrigation project. If the federal plan went forward, all the necessary land and water rights would be transferred from private to public ownership. Lippincott shrewdly told Eaton that the Reclamation Service would not withdraw from the Owens Valley unless the Los Angeles Aqueduct was “public-owned from one end to the other.” With this news, Lippincott undercut Eaton’s lofty dream of private water wealth.

  Eaton quickly returned to the bargaining table with a new and more ominous scheme. Eaton had managed to obtain a valuable $450,000 option on cattleman Thomas B. Rickey’s expansive Owens Valley ranch. To the wealthy and eccentric Rickey, the property—called “Long Valley”—was merely 25,000 acres of grazing land. To Eaton, it was the site for the only feasible reservoir in the valley, a level stretch of meadowland 20 square miles in size, with the potential to store approximately 183,000 acre feet of water. Eaton knew a massive storage reservoir at Long Valley would be critical to the long-term success of the aqueduct. In a transaction that should take its place alongside the purchase of Manhattan Island, Eaton only had to hand over a good-faith deposit of $100 cash to Rickey to bind the deal.

  Eaton returned to Los Angeles and offered Mulholland a new compromise. Eaton would sell his Owens Valley land options and associated water rights to the city but insisted on keeping half of the Rickey lands for himself. He would retain 12,000 prime acres of the existing Rickey ranch (including the valuable Long Valley reservoir site) and extend a perpetual easement to the city for construction of a small reservoir at Long Valley. If the city did not accept his offer, Eaton told Mulholland, he would use the ranch as a haven for his budding cattle empire and take his offer elsewhere. There were others who would pay handsomely for an option on land sorely needed by the city of Los Angeles.

  Eaton’s threat triggered a wave of alarm in the halls of the Water Department where officials recognized the land’s value. They would be forced to pay the price to the owner, whoever it might be, and better the devil they knew than some Eastern syndicate that might drive the price beyond reach. Eaton then added to tensions by speaking with reporters about his intentions in the Owens Valley and his comments made front-page news:

  Were it not for the fact that Los Angeles must accept the proposition as presented or lose all hope of saving itself from water famine, I would like to see the scheme defeated. This water right is a valuable thing and if it were not for the fact that the city would be robbed of what it needs most I would like to have them throw the lands back onto my hands.

  Enraged at Eaton’s self-serving public statements, and fearing the city council’s ratification of the project was jeopardized, Mulholland clashed with Eaton in heated arguments for two straight days. The secrecy surrounding the aqueduct route was disintegrating, posing the threat of land speculation, and Mulholland was weary from long arguments and futile pleas; he finally reached a verbal settlement with Eaton in June 1905. The City of Los Angeles would accept Eaton’s demands: In addition to his $450,000 price, Eaton received th
e 12,000-acre ranch, 4,000 head of cattle, horses, mules, and farm equipment—a sizeable return from his modest investment. He earned an additional $100,000 on commissions for other properties he secured on behalf of the city.

  To celebrate, Eaton hosted an informal reception at the posh California Club, an exclusive men’s club where Water Department officials and invited V.I.P.s met to congratulate him on his successful efforts in securing water rights for Los Angeles. Both Mulholland and W. B. Mathews were in attendance; despite the hair-splitting sessions they had been enmeshed in only days earlier, the three men drank heavily into the early hours of the morning and generously toasted the success of their future enterprise.

  Eaton continued to ruminate over his lost multi-million-dollar dream. He felt his share of profits for solving the city’s water problems was pitifully small and he was convinced he had needlessly sacrificed his financial ambition for an ungrateful city. “I have not received one dollar of city money, not even for expenses,” Eaton complained to the press. Walking with a slight limp, his face pale and drawn, he appeared exhausted, and confided to friends that he was suffering from a severe attack of rheumatism brought on by his continued travels into the high altitudes of the Owens River country. “I have lived in this western country long enough to know what water is worth,’’ Eaton blasted. “I probably know better than anyone else how much I could have made out of that option on the Rickey property. Private capital is waiting to put a million more into that valley than the city is buying it for.”

  Eaton worked himself into a frenzy decrying his loss of profits through civic fidelity. “Why, yesterday,” Eaton moaned to the Examiner,” the old man Rickey came to scold me because I had thrown away a chance whereby we could have gone in together and made a big pile of money. He said I beat him and myself out of at least half a million.”

  Despite the warm reception of friends and colleagues who celebrated his civic beneficence, privately, Eaton was increasingly alienated. He was convinced he had been cheated out of a fortune and vowed to Mulholland that he would make no further concessions regarding the Rickey ranch.

  Just days after the ebullient party at the California Club, Mulholland and Mathews re-examined their deal with Eaton, and soberly realized the city required a larger reservoir. They approached Eaton again, hoping to secure a more extensive easement in Long Valley which could be employed when the city grew large enough to require a permanent storage reservoir. Eaton told Mulholland and Mathews that he had given them “damn well enough for the money” and would not let them “flood his valley” under any circumstances.

  Mulholland had intended to construct a 140-foot dam at Long Valley whose storage capacity would be double that of all other possible reservoir sites. Had he been able to erect a dam on the Long Valley site, Mulholland would have assured Los Angeles a supply sufficient to meet its needs through even the most prolonged droughts. Mulholland’s plan would have preserved the Owens Valley as well and allotted residents enough water to keep 80,000 acres of first-class farmland under cultivation. It was Eaton’s standoff over Long Valley which guaranteed, as William Kahrl wrote, “that there would be insufficient water for both Los Angeles and Owens Valley in any future drought, and gave birth to the bitter Los Angeles Aqueduct controversy and the basis for the eventual sacrifice of Owens Valley.”

  The bargaining became so heated that Mulholland and Mathews left, threatening that “everything was off.” But the next day they returned and obtained Eaton’s begrudging consent to a reservoir only one hundred feet high.

  As a consequence of Eaton’s restriction, the city was forced to construct the needed reservoir elsewhere, a decision that would trigger far greater tragedy and ill will than Eaton’s clever machinations in 1905 could justify. To some, Mulholland committed a major error in failing to secure the Long Valley reservoir site, and he would later be accused of snubbing his nose at a more practical resolution with Eaton out of “petty niggardliness and almost fanatical pride.”

  The two men’s deep-rooted feelings of mutual resentment were kept from public scrutiny. Despite the thorny contracts they hammered out, Mulholland and Eaton were forced by circumstance to unite publicly in their efforts to sell the project to the citizens and the press. In public they appeared cordial and warm although Eaton now maintained little enthusiasm for the Owens River project since he stood to profit less by it.

  THOUGH FIFTY-ONE YEARS OLD, with hair nearly white (from two years of haggling in the Owens Valley, he claimed), Eaton was still remarkably handsome. In June 1906, fit and trim, suffering only from an occasional bout of rheumatism, Eaton quietly slipped into the city attorney’s office at noon to marry his second wife, twenty-four-year-old city office stenographer Alice B. Slosson. Eaton intended to spend his honeymoon at Long Valley and designed a special heavy-duty motor car to traverse the sands of the desert and the little traveled roads of the valley.

  On hearing news of the marriage, Mulholland immediately sent Eaton a letter of congratulations, and recalled the day he confided to Eaton plans of his own impending marriage. Four years after he had succeeded Eaton as Chief Superintendent of the Los Angeles City Water Company, Mulholland married Lillie Ferguson, a fair-skinned, dark-haired native of Port Huron, Michigan. Lillie gave birth to their first child, Rose, one year later. She later bore him four more children: two daughters, Lucille and Ruth, and two sons, Perry and Thomas.

  By year’s end, Eaton had established a permanent residence at the Long Valley ranch, commuting to Los Angeles with his new bride once a month. His world had changed drastically. Once viewed by valley residents as their betrayer, he now seemed one of their own after his protracted bitter fight with the city. Soon this ex-mayor of Los Angeles would become the premier citizen of the Owens Valley.

  3

  Sweet Stolen Water

  Ho, everyone that thirsteth,

  come ye to the waters.

  ISA. 55:1

  AT A SECRET MEETING with members of the Board of Water Commissioners and leading Water Department officials, newspaper owners were informed of Mulholland’s visionary plan to build the longest aqueduct in the world. Fearing that Owens Valley land prices would skyrocket if news of the mammoth undertaking were publicized, publishers were sworn to secrecy in an unusual “gentleman’s agreement.”

  To thwart speculation, the city had arranged to send Eaton back to the Owens Valley to acquire the necessary remaining options on downstream water rights below Long Valley. Furnished with official credentials (provided by the ever-agreeable Lippincott) which seemingly identified him as an agent of the federal government, Eaton met with unsuspecting Owens Valley farmers who thought they were aiding the proposed federal reclamation project as they signed over their water rights to the city, instead. On the same day that the Reclamation Service publicly announced that it was abandoning its project in favor of Los Angeles, Mulholland and Eaton returned to Los Angeles after a last buying spree in the Valley. “The last spike is driven,” Mulholland happily announced to Water Department officers. “The options are all secured.”

  The city’s deception at the expense of the unsuspecting Owens Valley landholders apparently was complete. Now the newspapers could make their simultaneous announcements of William Mulholland’s plan for the great man-made river that would bring water to Los Angeles. Mulholland knew that the newspapers’ editorials had to convince the people that the project was both necessary and urgent, so they would act quickly to approve millions of dollars in bonds and new tax assessments. Within twenty-four hours, the news would be public.

  Unfortunately, the fourth estate’s gentleman’s agreement was breached. On the same day as Mulholland’s announcement, an alert reporter in Independence wired the Los Angeles Times with the scoop of a lifetime. Fearing that the story might break first in the Owens Valley newspapers or leak from other sources, editors of the Los Angeles Times decided they dared not wait the remaining twenty-four hours before making their announcement. The following morning, Times’shead
lines blared: “Titanic Project to Give City a River!”

  Its front page revealed the city’s whole plan, causing perplexed readers to consult their atlases to pinpoint the Owens River. Los Angeles readers responded to the news with acclamations of joy as they read about the “concrete river” which promised to increase their number to two million and transform the sun-baked San Fernando Valley into an agriculture-rich Eden. City water officials could not have written the story better.

  “To put it mildly, the values of all San Fernando Valley lands will be doubled by the acquisition of this new water supply,” stated the Times grandly but inaccurately. Within ten days of the story San Fernando Valley properties soared five hundred percent. Land options were gobbled up by competing realtors and new buildings sprouted over the arid land like mushrooms after a spring rain. Such was the force of the news that feelings of renewed wealth, prosperity, happiness, and fortune descended upon the city—even though nothing had happened yet.

  Meanwhile, a number of rival Los Angeles newspapers (chief among them William Randolph Hearst’s Los Angeles Examiner) ,which had agreed to hold back the aqueduct story until given the nod by water officials, smarted over the embarrassing scoop by the double-crossing Times . Hearst began a long series of diatribes against the Times’s editors, who responded in kind with heated accusations.

  Insult led to insult, and soon a full-scale newspaper war raged. As vitriolic accusations were hurled from both sides and circulations skyrocketed, Angelenos followed the battling dailies with varying allegiances.