Rivers in the Desert Page 8

  In spring of 1912, the whole aqueduct line was again in full swing. (Due to the extreme climate conditions, the number of workers was continually fluctuating. As many as 100,000 men toiled on the excavation over the period of its construction, with the work force usually numbering 5,000 at any one time.) The new crews continued in their favorite recreational pleasures and the Mojave streets were alive again and more decadent than ever. Back to making his rounds, Taylor looked upon all the familiar hell-raising and mayhem with mixed emotions. As a physician, he shook his head in despair at the broken noses, bloody fists, and cracked ribs. As sole owner of a profitable business, he could only smile.

  IN OCTOBER 1912, despite the fact that the aqueduct was progressing beyond his own exacting expectations, Mulholland had to contend with what many considered his thorniest problem in the mammoth undertaking—Fred Eaton.

  Making the long, hot trip down by buckboard from his Long Valley ranch to Mulholland’s headquarters at Mojave, Eaton had watched with dismay the advance of the aqueduct as it stretched out before him for miles in a great line of open canals, steel pipes, and concrete conduits. The excavation sites of the future catchment reservoirs, eventually to be filled with Owens River water, scarred the terrain as far as Eaton could see, while workers by the hundreds toiled in the burning desert landscape. To anyone else, it would have been a rare sight of a great human endeavor, but to Eaton it was a blatant theft of his great enterprise. For five years, he had followed the aqueduct’s progress with mounting rage, and at every reported foot of advance, every conduit finished, and every tunnel bored, he knew another acre of property was purchased in the San Fernando Valley by those he was sure had deprived him of his own rightful profits.

  Since his bitter compromise with the city, Eaton had spent the ensuing years regretting its outcome in dark periods of wishful recriminations and self-imposed isolation, harboring feelings of injustice that friends reported were eating away at his pride. At the diversion site of the aqueduct above Independence, he had stopped to drink and fill his canteen with the Owens River water that was already trickling into the gray tufa concrete intake canal and had spit it out in disgust, its cool, sweet taste galling him as if it were the bitter water from briny Owens Lake.

  Now as his buckboard slowly made its way toward Mojave following the line of the aqueduct, the events of the compromise played over and over again in his mind like a tormenting melody, and by the time he walked into Mulholland’s office he was seething with anger.

  Greeting Eaton with outstretched hand, Mulholland’s face soon hardened as he prepared himself to listen to yet another long-winded harangue. Twice before, Eaton had visited Mulholland at the aqueduct and each time had demanded that Mulholland, on behalf of the city, meet his price of one million dollars for Long Valley, which he had decided to sell outright. Biding his time until Mulholland’s labor problems had been settled, Eaton now chose to take up his bargaining again.

  Although the planned reservoirs—at Haiwee, Fairmont, Bouquet Canyon, Dry Canyon, and two in San Fernando Valley, from which the water entered the Los Angeles distribution system—were in various stages of completion, Eaton knew these reservoirs functioned basically as catchment devices in the aqueduct’s downward flow. The city, he also knew, would have to have a long-term storage facility for times of shortage and drought. Eaton’s Long Valley, a twenty-square-mile meadow at the head of the Owens River, was a natural site for such a reservoir. Eventually, he knew the city would have to utilize it. It made no sense whatsoever to build the aqueduct without a storage facility at the source.

  Recognizing his old friend’s increasingly hostile behavior in each repeated visit, Mulholland knew that the situation required kid gloves, and despite Eaton’s invective, Mulholland patiently explained the position he and the city held regarding Long Valley. Had Los Angeles acquired the property early during the construction phase when Eaton first made his offer, Mulholland might have been able to persuade the city to return to the proposal he had made in his 1907 report: a simple dam across Long Valley, 165 feet high, 525 feet across, creating a reservoir of 26,000 acre-feet that armed Los Angeles against dry years. But during their negotiations Eaton was not willing to give up that much, allowing rights for only a 100 foot dam, which was totally inadequate for the job.

  Since then, after construction began, the Board of Public Works had eliminated it in its overall downscaling to save on expenses, and decided upon a permanent reservoir at another site rather than Long Valley, a site yet to be determined. Eaton’s continuing demands for a million dollars only convinced the board that building a dam at Long Valley was not feasible.

  Now, once again, Mulholland explained the city’s position, and once again Eaton stormed out of Mulholland’s office, slamming the screen door behind him. Flushed with anger and muttering to himself, Eaton strode to the buckboard and headed back to his prized Long Valley ranch. Eaton’s visit, like the others, left Mulholland feeling depressed and anxious. There was no solution to his onetime mentor’s anguish. His friendship with Fred Eaton seemed irreparably damaged.

  On the heels of Fred Eaton’s troubling visit, Mulholland was soon faced with the problem of defending himself back home in Los Angeles.

  IN NOVEMBER 1911, Socialist candidate for mayor, Job Harriman, supported by the very trade unions Mulholland had defeated, made the repudiation of the aqueduct the pillar of a furious campaign. Charges of conspiracy and fraud leveled against Mulholland by the Socialists and other factions had been so loudly publicized that after much debate the Aqueduct Investigation Board, appointed by the Los Angeles City Council, began an official inquiry into their allegations, and in the summer of 1912 summoned Mulholland to Los Angeles.

  Mulholland welcomed the investigation, hoping it would clear the charge of malfeasance on his part, but grew impatient when the inquiry turned into a political quagmire of “insinuation and crap,” as he bluntly summarized it. He had answered charges in four long days of straightforward testimony about every conceivable detail concerning the purity of the water, the labor force, and the aqueduct’s design—but he refused to cooperate with the board’s repeated questions about Fred Eaton. Mulholland emphatically stated it was “unnecessary and unethical” for an investigative board to delve into the personal lives of the men who had conceived the idea of developing the aqueduct.

  “You are not willing to recognize the right of this board to decide for itself the ethics of the case?” asked one examiner.

  “I am the guardian of my ethics,” Mulholland shot back, rising to his full, six-foot height. “It would be unethical for me to disclose names of men who never had anything to do with this thing. All this was prior to any deal in which the city is concerned.… This board has nothing to do with that,” he continued, his fatigued eyes addressing every member.

  Disgusted with the political motivation for the proceeding, Mulholland erupted before storming out, “The concrete of the aqueduct will last as long as the pyramids of Egypt or the Parthenon of Athens, long after Job Harriman is elected mayor of Los Angeles.” The following morning, the quote was printed on the front page of every newspaper in California.

  In spite of Mulholland’s fiery defense, the Investigation Board recommended suing Mulholland, Fred Eaton, and attorney W. B. Mathews, claiming they had deceived the electorate in an elaborate scheme involving water dumping and land fraud. Its final report criticized nearly every aspect of the aqueduct, alleging Mulholland and the San Fernando land syndicate had artificially created the drought of 1905 in the minds of Los Angeles voters to induce passage of the aqueduct bonds and that Mulholland and the syndicate secretly plotted to hatch huge profits in the San Fernando Valley once the water had arrived. The report also alleged kickbacks to food contractor Joe Desmond and irregularities in Raymond Taylor’s medical services.

  The report concluded that the Investigation Board had insufficient time to “unearth the graft” which they were sure was hidden somewhere within the department and in Mulh
olland’s administration of the aqueduct, but wanted to “hang the dirty wash” out on the line for the public to see for themselves.

  Mulholland was not without powerful supporters, however; George Alexander, then in city hall as mayor, called the report “the veriest rot,” claiming there was no graft whatsoever to uncover. As all of his friends knew, William Mulholland loathed the political game. To him, the inquiry was a sham, mired in political haranguing between pro-socialist and pro-capitalist forces, the proceedings swinging from critical attacks against the syndicate’s influence in the San Fernando Valley to petty indictments that dark blue rather than white enameled tableware was used in the mess halls.

  After four days of grueling interrogation, the exasperated Mulholland was almost persuaded to quit. “No independent man who fights for what he thinks can succeed,” he told Raymond Taylor, who was appearing as one of the accused, “This is no democratic process,” he announced. “This is my goddamn ditch.”

  The Board lacked power of subpoena, and could not legally require the appearance of the members of the syndicate, including Harrison Gray Otis, Moses Sherman, and Harry Chandler. Two other members were now out of the picture: E. H. Harriman of the Southern Pacific rail system fortune was dead, and Henry Huntington, having sold off his local railway empire in 1910, was now in comfortable retirement, devoted to building his renowned San Marino library.

  Although the syndicate’s culpability was not proved, the proceedings were embarrassing, and scrutiny of the land speculation publicized the immense profits the members stood to garner once water was delivered to the valley. The entire affair proved to be an ongoing public relations nightmare. In the end, however, the inquiry did not demonstrate any tangible evidence of illegal activities and the board could only recommend that no water be provided to the San Fernando Valley for agricultural irrigation.

  To Mulholland’s satisfaction and vindication, on the central issue of municipal corruption, the inquiry asserted, “There was not a statement submitted nor any evidence unearthed to indicate that any criticism of the integrity, business ability, or loyalty of effort for the best interest of the city of Los Angeles could be maintained to the slightest degree,” concluding that “no direct evidence of graft had been developed.”

  However, to Mulholland’s sorrow, the Board called for the immediate indictment of Fred Eaton over his purchase of Long Valley. No criminal charges or civil litigation was commenced, and Eaton continued to sit on his Long Valley cattle ranch waiting impatiently for his day in the sun. The sense of loyalty to Fred Eaton that was born in the muddy water of the Zanja Madre was strong enough for Mulholland to defend him against such charges, even if he knew them to have merit.

  The shoddy hearing over, Mulholland, with a sense of personal vindication, returned to the desert and to the task of bringing the aqueduct to its conclusion, only to be faced again with the most heartbreaking of all his many problems.

  In June 1912, en route to Mojave to treat men injured in a barroom brawl, Taylor received word of a huge explosion at the Saugus division. Forty minutes later, he arrived at the south portal of the Clearwater Tunnel, fifteen miles north of Saugus, to find three men dead and a dozen others buried alive beneath tons of blasted rock. Taylor’s worst fears had been realized.

  When he got there, two of the badly burned corpses had been recovered. Another twenty men had escaped, but were seriously injured by flying rock and the subsequent stampede by the workers themselves through the black, smoke-filled tunnel. “It was a scene of chaos, ugliness and tragedy,” he reported later.

  Shift boss Norman Stoble had been setting the powder for the next charge, and the others had walked nearly three hundred feet toward the mouth of the tunnel, when the powder suddenly exploded, blowing Stoble to bits. The blast blew in the width and roof of the tunnel, trapping the crew inside. An hour later, a second cave-in occurred, and tons of falling rock narrowly missed engulfing the rescue gang as they worked feverishly with shovels and picks to free the men trapped in the original blast.

  As Taylor entered the tunnel, he saw the recovered bodies of Edward Garside and Thomas O’Donnell and the escaped men prostrate on the floor of the tunnel. The rescuers were attacking the huge mound of shattered rock and were shoveling debris into box cars while shouting out the trapped men’s names in encouragement. Faint, muffled shouts from behind the mound were the only indication that anyone was still alive. Taylor immediately began treating the men who had escaped. They had been impaired by the bitter fumes of nitroglycerine as they fought their way through the wall of blasted rock to the open air a half-mile away. Some of them had become disoriented in the pitch black tunnel, running hundreds of yards in the wrong direction.

  Six unconscious men were recovered and, with the help of two hospital stewards, Taylor succeeded in resuscitating each man. He learned that the tunnel foreman was still inside. When Taylor realized that the man they were talking about was Louis Gray, the twenty-seven-year-old son of John Gray, he dispatched one of the men to phone Gray at the Elizabeth Tunnel and bring him to Saugus at once.

  Hearing that his son was buried alive and that three men were dead, John Gray fell to his knees in prayer. Informed of the accident, Mulholland dispatched a car to drive Gray to Clearwater Canyon. Gray arrived and tried to find out exactly what happened.

  “The way these fellows handled dynamite and caps would make your blood run cold,” Taylor told him, shaking his head.

  Some speculated that the blast may have been caused by a candle igniting one of the fuses, because, in spite of the fact that the tunnel was fit electrically, the older miners insisted on working with candles—even though their use was strictly prohibited. A second theory suggested that the explosion was triggered by the “careless crimping of a cap on one of the charges as the fuse and fulminate primer was applied.” Ironically, five minutes before the blast, a worried Louis Gray had emphatically warned the men to take more care with the explosives.

  Gray ran into the tunnel; joining the rescuers, he frantically began shoveling rock and dirt, shouting his son’s name to keep up his spirits. By midnight, the rescuers had broken through to the trapped men. Mulholland was relieved to learn that none of the buried men were badly injured, but were suffering from severe shock. An exhilarated John Gray emerged from the tunnel hugging his son. The younger Gray could not speak, and John Gray feared his son had been rendered mute by the explosion. Later his fears were relieved when Taylor pronounced Louis’s condition as only temporary. He regained hearing in one ear, and Taylor later sent him to Los Angeles for treatment.

  Mulholland worked vigorously to safeguard his crews, but by the very nature of their dangerous jobs, accidents occurred often. “It seems a miracle that only five men died during the whole of the construction,” he stated later, referring to the tunnelers whose jobs were the most risky of all. Compared to the large number of deaths that occurred during the completion of the New York Catskill Aqueduct where 160 men died—nearly one man every week experts applauding the minimal loss of life said credit was due in part to Mulholland’s insistence on safety, including the use of expensive, modern, German-made fuses which reduced the risk of unintentional detonations.

  When death did occur, the hard-bitten crews, heads bowed, hats held to their breasts, stood around the makeshift graves, wet-eyed at the loss of one of their own, and it was their Chief who, fighting back his own tears, delivered the simple, elegant eulogies.

  Stoble, Garside, and O’Donnell died before they reached the age of thirty. Stoble’s identification card stated that in the event of an accident his sister, Ann Stoble, of Redruch Highway, Cornwall, England, be notified. O’Donnell had a wife, Helen, living in San Bernardino. Mulholland determined that Norman Stoble’s body was unfit to be transported to his family overseas. Instead, preparations for a “Proper Christian burial” were made in the desert.

  The City of Los Angeles would later settle death claims for the deceased men. The average amount paid per death claim
was $436.20. Many of the roaming, highly independent, and often suspect workers refused to give out the names of next of kin and often no living relatives could be traced.

  With Gray and his son standing at his side, Dr. Taylor fought back the tears hearing Mulholland’s simple, plain words as Stoble, Garside, and O’Donnell were lowered into the hard, desert earth. Mulholland stopped work at the Coldwater camp site for forty-eight hours, feeling “tribute was more important than the damn work schedule.”

  From the outset the biggest challenge of the construction had rested upon the brave shoulders of these tunnelers. When finished, their crews would have bored through mountains of granite and sandstone, welded 100 miles of iron conduit, run 2,400 mule teams and exploded 6,000,000 pounds of dynamite to complete the Herculean task—a great chain of 164 water tunnels through mountains of granite, a feat that captured the attention of the engineering world.

  THE LONG, DANGEROUS DAYS of building the aqueduct, however, were not without their lighter moments.

  In October of 1912, the tunnels above Saugus were finished. The vibrant purple, white, and yellow hues of the verbena and primrose blanketing the desert floor had given way to the monotonous grays and browns of fall. In the high desert elevations, the air at night was already bone-chilling, and Dr. Taylor thought it would be the ideal time to give his young son Richard a tour of the aqueduct before winter set in.

  At Dry Canyon, Mulholland, standing before the entrance of the newly opened tunnel, insisted that Taylor drive through it in his Franklin.

  “Go on right through, Mulholland said smiling.

  “Can you do that?” Taylor asked cautiously.

  “Sure, I’ve already gone through it two or three times myself. It’ll save you fifteen miles, and only take a few minutes with your car.”