LOS ANGELES AQUEDUCT HAER No. CA-298 From Lee Vining Intake (Mammoth Lakes) to the Van Norman Reservoir Complex (San Fernando Valley) Los Angeles vicinity Los Angeles County California PHOTOGRAPHS WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA REDUCED COPIES OF MEASURED DRAWINGS HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior 1849 C St. NW Washington, DC 20240 HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD LOS ANGELES AQUEDUCT HAER No. CA-298 Note: For shelving purposes at the Library of Congress, Los Angeles vicinity in Los Angeles County was selected as the "official" location for all Los Angeles Aqueduct documentation. For information about the individual parts of the Los Angeles Aqueduct see: HAER No. CA-298-A through HAER No. CA-298-AM Location: From Lee Vining Intake in the vicinity of Mammoth Lakes, California, to the Van Norman Reservoir Complex in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California Dates of Construction: 1907-1944 Designers: First Los Angeles Aqueduct: William B. Mulholland, Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Bureau of the Aqueduct; J.B. Lippincott, Assistant Chief Engineer. Present Owner: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Present Use: Aqueduct Significance: The Los Angeles Aqueduct and its Mono Basin Extension delivers water to the City of Los Angeles from the Mono Basin in the Sierra Nevada Mountains through the Owens Valley and across the Mojave Desert to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles .. Built between 1907 and 1913, the First Los Angeles Aqueduct, together with the Mono Basin Extension completed in 1944, is significant as an engineering feat utilizing a gravity flow system that sends water from the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Los Angeles along a 338 mile line of conduit, inverted siphons, tunnels, dams and reservoirs. The Los Angeles Aqueduct is significant as a water conveying system that made possible the continuing growth and development of Los Angeles as it expanded from a small city to Pacific Coast metropolis. The Los Angeles Aqueduct gains significance for its association with its principal engineer-designer and superintendent of the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Water and Supply, William Mulholland, who served and guided the Los Angeles water system for a half-century. Historian: Portia Lee, August 2001 LOS ANGELES AQUEDUCT HAER No. CA-298 (Page 2) Project Information: This recording project is part of the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), a long range program to document historically significant engineering, industrial and maritime works in the United States. The National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior, administers the HAER program. The Los Angeles Aqueduct Recording Project was co-sponsored during the summer of2001 by HAER, under the direction of the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), Jerry Gewe, Assistant General Manager for Water. The field work, measured drawings, historical report and photographs were prepared under the direction of Eric N. DeLony, Chief of HAER and by Todd Croteau, Project Leader; Portia Lee, Project Historian and Tatiana Begelman, Field Supervisor. The Los Angeles Aqueduct Recording Project Team consisted of Architects, Erin Ammer (Tulane University), Roland Flores, Rebecca Jahns (Cornell University and Carolien Loomans (ICOMOS, Netherlands). Jet Lowe, HAER Photographer, did large format photography. Department of Water and Power Engineering Designer Victor Murillo and Public Relations Manager Chris Plakos provided consultation and advice. Stephan Tucker, Staff Engineer of the Water Executive Office, served as liaison. Engineers at the Department of Water and Power have been generous in sharing their time and expertise. Waterworks Engineer Fred S. Barker volunteered to read the text and assist with the editing process. Thomas Barth shared his extensive historical knowledge and pointed out aspects of the work that might otherwise have been overlooked. Special thanks go to Victor Murillo whose explanations of aqueduct theory and practice were untiring and whose skill at locating archival materials enriched the report and broadened its scope. LOS ANGELES AQUEDUCT HAER No. CA-298 (Page 3) Introduction The story of the Los Angeles Aqueduct is the story of the politics of growth and the history of water resource development in Los Angeles. From the moment Los Angeles began to look to the Owens Valley for the water that would guarantee its continued life and growth, the story became a saga of conflicting interests. Those who saw the struggle from the point of view of Los Angeles spoke of the greatest good for the greatest number, lauded the vision and foresight of city fathers and the loyal support of the people of Los Angeles in bonding the city to the limit to guarantee its future growth and prosperity. Other writers adjudicated the conflict in terms ofland use patterns, settlement in the Owens Valley and rural arid West, and the loss ofa potentially thriving agricultural economy in the Eastern Sierra Nevada~ More dramatic presentations have presented the story in terms of individual personalities led by their financial self-interest, while focusing on the arrogance of Los Angeles politicians, Water Bureau officials and Superintendent Mulholland whose reckless confidence resulted in the failure of the St. Francis Dam. Since its inception in 1781, the city of Los Angeles has been characterized by a single phenomenon: growth. A half century later the tiny pueblo in the far-flung colonial empire of Spain had supplanted the mission padres and presidio soldados with h1.lge ranchos and Mexican secular government. Twenty years later, only two years after the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, California had been admitted to the Union. "By the beginning of the twentieth- century," writes historian Abraham Hoffman," Los Angeles could be counted as one of America's great urban success stories." 1·The transcontinental rail lines of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific brought access to eastern markets and a new Anglo population whose booster LOS ANGELES AQUEDUCT HAER No. CA:-298 (Page 4) spirit intended to create an economic and commercial center inthe Los Angeles·Basin. Attempting to reproduce patterns of urban development characteristic of cities they knew in the East, the new Pacific Rim pioneers began to impose their familiar cultural patterns upon the Great American West. Yet, even unwelcome interruptions to the good life in a superior dimate, such as earthquakes, for example, became unimportant before the one greatreality oflife in Southern California: the presence- or absence - of water. By 1904, the city of Los Angeles had exceeded the inflow into. its reservoirs by nearly four million gallons of water. For Superintendent William Mulholland of the Los Angeles Bureau of Water Works and Supply, growth had become reality, not desire; injust 40years, Los Angeles' population had increased by a factor of seventeen. To continue at that pace, the city had to develop water infrastructure based on a dependable year-round source. To get the water that would enable such exponential growth, former Los Angeles Mayor Fred Eaton suggested to Mulholland a mammoth undertaking that would tap the flow of the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Bonds in the amount of $26.SM were voted by the citizens of Los Angeles to buy water rights and finance the undertaking. Together with Joseph Barlow Lippincott, who had surveyed the Owens Valley as Assistant Superintendent of the United States Reclamation Service, Mulholland and an army of engineers, skilled craftsmen and laborers undertook the development of an aqueduct drawing down the waters ofthe Owens River. Their plan, a 225-mile, gravity flow structure of siphons, tunnels, reservoirs and channels, demanded a huge effort of men, materials, land acquisition and civic will. The Chief Superintendent saw his historic project to completion and on November 5, 1913, water from the Owens River flowed I Abraham Hoffman, Vision or Villainy: The Origins of the Owens Valley Water Controversy, Texas A&M University Press, College Station, Texas, 11. LOS ANGELES AQUEDUCT HAER No. CA-298 (Page 5) into City reservoirs in the San Fernando Valley. The city had, the Superintendent reported, "as much water as it would ever need."2 The Bureau of the Aqueduct and its Chief Engineer Mulholland began construction on the first Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1907. Utilizing water from creeks above Mono Lake had been considered in the planning of the work from the beginning, but fiscal restraints and problems in acquiring land for a storage reservoir necessitated changes in the water system route. With the impetus of a severe drought in Los Angeles in 1930, the Mono Extension was constructed. When it was completed in 1940, the aqueduct extended from Lee Vining Creek above Mono Lake to Van Norman Reservoir in the northeastern San Fernando Valley, bringing the aqueduct route to a total length of 338 miles. As it is presently configured, the route utilizes siphons, tunnels, reservoirs and channels. At the Lee Vining Intake, water is diverted from Lee Vining and smaller creeks flowing from the Sierra Nevada Mountains into the western side of Mono Lake and transported in conduit to Grant Lake Reservoir (capacity 47,400 acre.;feet). Water then flows through the 11.3 mile Mono Craters Tunnel to the upper reaches of the Owens River, where it flows in natural channels to Long Valley Dam, now known as Crowley Lake (183,500 acre-feet). At Crowley Lake the water is stored and its flow regulated into the three Owens Valley Gorge power plants, dropping nearly 2500 feet. Out of the gorge the flow proceeds in the natural channels of the Owens River to the 16,400 acre-feet Tinemaha Reservoir. After leaving Tinemaha Reservoir, the water continues to the original Los Angeles Aqueduct intake, located approximately 35 miles north of the point where the river empties into Owens Lake.