I was born by a river
But it was paved with cement…
— Dave Alvin, Dry River
The rough, wild — and shady — frontier history of the old hometown has cropped up again.
KCET produced a piece on “Lost L.A.” that plumbs the exceedingly violent history of the sleepy pueblo that grew into one of the wildest, weirdest metropolises in the world.
From the end of the Mexican War (1848) to the arrival of the transcontinental railroad and respectability (1876), Los Angeles drank, whored, brawled, lynched, and murdered.
Calle de los Negros, just off the Los Angeles Plaza — a notorious and dangerous red-light district.
Of course, “respectability” didn’t actually change much, as is noted in crime writer James Ellroy in “LAPD ’53.” “THE QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN BOOMTON TO THE QUEEN CITY OF A NEW MILLENNIUM,” Ellroy proclaims in his introduction to a collection of crime scene photos from the LAPD archives — and the body count says high. The queen city has always been a bloody place…
The dam collapse came without warning, thanks to an error in judgment by the man whose water projects made modern L.A. possible: William Mulholland.
His story is a classic tale of a frontier go-getter. Wilkman:
Born in Ireland in 1855, young Willie Mulholland ran away to sea when he was 15, and in 1877 followed his sense of adventure to Los Angeles, a frontier town with a welcoming climate and a population of a little more than 11,000. The year before, the once isolated Mexican pueblo gained easier access to the rest of the United States with the arrival of the transcontinental railway.
In 1878, at age 22, Mulholland started his life’s work as a ditch digger for the city’s privately managed water distribution system, which was linked to the shallow Los Angeles River. In the years that followed, the Irish immigrant’s no-nonsense attitude and management skills led him to the leadership of a new city-owned water department in 1902.
With a growing population outstripping water resources (sound familiar?) former mayor Fred Eaton secretly bought up land and water rights in the Owens Valley in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada, and Mulholland designed a 233-mile-long aqueduct to bring Owens Valley water to L.A. My wife’s grandfather was in the crowd that gathered to hear William Mulholland say, “There it is — take it!” and watch the water flow in on November 5, 1913. He would become a walnut grower in the San Fernando Valley, so the water meant prosperity to him.
The L.A. Aqueduct. An extraordinary feat of engineering — and a sore spot for generations of Owens Valley ranchers and farmers.
Somewhere in that crowd is Marilyn’s grandfather.
The secret — and profoundly devious and underhanded — water acquisition, which looked an awful lot like outright theft to Owens Valley ranchers and farmers, led to violence. There were several incidents where locals dynamited sections of the aqueduct. The water transfer totally changed the ecology of the Owens Valley, and the locals are still pissed off about it. They don’t like Angelenos up there. I used to backpack in the Sierra Nevada out of Owens Valley towns, and I can tell you the hard feelings are far from dead.
Mulholland designed dams to hold the Owens Valley water — one of them being the St. Francis Dam in San Francisquito Canyon 50 miles north of the city.
Wilkman:
On the morning of March 12, 1928, Mulholland and his assistant, Harvey Van Norman, were called to examine a leak in the St. Francis Dam. Leaks were not uncommon, but watchman Tony Harnischfeger thought the escaping water looked muddy, an alarming sign that the dam’s foundation could be failing. When Mulholland took a close look, with nearly 50 years of experience, the water appeared clear. Van Norman agreed. They concluded the leak became muddy when it mixed with construction debris. Shortly after noon, the water department bosses returned to Los Angeles. Less than 12 hours later, shortly before midnight, the St. Francis Dam suddenly shuddered, heaved, and cracked apart, releasing a flood that surged west through small agricultural towns and farmland, destroying nearly 500 lives before reaching the Pacific Ocean 54 miles away.
L.A. is even more historically amnesiac than the rest of America, and virtually nobody knows about this disaster, or the unbelievable chicanery behind the birth of modern L.A. — unless you’ve watched Chinatown and read Mark Reisner’s Cadillac Desert.
Speaking of which, here’s the 1990s PBS series Cadillac Desert — Mulholland’s Dream, which does an excellent job of telling this quintessentially American story. The VHS transfer isn’t great quality, but it’s well worth the viewing. And while you’re at it, take a few minutes to read this blog post from BOOM: A Journal of California, where David L. Ulin jumps off from the opening of the L.A. Aqueduct to examine the Ned Doheney murder-suicide and the writing of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. Good stuff.
deuce says
Edgar Rice Burroughs was also part of the project to develop the San Fernando Valley. That said, he appears to have been an honest and straightforward man overall. For ERB fans, I recommend BROTHER MEN, a collection of correspondence between ERB and one of his oldest friends back in Nebraska (who also appeared disguised in a couple early ERB novels). You can read the man talk about his love of horses and nature, military virtues, boxing and Teddy Roosevelt.
Not much about his fiction, just the musings of a man who very much wanted to be thought of as a “normal guy”, but was much more than that.
JimC says
As in most such cases of “it’s there; take it” on frontiers all over the world, the men doing the taking didn’t think of themselves as dishonest or in any way dishonorable. From Rhodesia to the San Fernando Valley. They were doing “what they had to do” and it was “for the greater good.” And folks from Burroughs to Marilyn’s grandfather who developed the San Fernando Valley only considered that they were making the desert bloom. They WERE “honest and straightforward men overall.” It ain’t pretty, but cabals and good-ol-boy networks and “rings” were the nature of things on the boomtown frontiers of the world. And mostly good men did bad things in the name of “progress.”
Thom Eley says
Mulholland Drive was laid out by Walter Goodwin (a locating engineer) who had surveyed the route of the Seward to Nome Mail Trail. During his survey gold was found in Iditarod and the trail was nicknamed the Iditarod Trail. Actually the part of the trail that went around Anchorage (which didn’t exist then) was first explored by Yellowstone Kelly and Walter Mendenhall (later head of the USGS) and was called the Kelly Trail. Indians apparently never used the Kelly Trail. The Army and the USGS wanted to bring horses and wagons over the Kelly Trail and there was no thought about dog teams. To hike the Kelly Trail and think about wagons going over the Trail is shocking. It would have been a hell of a trip.
JimC says
Great stuff, Thom — thank you.
John C. says
There is a very impressive fountain at the busy intersection of Los Feliz Blvd. and Riverside Drive, next to Griffith Park, that is the Mulholland Memorial Fountain. It was dedicated in 1940, and the plaque paints Mulholland in a rosy light:
“A penniless Irish immigrant boy, who rose by the force of his industry, intelligence, integrity and intrepidity to be a sturdy American citizen, a self-educated engineering genius, a whole-hearted humanitarian, the father of this city’s water system and the builder of the LA aqueduct. This memorial is gratefully dedicated by those who are the recipients of his unselfish bounty and beneficiaries of his prophetic vision.”
There has been a lot of hoopla in recent years, because they continued to run the fountain during the drought. A strong bit of irony. As the drought worsened, they finally turned it off.
KCET did a good article about the memorial fountain – https://www.kcet.org/departures-columns/the-mulholland-memorial-fountain-a-grand-monument-to-a-man-and-water
Louis L’Amour’s book, The Californios, is set in the LA area in 1844, and gives insight into the area’s violence and criminality, albeit through L’Amour’s sanitizing style.
John C.
Craig Rullman says
My people were on the other end, in Bishop, some still are. My grandad, in between cowboy gigs and working for Bishop PD, ran the Meadow Farms store, which is still there. My mom and uncles graduated from Bishop High. My cousin taught the ag classes there for 40 years. They remember a much different valley than what is there today. There is no going back, of course, and rural folk are pretty much always getting hosed by the urbanites who, when they aren’t just stealing, can always outvote them.
JimC says
So, basically, Marilyn’s grandpa stole your grandpa’s water….
Saddle Tramp says
” A trail of empty whiskey bottles ” […]
Bread crumbs Irish style!
A trail that has led us to this possible epitaph for the 21st century. God forbid!
” Doomed to succeed ”
— William Mulholland
Great post Jim!
Trying my best to keep up with you. Great musical posts to boot.
John Anderson with a voice like poured whiskey and a song that cuts to the bone.
Rory laying down licks that can raise the dead. Great stuff!
Back into the water…
All things in context of the time they took place, but of course.
It was a few years ago that I stopped to photograph the Mulholland Memorial Fountain at Los Feliz Blvd & Riverside Drive ( before the drought had come to the forefront ). It was undergoing a major renovation that was finishing up at the time but the water was still flowing.
That can no longer be taken for granted any longer.
I listened to a recent talk by Kermit Roosevelt III the great-great grandson of Theodore Roosevelt.
He said ( with the highest of respect ) that Theodore got it wrong in one respect and that being that if it only benefits a few, then favor should be awarded to those who are in the majority to benefit.
This is a summary statement by me and not to be taken verbatim. An everyman sentiment that I usually adhere to as well. It was in regards to rule of law and such. Theodore’s intention was meritorious but outcomes have often been proven to not be the case. Thankfully Theodore was right on so many many other things. Not always perfect. The great ones never are. We could use a few more imperfect ones of his caliber right now as we are surrounded by so many “False Profits ” who are steering the lemmings in a direction to repeat the most dangerous by-products of American exceptionalism and all that it has wrought. I say this as someone who is American to the bone when America does what’s right and corrects what’s wrong. That’s where the trouble begins.
” There it is. Take it. ”
— William Mulholland
Everything in context of time.
There comes a time…
Saddle Tramp says
P.S. :
A few years back my oldest son and I took a road trip up the eastern side of the Sierra Petes and stayed over in Bishop. A visit to the Galen Rowell Gallery was a prime motivator along with the mandantory stop at Erick Schat’s Bakery in the morning before an early start For Mono Lake and those famous Tufa Tower formations that became taller due to the aquaduct to L.A. Unfortunately we missed out on Meadow Farms.
Always appreciate a good lead for something old and worthy. We are losing it all too fast!
Next time for sure…
Jim Cook says
Oct. 10, 2022
Concerning the poor farmers in the Owens Valley who bemoan the loss
of their land, the American Experience DVD reveals a sobering fact.
The early farmers came to the valley and killed, moved and displaced
the Paiute Indians who had been there for thousands of years and irrigated
the valley with water from the Sierras.
People are not taught that and that fact is lost in translation when American
history makes the white man the innocent victim. The farmers stole the land
and irrigation canals from the Paiutes.
The Paiutes were just one of many tribes whose land, way of life, the Bison
and heritage was taken by settling “pioneers.”
Remember and teach that to your high school age and older children.
Respectfully,
Jim Cook, Professor of history and astronomy, semi emeritus.