UC Berkeley Technical Completion Reports Title The Evolution of California State Water Planning 1850-1928 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0s84j2ww Authors Jackson, W. Turrentine Pisani, Donald J Publication Date 1983-05-01 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California THE EVOLUTION OF CALIFORNIA STATE WATER PLANNING 1850-1928 r-*WATER ~~ESOURCis d_ j CN.•I·rr::~ARCHIVES by W. Turrentine Jackson and Donald J. Department of History University of California, Davis Office of the Director CALIFORNIA WATER RESOURCES CENTER University of California Davis, California The research leading to this report was supported in part by the United States Department of the Interior, under the Annual Cooperative Program of Public Law 95-467, Project No. A-075-CAL, and by the University of California Water Resources Center, Project UCAL-WRC-W-571. Contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Office of Water Policy, U.S. Department of the Interior, nor does mention of trade names or commercial products constitute their endorsement or recommendation for use by the U.S. Government. TECHNICAL COMPLETION REPORT MAY 1983 i. c"'\fl i .•..•.In. ) 1983 \ ~ UNIVER5tW or- CALIfORNIA I .B~Rt<El~ .. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter A FRAGMENTED COMMONWEALTH: CALIFORNIA IN THE 19TH CENTURY. II WATER LAW AND THE IDEA OF IRRIGATION IN 19TH CENTURY CALIFORNIA 26 III THE SEARCH FOR AN INSTITUTIONAL BASE: THE IRRIGATION MOVEMENT, 1850-1877 55 IV STALEMATE: IRRIGATION IN THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE, 1878.1889 112 V THE TERRIBLE '90s: FROM THE WRIGHT ACT TO THE SECOND IRRIGATION CRUSADE 179 VI THE STATE, THE NATION AND THE IRRIGATION CRUSACE, 1900-1917 206 VII TOWARD A STATE WATER PLAN: IRRIGATION IN THE 19205 257 ABSTRACT California's water problems stretch back to the 1850's when argonauts began diverting water from rivers to get a placer deposits in stream-beds or to conduct hydraulic mining. Mining remained the most important economic use of water for two decades. In the meantime, farms, cities, and factories became important users of water. and these "interests" were joined by those committed to the maintenance of river navigation and the reclamation of "swamp" lands. By the 20th century, when mining no longer represented a significant use of water, hydroelectric power companies filed new claims to the State's limited water supply, and the problems of storing and controlling "flood water" began to receive serious attention from the State. Though the State's participation in water planning increased enormously in the 20th century--particularly ~fter World War I--the earlier period was significant for many reasons. State government played an active, if limited, role almost from the beginning. Not only did it publicize the State's water problems and gather ~Iater use information to aid private interests, it provided the legal framework necessary to use the resource. The well-known conflict between riparian and appropriative rights has overshadowed the legislature'S attempts to provide laws regulating water use by private interests. Even in the 19th century the State occasionally intervened directly to tackle a problem, as in 1880 by constructing restraining dams on the Yuba River to trap debris from hydraulic mining. From 1850 to 1930. when a comprehensive State water plan was presented to the public, the State's role in planning changed dramatically. This study provides a chronological overview of State involvement with a focus on two themes: the evolution of legislative (as opposed to "court made"} water law, and the development of the multiple-use concept of water planning. I. A FRAGMENTED COMMONWEALTH: CALIFORNIA IN THE 19TH CENTURY In the 19th century, Cal ifornia had a dual personal ity. If it was a "western" state, it was western with important differences. Clearly, it shared many of the characteristics of other "frontier" states. Its economy passed through several distinctive and fairly abrupt states. A mining and pastoral era gave way in the late 1860s to a wheat boom which, in turn, was eclipsed by horticulture in the late 1880s and 1890s. Sharp economic fluctuations resulted from such disparate factors as speculation in Nevada mining stocks, completion of the first transcontinental railroad, droughts, and real estate booms. Economic diversification--which helped mitigate these swings--was not achieved until well into the 20th century. Moreover, California, like other western states, was far removed from large markets for its crops, and suffered from inadequate transportation facilities, sectional rivalries, persistent labor shortages, and ethnic and racial conflicts. However, unlike its sister states and territories, California was highly urbanized, with 27 percent of its residents living in San Francisco in 1870. In the 1850s, San Francisco exhibited many of the violent and unstable elements of a frontier society. But by the 1870s and 18805, law and order took second place to the same problems encountered by the rapidly growing cities of the eastern seaboard, inclUding municipal corruption, the cost of government, poor relief, and the need for new water and sanitation systems. Residents of interior communities frequently grumbled that San Francisco paid scant attention to agriculture. By the 1880s, San Francisco sported a wide variety of financial institutions, and while investment capital was often short in California--forcing businessmen to rely on European or Eastern investors--the state depended far less on distant financial institutions than other western states. This, of course, did not mean that California was either independent or self- sufficient. Though it never became an economic "colony" of the East, its dependence on mining, and later wheat cultivation, made it the prey of unstable international markets. However, San Franciscans, if not all California "urbanites," could take pride in having passed through the frontier stage of development fairly rapidly. Nevertheless, for all the advantages California enjoyed in comparison with other western states, its population growth lagged behind its enormous economic potential. California grew by 47 percent in the 1860s and 54 percent in the 1870s, while Kansas grew by 240 percent in the 18605 and 173 percent in the 1870s, Minnesota by 155 percent and 77 percent, and Nebraska by 355 percent and 270 percent. In 1870, California's population averaged less than person to the square mile while New England's ratio was 49 to 1, the Middle Atlantic states 69 to 1, and the south Coast states 15 to 1. Even sprawling Texas averaged two people per mile. During the 1880s, the state's population expanded at about the same rate as during the 1860s, despite a land boom in southern California. Then, in the 1890s, the growth rate dropped to 22.4 percent. Of all the arid West, only Nevada, which actually lost population during the 1890s, attracted fewer new residents. Though California's "remoteness· and the cost of transportation help explain these figures, the state's dry and unpredictable climate, contests over Mexican land grants--which blocked the sale of rich agricultural land along the coast for more than two decades after statehood--high unemployment, and land monopolies counted for more. California developed a reputation as the home of a rootless society of gamblers, speculators, and businessmen who had little attachment to the land and little allegiance to the values family farming promoted. Both within and without the state. California society was portrayed as disorderly and corrupt, the antithesis of basic American ideals.1 California agriculture was in its infancy in the 1850s and early 1860s, placing third in the economy behind mining and the livestock industry. In 1846, more than 500 ranchos in upper California covered hundreds of thousands of acres in the Los Angeles basin and along the coast from San Francisco to Santa Barbara. The lanky Spanish cattle raised on these open ranges were valued for their hides and tallow, and only incidentally as a source of meat and milk. During the Mexican period, there was little attempt to improve the breeding stock, and the "industry" remained isolated. The only substantial overland drive occured in 1837 when 700 cattle were sent north to the Willamette Valley. But the gold rush transformed the industry from a pastoral "life style" to a speculative business. Miners bought so much meat that for a time cattle drives from southern California to Sacramento and the mining camps rivalled the great Texas drives. Demand so outstripped supply that the price soared from $4 a head in 1846 to over $500 a head delivered in Sacramento in 1849, During the 1850s, cattle were imported from Mexico, Texas, and the Middle West, increasing both the supply and quality of meat. The total number of cattle increased from 448,796 in 1852 to l,116.261 in 1859, and the number of milk cows tripled. In 1861. the nation's leading agricultural newspaper, The Country Gentleman, counted 55 ranchos in Los Angeles county alone. Abel Stearns' 12 ranches covered 230,815 acres on which grazed 18,000 cattle and 3,000 horses. The other ranches ranged in size from a modest 4,000 acres to 60,000 acres.2 2 Nature delivered a serious blow to the range cattle industry in the early 1860s. A massive flood in 1861~1862 was followed by drought in 1863-1864. Pastures dried up and cattle carcasses littered the barren countryside. In Monterey County--stronghold of the cattle industry in the Mexican period--the county assessor estimated that the herd had declined from 70,000 to less than 13,000 animals. But nature did not kill the open range. By irrigating pasture land, as Henry Miller would later dO in the San Joaquin Valley, the ranchos might have survived. However, irrigation was expensive, and by the mid 1860s wheat farming on the rich coastal plains promised a much higher profit per acre than stock raising.