Rivers in the Desert Read online

  The union men could not have picked a worse time to strike. In addition to the problems with labor, a shortage of aqueduct funds soon materialized. The eastern bonding firm which had been buying aqueduct bonds ahead of the established rate schedule decided not to buy additional bonds until the schedule and sale were even again. The labor troubles and a recession in the bond market had made investment bankers skittish, and New York bankers ceased purchasing aqueduct bonds altogether, creating a financial crunch that threatened to halt construction. Facing a catastrophic cash shortage, Mulholland traveled to New York to intervene.

  Despite his increasing national fame, Mulholland was unable to persuade the New York money men, and frustrated, bitter, and tired, he returned to the line only to find that the WFM had now infiltrated the crews at the Little Lake and Grapevine tunnels and called an official strike.

  Mulholland’s brilliant organizational skill, which Taylor and so many others had admired, had finally worked to his disadvantage. It was a maddening dilemma—by pushing his crews faster and faster to the goals they were capable of achieving, Mulholland outdistanced the aqueduct funds available to him. If, on the other hand, he delayed work to stay within the schedule the financiers had dictated, Mulholland ran the risk that increased labor costs and inflation would drive prices way over budget and place him serious behind schedule.

  It was an utter disaster—the aqueduct was nearly two-thirds complete, and despite his pleas to the bond merchants, there was no money to finish. In this hour of desperation, Mulholland had only one course of action: He immediately announced that four thousand men, constituting 80 percent of the pipeline’s work force, would be dismissed. “We’re shutting down flat,” Mulholland said sullenly. Overnight, his close-knit organization suddenly lay in shambles.

  Mulholland now worked with a skeleton crew, suspending all work which was ahead of schedule so he could concentrate his remaining resources on the lagging sections of the aqueduct. At one point, fewer than 450 men were employed in the entire 233-mile project. Whole divisions along the line were closed down, with only the Elizabeth Tunnel remaining open to operate full-time. Without the boisterous workers, Mojave became a near-ghost town overnight.

  Joe Desmond found himself stuck with huge losses, and as more workers joined the strikers, he was forced to raise meal prices a second time.

  Raymond Taylor and his partners watched their income crash—from $5,000 to $450 a month. Taylor had sixteen bed-ridden patients in his field hospitals, no supplies, and no income. Fearful that the situation might drag on indefinitely, Taylor went to see Mulholland in the camp office at Jawbone, and told him that he was shutting down all hospitals but two, and intended to transfer the ill men to the infirmary near Mojave. Mulholland agreed. Taylor closed the hospitals at Tehachapi and at Haiwee, and accompanied the ill men to Mojave where he received a cautious telephone call from Mulholland’s chief clerk.

  “The Chief doesn’t know when we’ll open up again,” the gloomy voice of the clerk informed him. “At least not until we get this money thing straightened out. And then when we start we’ll have lost our organization and it’ll take months to get it built up again. It’ll probably never get as big as it was.”

  Taylor immediately contacted his partners, who agreed that they would be financially ruined if they continued to maintain their contract with the city. Taylor told them that he’d like to stick it out, reasoning that he couldn’t be any worse off financially than if he were to quit. An arrangement was reached with the Board of Public Works: Taylor’s partners were removed as participants, and the contract was assigned to Raymond Taylor as an individual, Taylor returned to the now-shattered line, in business by himself. Banking on a financial recovery, Taylor treated the remaining workers and engineers as needed, at his own expense, a tribute which Mulholland never forgot.

  As the chief clerk had predicted, the work never attained its previous momentum. But in a strange, unexpected turn, the strike had provided much-needed relief from the current cash shortage for Mulholland. Without huge payrolls to meet, he was now in no hurry to settle the strike, and simply ignored it, biding his time until the money troubles blew over. For the strikers, Mulholland’s move was as disastrous as their timing—their union quickly failed and they were all out of work. When the financial crunch eased in the spring of 1911, the New York bankers resumed buying bonds, allowing Mulholland to begin hiring a new work force.

  At first, he found it difficult to enlist new non-union workers, and had to place full-page ads in the newspapers advertising for two thousand men to start the building again. Believing that the unadorned, direct words of William Mulholland would speak more eloquently than any from its own copywriters, the Los Angeles Times pleaded for workers on behalf of the city in a front-page ad: “There is work for any man who wants it. ‘The Los Angeles Aqueduct needs men,’ says Bill Mulholland.”

  “I was forced to go into the market and buy men as I bought lumber and cement and machinery,” Mulholland would later state as he reflected on the crisis. To facilitate the induction of the new work force, he offered free transportation to the job sites, and a quick resumption of the bonus system. His only concern was that a new man accept his wages with no promise of an increase.

  By May 1911, incoming crews were already hard at work. He had succeeded with only a modest delay.

  AFTER FOUR YEARS of single-minded effort, the two vying teams of the north and south portals of the Elizabeth Tunnel finally came face-to-face. On the previous afternoon, John Gray and W. C. Aston entered the screen door of Mulholland’s makeshift office at the tunnel’s camp and grinned at Mulholland hunched behind his desk pouring over blueprints.

  “We’re within spitting distance of each other,” announced Gray.

  “Give or take, at least that close, Chief,” added Aston, grinning.

  Mulholland smiled broadly. By his own calculations, the competing crews were now less than a few dozen feet from the center mark of the Elizabeth Tunnel. As good as the news was, he also knew a careless round of powder on either side would place both teams in imminent peril, and Mulholland cautioned the men to continue using the newly implemented tunnel communication system, a telephone line that ran over Elizabeth Mountain and into each portal, allowing the teams to communicate with one another at any given time. Now, at this close distance, communication between the two teams was vital for their safety.

  When John Gray returned to the tunnel, he was agitated and nervous. Nightfall was quickly approaching, and he decided to rush one more shot even though his crew was quitting for the day. He drilled fifteen holes into the thin remaining granite bore and shot. As his muckers cleared the rubble, Gray felt the floor of the tunnel vibrate beneath his feet, and smiled. He knew Aston had just gotten off a shot of his own.

  That night in his quarters, the hyperactive John Gray couldn’t sleep and spent the night drinking coffee laced with whiskey, pacing and planning his tactics for the next day.

  On the other side of the tunnel, Aston’s crews huddled in their quarters around wood-burning stoves, placing bets among themselves which crew would be the first to break through.

  “It’ll happen by noon,” Mulholland told his young assistant Harvey Van Norman before turning in. Big and broad-shouldered, engineer Van Norman’s physical size was matched only by Mulholland’s own.

  “Who do you think’ll do it, Chief?” asked Van Norman. “Gray or Aston?”

  “It’s even money,” said Mulholland, taking a coin out of his pocket. “Heads Aston, tails Gray.” He tossed the Indian head nickel high into the air. The coin landed on the floor and rolled into a crack between the rough pine planks.

  “Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?” said Mulholland.

  At dawn two terrific blasts were heard simultaneously from the south and north portals. The final hours of the great contest between man and nature was at hand. The blasts continued shattering the solid barrier of granite and gradually it was shaved down u
ntil less than nine feet of rock separated Gray and Aston.

  Grays and Aston’s crews were working waist-deep in freezing-cold water, even as the pumps extracted 350 gallons a minute out of the portals. Covering the event, a Herald reporter, giving the citizens of Los Angeles a description well worth their nickel, wrote that conditions inside the tunnel were like a “titanic hollow serpent heaving in a cold sweat.”

  John Gray pinned his faith in the efficiency of his continued shots of dynamite. When the distance of the two sides was estimated at not more than four feet, Gray decided that two measured blasts would send his team through. On the south side, W. C. Aston had chosen to drill through rather than continue blasting, and the steady sound of his drills filled the south portal except for slight intervals to change drill heads.

  Just before noon, Gray set off his last charge, estimating the crews would then be only about two feet apart, and he could then himself start drilling. But before the muck had been cleared away, Gray heard a noise scarcely louder than the pop of a small paper bag and saw the point of a Leyner Air Drill breaking through the thin granite wall, barely missing a mucker’s head. Suddenly the wall shattered like a plate glass window, leaving a ragged opening twenty-one feet high and a scant six inches deep. Gray had overestimated the distance by a foot and a half.

  There was a simultaneous, irrepressible cheer, and both crews crowded around the opening. Aston, grinning and sopping wet, was the first to step through the opening and into what was a second ago the north portal. “Hello, there, you north portal! Congratulations!” he roared with a smile as wide as the tunnel he had just conquered.

  “Hello, yourself!” said Gray. “And same to you—lots of ‘em!” and he moved forward to shake Aston’s hand.

  Mulholland, followed by Van Norman, appeared and threw his hat into the air and spit tobacco on the ground. “By God,” he shouted. “She’s done, boys. Well done!”

  The 26,860-foot tunnel was excavated in 1,239 days, becoming the second-largest water tunnel in the nation. The concrete work needed to finish it took ten more months. The total cost of the tunnel was $1,611,600. The Board of Engineers had estimated it would take almost six years to completely finish the five-mile tunnel, and, including the cement work, the crews beat their deadline by more than twenty months at a cost savings in excess of $500,000, a considerable sum in 1911, and hastened the completion of the whole aqueduct. John Gray and W. C. Aston received unstinted praise from Mulholland, who later praised Grays efficient relay system in engineering journals. Mulholland would soon send in another superintendent to supervise the tunnel’s lining and pouring of concrete.

  But for now the three men, intoxicated by victory, stood in the dripping, cold tunnel congratulating one another on a truly historic achievement. Overcome with emotion, John Gray sent for his son, Louis, who arrived the following morning. Father and son walked the entire length of the tunnel together, John Gray misty-eyed over the realization that the task was at last finished. Although the loser of the contest, Gray gained a lasting reputation as the best tunnel man on the aqueduct due to the difficulties he faced in the north portal. In their struggle, Gray’s and Aston’s crews repeatedly broke records for rapid hard-rock tunneling, and as progress on the Elizabeth Tunnel climbed to 221 feet per day (or a little better than 11 feet for each end), set a world record for hard-rock mining in May, 1910 with a single around-the-clock run of 567 feet, beating the Swiss at work on the Lichtberg Tunnel by 50 feet.

  After a week of relaxation and heavy drinking, the two drilling teams disbanded, some moving on to other parts of the aqueduct system and others to different parts of the country. John Gray remained with Mulholland and worked until the opening of the aqueduct in 1913.

  Upon completion of the Elizabeth Tunnel, the Examiner stated that “William Mulholland can sit back and twiddle his thumbs a little while, for the rest of the work is like child’s play compared to this vast project.” Accused of many things, it was one of the few times Hearst’s yellow-sheeted tabloid could be accused of underestimating anything. The arduous tasks that still loomed ahead for Mulholland were far from a game of simple child’s play.

  6

  Blood of Sacrifice

  I have finished the work which

  thou gavest me to do.

  JOHN 19:28

  DESPITE HIS PENCHANT FOR DARING, often dangerous ventures and his fondness for all things mechanical, Mulholland never learned to drive an automobile; he was transported up and down the aqueduct line in a chauffeured Water Department car. Usually he was driven from work site to work site by his second son, Thomas, or by his official driver. Despite the big, expensive company sedan and the ubiquitous driver, Mulholland—unlike Joe Desmond—promoted the figure of the working man. Stepping out of the sedan, his boots soiled by desert dust, Mulholland’s demeanor was that of a man who knew hard labor firsthand. The men knew this and respected him; it would not have mattered if the boots had been patent leather. But behind the rugged, invincible image that Mulholland projected, the stress of the work was having its toll.

  “This big project has completely worn you out,” Taylor chided Mulholland, who was accompanying Taylor on an inspection of the newly reopened medical facilities. “The strain and responsibility is shattering your health. You have to slow down.”

  “What’s your advice?” asked Mulholland wearily. “Am I to forget everything connected with the aqueduct? My work is nearly completed, and then I shall take a nice long rest,” he sighed, knowing that over a year of conflict and turmoil lay ahead before he would be able to make good on this promise.

  Taylor had developed his own afflictions from his work and the stress of insecure financial resources, among them a severe case of sciatica that made driving painful; but he bore his burden with good cheer.

  On this day, Taylor observed again the early signs of what would later be diagnosed as Parkinson’s disease. Mulholland’s face was sun scorched from his years in the field, and his heavy smoking habit contributed to its leathery, worn appearance. As the big, black sedan moved along, Taylor knew the slight twitching in Mulholland’s face and the odd muscular jerking of the head would soon disappear after a few belts from the whiskey flask the two friends often shared on these trips.

  Taylor knew that Mulholland’s wife’s illness was also adding to his stress. Lillie Mulholland, now confined to bed, was painfully suffering. Her condition had become so serious that Mulholland left strict instructions with the staff at the German Hospital in Los Angeles that he be notified immediately, anywhere in the field, if her condition should become worse. Lillie had never been very strong, and the doctors believed she was suffering from cancer. Every morning from his work site, Mulholland called the German Hospital for news about her condition. Despite his heavy workload, he made extra trips to Los Angeles to see her. Mulholland’s eldest daughter, Rose, now twenty years old, faithfully monitored her mother’s condition in near-daily reports to her father.

  Mulholland was keenly protective of his wife and children. Especially as his wife’s health deteriorated, he never burdened her with the pressures of public events or public attention and few of Mulholland’s colleagues were aware of how seriously ill Mrs. Mulholland had become. Raymond Taylor, as both friend and physician, was one of only a handful of associates who knew the extent of her illness, and the toll it had taken on Mulholland’s nerves. Due to the nature of her condition, and what little facts he could glean from Mulholland’s silence, he feared that Mrs. Mulholland might die. It had to be a very difficult and shattering experience for the Chief; Mulholland was devoted to Lillie and he never hesitated to communicate with her by aqueduct telephone from the field or by telegram.

  As the car moved along across the desert floor toward Mojave, Taylor produced the familiar, silver, half-pint whiskey flask from his coat pocket, unscrewed the cap, and passed it over to Mulholland. He smiled to himself as he watched Mulholland take a healthy swig and wipe his bushy mustache with his sleeve. Since that first m
eeting at the Elizabeth Tunnel cave-in, Taylor had never tired of being in Mulholland’s company. He was pleased to see the tense facial muscles relax and the face appear younger than its fifty-seven years. Taylor realized that for Mulholland, not working would bring him down faster than the rigors of work, and his kindly advice to slow down would go unheeded. No matter what, Taylor knew that the Chief would continue his stupendous pace, making the arduous inspections of job sites and the many trips down to Los Angeles to give battle to whatever nay sayer and bureaucrat happened to appear on the horizon.

  Throughout the strain of his wife’s illness and the rigors of the aqueduct, Mulholland had maintained a public image that was poised, refreshed, and confident. Now, in the warm glow of a good friend’s company, the facade was no longer needed. “I don’t know why I ever went into this job. I guess it was the Irish in me. Nature is the squarest fighter there is, and I wanted the fight. When I saw it staring me in the face I couldn’t back away from it. I know the necessity better than any man; and if I don’t, my thirty years of employment on the city’s water works hasn’t gone for much. I didn’t want to have to buckle down and admit I was afraid of the thing, because I never have been—not for a second.”

  The strike and New York financial troubles that had threatened to destroy his spirit and the aqueduct itself were now behind him. The battle of the Elizabeth Tunnel had been fought and won. And Mulholland confidently told Taylor that he thought the worst was now over. If anything else came up, well, “Don’t worry. We’ll pull her through on time, never fear,” he snorted, and passed the flask back to Taylor. Taylor, pleased at hearing the old optimism, never had any doubt that he would.