Rivers in the Desert Read online

  Pleased, Taylor and sixteen-year-old Richard, who would later become a doctor like his father, started into the mouth of the tunnel in the Franklin. A small shallow stream of water was running out of the tunnel and Taylor, concerned, shouted back at Mulholland.

  “Don’t worry,” Mulholland yelled back. “We’re just running a little water to settle the ground so we can finish up the concrete work.”

  Taylor pulled ahead, switching on his lights. He saw there was just enough room to drive the Franklin in one direction through the dark tunnel. The smooth surface of the tunnel floor made an excellent driving surface and the Franklin moved along at a good clip until the car hit a section saturated with water. Taylor downshifted and the Franklin plodded through the next section of the tunnel where the water was even deeper and the floor was thick with mud.

  The Franklin slowed to a crawl. Richard, who was having a great deal of fun and enjoying it all, jumped out and started pushing the car. The wheels sank deeper into the mud, but continued to inch forward. They had traveled about a mile into the dark depth of the tunnel when suddenly the Franklin came to an abrupt stop.

  “Damn it!” Taylor shouted, looking under the hood. “There’s water in the magneto.”

  The Franklin had no battery, and was powered by Bosch magnetos which when wet would cause the car to stall. Taylor and Richard looked alarmed. The headlights were still on, but they couldn’t see more than a dozen yards ahead in the pitch black tunnel.

  Icy cold water was dripping from the ceiling onto their necks.

  “Jesus Christ,” Taylor sighed and looked at his son in dismay. Taylor pulled off the magneto, wiped it dry and put it back on again. To their relief, the Franklin started up and they moved forward. The Franklin stalled again, and again and again; each time the exasperated Taylor got out and had to dry off the magneto to start up again.

  Over an hour later, the Franklin managed to come out of the tunnel into daylight.

  “It took us longer to get through that goddamn tunnel than it would if we’d gone all the way around by road,” Taylor later complained to a bemused Mulholland. “I thought you said you did it all the time.”

  “Yup, that’s what I said,” replied Mulholland, eyes twinkling with mischief. “But not in a car.”

  BY THE SPRING OF 1912, 90 percent of the aqueduct was complete, and Mulholland told reporters that “the end of our task seems fairly in sight.” The most difficult and innovative phase of final construction was the installation of the massive inverted siphons—jumbo, airtight pipes by which water would be made to move miraculously up steep canyons and over mountains. Twenty-two in number, these unique hoses were actually welded-together steel pipes, the largest in existence. Ranging in length from 611 to 15,596 feet, and at a diameter of 8 to 12 feet, some were large enough to drive a locomotive through, and their tonnage—some sections weighed as much as 52,000 pounds—required 35 trains of 20 cars each to transport them from steel foundries to the connecting links along the aqueduct line.

  They could not be moved by manpower alone, and Mulholland commissioned new equipment to get the job done. The work moved relatively quickly after a steam tractor, dubbed a “caterpillar,” was introduced to the world. To move the millions of tons of earth, the steam dredger was another innovation, and the men christened the machine “Big Bill,” a joint compliment to engineer Mulholland and the Presidential nominee, William Taft, who himself weighed well over 300 pounds.

  Until the machines were later refined, the clanky contraptions broke down often, forcing Mulholland to resort to using old-fashioned but ever-reliable mule teams. Fifty-two mules to a team were needed to haul single pieces of the giant siphons, using three parallel jerk lines of sixteen animals each, with a “lead pair at the head and two wheelers on the tongue.” The most famous of the mule skinners, “Whistling Dick,” who hauled borax from Death Valley in earlier days, fell from his saddle and was crushed to death in the track of the enormous wagon wheels. He was seventy-four years old.

  In March 1913 the Jawbone Siphon, near Water Canyon, the last of the great uphill conduits, over 7,096 feet long, was finished and Mulholland made preliminary preparations to fill the aqueduct with water. He and Harvey Van Norman traveled to the Owens Valley to the headgates of the aqueduct to turn the water from the Owens River into the first intake canals.

  Harvey Van Norman, simply known to his friends as “Van,” was said by Mulholland to possess “Perfect mental equipment for the job of aqueducting.” Tall, lean, and handsome, Van Norman projected a genial, honest, and kind personality. Son of a Texas pioneer who had served in the Civil War, Van had become a proficient electrical and civil engineer. He had launched his career as a steam engineer for the Los Angeles Railroad Company and served as superintendent of the Pacific Electric Railway. He had been working as head of construction for the Los Angeles Gas and Electric Company when he was engaged by William Mulholland in 1907 to be electrical construction engineer in charge of building the hydroelectric plant at Cottonwood Creek, where he and his young bride, Bessie, spent the first days of the construction in primitive living conditions. During the next ten momentous years, he and Mulholland would experience the most deep-rooted, poignant friendship and professional association imaginable, and eventually Van Norman would succeed Mulholland as chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

  At the intake, a small party of celebrants gathered on the concrete floodway. As one of them caught the historic moment on film, Mulholland and Van Norman prepared to open the large iron valve and release the water. Jubilant, Van’s wife Bessie smashed a magnum of expensive French champagne against the safety railing. The massive holding gate creaked, and the first gallons of Owens River water surged into the canal.

  For the next two days the exuberant party followed the slow progress of the water through the fifty miles of tunnels, canals, and siphons until it flowed into the Haiwee Reservoir. The party dispersed, and Mulholland continued to supervise each step of the water’s further advance.

  When the flow reached the Elizabeth Tunnel, seventy-five miles south, John Gray and his son, Louis, were on hand to celebrate. The final holding reservoirs that were located at each end of the tunnel were filled with water and the grand opening of the aqueduct was scheduled for July. The water would be stored here until its final journey to the San Fernando Reservoir. As Mulholland and Van Norman congratulated one another and those around them, an urgent phone call came from a frantic engineer up the line at the Sand Canyon siphon. The siphon had developed a leak and was spilling water down the north side of the ravine. Built of two underground tunnels running down and up two mountains, and connected by a steel pipe across a canyon, this siphon was the only one of its kind on the aqueduct.

  Rushing back to Sand Canyon, Mulholland and his aqueduct men repaired the leak within forty-eight hours. A small leak occurred on the slope of the south side mountain, prompting Mulholland to test the full pressure capacity of the siphon. He ordered his men to gradually increase the flow of water and waited. When the flow reached 42 second-feet a huge length of the underground siphon was lifted up by the pressure. Water spewed into the air and the canyon wall burst; huge chunks of concrete crashed into the ravine. A workshop was sheared away from the hillside in the avalanche of mud and boulders, and construction equipment was buried beneath debris.

  Van Norman was called and arrived the next day to inspect the wreckage. He was harnessed into a chair and lowered by rope into the huge cavity of the ruptured pipe. Above his head as he descended, great chunks of concrete hung from the reinforcing rods. Returning to the surface, Van Norman informed Mulholland that the only choice they had was to rebuild the siphon.

  Mulholland agreed, knowing the months it would take to rebuild would delay the grand opening of the aqueduct past summer and would only fuel the opposition forces and give them one more chance to “cry graft” all over again. The collapse of the Sand Canyon siphon was met with disappointment and frustration in Los An
geles as well, and the detailed plans for an elegant summer opening with parades, balls, and gala dinners were postponed indefinitely. Mulholland promised to have the aqueduct ready by Thanksgiving, relieving some of the political pressure, although his engineers remained skeptical. Working with urgency, the crews completed the new siphon by September, and Mulholland announced that the new opening for the Los Angeles Aqueduct would be on November 5, 1913.

  The greatest and most controversial water project in North America was finally finished. Mulholland could only grin meekly at his exhausted workers who had gathered around him in celebration.

  “That’s all, boys. Pick up those hammers and derricks and things and get along home,” he said rather sadly. “It’s over.”

  All that remained was for Mulholland to accept the praise, and the people of Los Angeles to reap the profits of his labor and struggle. Completed almost exactly five years after he had first broken ground, and eight years after he and Fred Eaton had first announced the project, the city of Los Angeles would turn to William Mulholland in his greatest moment of triumph and in its own hour of deliverance.

  7

  Deliverance

  I give waters in the wilderness,

  and rivers in the desert,

  to give drink to my people,

  my chosen.

  ISA. 43:20

  AS THE MORNING SUN began to rise high in the California sky, five thousand wheeled vehicles of every kind—touring cars, roadsters, shiny Big Stephen limousines, underslungs, horse-drawn buggies, hacks, and buckboards—snaked along the already sweltering desert floor, leaving a brown dust cloud twenty miles long.

  The massive caravan rumbled north to the natural limestone amphitheater carved in the hillside four miles above the sunbaked hamlet of San Fernando. A dozen steam locomotives brimming with excited spectators squealed to a stop at the little San Fernando railway station and discharged their eager cargo who made their way by foot up to the amphitheater.

  By noon, 43,000 wide-eyed men, women, and children, enough people to fill six city blocks, had gathered before the rough wooden grandstand constructed at the base of the amphitheater and garlanded with patriotic red, white, and blue bunting to witness the historic moment. Of this number, 25,000 had come by automobile (the largest number of automobiles ever assembled in one spot in the state of California), 10,000 by train, 2,000 by motorcycle, and 6,000 by carriage, wagon, horseback, or on foot. Clad in their Sunday best—bright bows and knickers, stiff Eton collars and shiny Panama hats, lacy ankle drawers and petticoats—they stood ten deep along the banks of the “Grand Cascade,” the so-named graceful, gray concrete trench meandering from the north behind the grandstand and down into the valley.

  One out of every five persons living in Los Angeles had come this day, November 5, 1913, to see the precise moment the long-awaited water would at last tumble through the giant sluice gates on its journey into their parched valley and to canonize the man who had delivered them from their thirst.

  The official aqueduct program handed out to the sweating throng described in the florid prose style of the time the miracle which they were now about to witness:

  This is the story of a dream that came true of an idea audaciously conceived and splendidly realized. It is an outline sketch of the history of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the giant conduit of concrete and steel that brings a river across hundreds of miles of deserts and through mountains to make possible the building in California’s sunny southern land of one of the wonder cities of the world. Less then a dozen years ago the vision of the dreamer was told in these words:

  A drop of water, taken up from the ocean by a sunbeam, shall fall as a snowflake upon the mountain top, rest in the frozen silence through the long winter, stir again under the summer sun and seek to find its way back to the sea down the granite steep and fissures. It shall join its fellows in mud follies in mountain gorges, singing the song of falling waters and dancing with the fairies in the moonlight. It shall lie upon the bosom of a crystal lake, and forget for a while its quest of the ocean level.

  Again, it shall obey the law and resume its journey with murmuring and frettings; and then it shall pass out of the sunlight and the free air and be borne along a weary way in darkness and silence for many days. And at the last drop that fell as a snowflake upon the Sierra’s crest and get out to find its home in the sea, shall be taken up from beneath the ground by a thirsty roof and distilled into the perfume of an orange blossom in a garden of the City of the ‘Queen of Angels.”

  With police sirens screaming, the official motorcade, forty banner-draped black Model Ts, crossed over the Southern Pacific tracks and, amid waving American flags and blasting horns, parted the throng and pulled to a halt before the grandstand. Black-suited dignitaries—mayors from San Diego and San Francisco, the governor of California, both senators, various congressmen, and an envoy from Woodrow Wilson—stepped from the cars, waving to the tumultuous crowd. Among them, smiling broadly, were the five men who named themselves the Board of Control. They were an elite group of Los Angeles businessmen who had been accused of manipulating privileged information about Mulholland’s “big pipe” to their own advantage. While others in the motorcade had supported or opposed the aqueduct openly, the five men had quietly purchased cheap land options in much of the San Fernando Valley, planning to sell them at hefty profits as soon as this greatest day in Los Angeles history arrived. Dressed in the finest clothes their already considerable wealth could buy, publisher Harrison Gray Otis, his son-in-law Harry Chandler, former water commissioner General Moses Hazeltine Sherman, land developer H. J. Whitley, and Otto F. Brant, vice-president of the hugely successful Title Insurance and Trust Company, made their way to the honored seats on the grandstand to await the arrival of the guest of honor.

  William Mulholland was the last to exit his car and climb the stairs to the stage. The throng erupted in a standing ovation, recognizing the fifty-eight-year-old Mulholland immediately from the many photographs of him they had seen as they excitedly followed the progress of his aqueduct in the newspapers. He was everything they imagined their hero to be—six feet tall with a bushy black-and-silver mustache, he projected the charm, energy, and vigor that earned him the affection of all those who had worked under him and now the awe of a public as well.

  William Mulholland was a man whose truest feelings, even ordinary daffy reactions, were hard to gauge and rarely expressed. Although an aficionado of the arts, he was first of all a doer, a man of action, and action guided his life. Like most men born in the mid-nineteenth century, to speak of his inner self was foreign to him—inconsequential things like fears or yearnings were a waste of time and best left unsaid. It was one thing to be frank and blunt to get the job done, but little in a man’s life could be improved by expressing self-doubt or weakness. The tough workaday world required single-mindedness of purpose. Nearly all of his professional life was devoted to the relentless pursuit of water. His sole interest was in advancing the public good and fulfilling his vision—to make desert-locked Los Angeles into a thriving metropolis.

  Even on this glorious day, Mulholland’s face was controlled and measured, and amid the continuing ovation, he walked straight and tall to his honored position on the grandstand, every inch a hero. Never before had a city of 250,000 put so much faith in one man. This was the capstone of his life, a moment of triumph as few have known. Yet, beneath the calm, sun-hardened features was despair. Back in Los Angeles, Lillie lay dying, and Mulholland knew that neither the cheering of the crowd nor his resolve could save her.

  One by one, the dark-suited officials came forward to the rostrum and heaped unstinted, eloquent praise on their calm, efficient engineer. “William Mulholland … has given of himself and of his best in unswerving loyalty to build the aqueduct for the people of Los Angeles. Through the long years of toil and planning, fighting against obstacles, boring through mountains, and bridging deep canyons, Mulholland continued his work without excitement or flurry,” droned bu
t one of his many admirers to the restless crowd.

  At long last, speaker William Kinney of the Chamber of Commerce came forward to introduce the hero of the hour:

  We came to believe that not only could the city have the water but that we could get it by spending money and building a great conduit. Then the people began to ask where a man could be found who was big enough to tackle the job and put it through. We found him. He was right there in our midst. We decided that Bill Mulholland was that man. And we never changed our mind. I have worked in the some of the big cities of the world. In Washington and elsewhere I have come in contact and have known men in high station and engineers of prominence, and I have never met a nobler man, or a kinder man, nor a better engineer than William Mulholland. And here he is!

  As Mulholland rose from his chair and moved to the rostrum to speak, the crowd surged forward, cheering, waving a sea of tiny American flags in time to the salutes of National Guard rifles and the crashing of military band brass cymbals. Dozens of newspaper cameras flashed as one, billowing spent flash powder into the air.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Mulholland began, his strong voice booming across the now-hushed crowd, “in the few remarks I shall make, I speak not for myself alone but for my associates of this great work.”

  With his voice growing hoarse in the dusty parched air, he went on to praise the army of men who labored beside him at the drills in the tunnels, at the cement molds, the men who dug the ditches with great steam shovels, the muleskinners, the riveters, the forge men, the blacksmiths, masons, skippers, swampers, blasters, and engineers:

  They do so much for so little. I know this type of man from my early life as a sailor and worked with them, slept with them and I would rather sit around camp with them than be in a circle of lawyers, doctors or bankers. Professional men are trained to conceal their thoughts but these men are frank, blunt and human and a man gets more real insight into human life and affairs with them than with the other type. They were a grand lot, they did their work and took their chances in the tunnels, dry or wet, safe or indifferent, with gas or free from it and in other dangerous jobs and they spent their money like sailors ashore and that is the one thing that saddens me today. It has been a close partnership and we have worked together well. Therefore we appear jointly and this expression is on behalf of all of us.