American History Tellers - California Water Wars - Building the Dream | 2

Episode Date: January 29, 2020

By 1907, the city of Los Angeles had found a solution to its water problem. Two hundred miles north in the Owens River Valley was a never-ending source of water. Los Angeles Water Department superintendent William Mulholland set about constructing one of the largest public works projects the state of California has ever seen. But first, he would have to convince the voters of Los Angeles to approve the project. And then, he would have to build it himself. For five years construction crews filed into the desert, building a massive aqueduct system that would ferry the water all the way to the thirsty city. Along the way, Mulholland would encounter problems with bureaucrats, bad food, and dynamite. With the project hurtling towards completion, serious doubts would be raised about graft and self-interest. Was the Los Angeles aqueduct really just about water? Or was it set to make a handful of rich men even richer?Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's late summer 1906. You've arrived in Los Angeles for a meeting with Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times. The receptionist outside his office stands as you step off the elevator. Mr. Hurst, can I bring you some water? No, thank you. I'd like to see Mr. Otis as soon as possible.

Harrison Otis is not the only man in this building who owns a newspaper. You happen to own several, including the Los Angeles Examiner, the Times' direct competition. You rode the train down from San Francisco to visit Otis, a rival, though a much less successful one by your reckoning. The office of Harrison Gray Otis is dimly lit. The heavy curtains have been pulled. Strikes you as a bit dramatic, until you realize the curtains are keeping the heat out of the room. The air whirs gently under a ceiling fan.

Otis cuts right to the chase, speaking from underneath a large, walrus-like mustache. I'd like to know if the Examiner is going to continue proselytizing against our city's aqueduct. We have the bond issue vote coming up, and I would like the city to be of one mind. You'd like the city to vote yes. Well, damn right I would. Every editorial your paper puts out against it does damage to our cause. I'll take it as a compliment that you feel my examiner has such a reach of influence. Oh, hogwash. People only read what they agree with, and we need them to agree with this aqueduct for the future of the city and for the future of your investments. Otis narrows his eyes at you, leaning across the table. That land was bought three years ago, long before we knew about the Owens Valley. Your papers continue to insinuate

that I had some kind of foreknowledge of this deal, that I got a hot tip. My papers are only printing the facts, and the fact is that Potter Ranch is no longer owned by George Potter. It's owned by you. William, I'm not interested in land deals. I'm interested in selling papers just like yourself. I'm interested in the growth of this city and keeping conservative and liberal interests strong together. Your friends at the Chamber of Commerce told me much the same thing this morning.

The bigger the city gets, the more subscribers we'll both have. Subscribers who will be excited to hear about your ambitions for the presidency. Or am I getting ahead of myself? No, Harrison, the presidency is certainly on my mind. Then perhaps we can talk about that at a future date. But right now, I'd only ask that you do me a favor. Drop the examiner's opposition to this project. If we have water, the city will grow, and your circulation with it. You sit back in your chair, glancing up at the ceiling fan. Somewhere underneath that mustache, Otis has a point. After all, William, you might want to move out here yourself someday. Build a little house. The city will not forget which choice you made. Okay, I'll consider it. Excellent. I'll pass the word along.

Otis stands, smiling broadly. While you're in town, I suggest you take a ride on one of our new red cars. If nothing else, the breeze feels delightful through your hair. On your way out of his office, you stop and lean over the receptionist's desk. You know what? I'll take that glass of water now. As the receptionist scurries off, you chuckle to yourself. A little bit of water never hurt anyone, did it? Hey, this is Nick. And this is Jack. And we just launched a brand new podcast called The Best Idea Yet.

You may have heard of it. It's all about the untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. Listen to the best idea yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the hosts of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. By September 1906, Los Angeles was a city divided, driven by a water crisis that threatened its very future. In response, the city had announced a mammoth engineering project to divert an entire river 260 miles south from the Owens River Valley.

After a decade of drought conditions, the city lacked the water to feed a rapidly expanding population, so its engineers would deliver water by force if necessary. But no one could agree on whether such a massive project would work, or whether the water was necessary at all. And the two rival newspapers, locked in a powerful battle for influence, displayed the city's ambivalence on a daily basis. 51-year-old Water Department Superintendent William Mulholland would find himself thrust into the middle of the controversy while simultaneously engineering the aqueduct

himself. He would have to manage a project that crossed vast distances, employed thousands of men, and cost millions of dollars. There would be no room for error. Mulholland, a brilliant engineer who came to Los Angeles from Ireland, had gone from a city municipal officer to an empire builder almost overnight. He would have to balance the perils of men, machine, and water against a city bureaucracy that threatened to derail the entire project. This is Episode 2, Building the Dream. In 1905, the Los Angeles Times announced that construction of a massive aqueduct would begin. Shortly afterward, the city's number two newspaper, the Los Angeles Examiner, published its own bombshell story.

The Examiner reported that Harrison Otis, the Times publisher, was part of what it called a land syndicate. Otis and a handful of other businessmen, acting as the San Fernando Mission Land Company, had pooled their resources and bought the 16,000-acre Porter Ranch for $35 an acre. Tucked in the northwestern corner of the San Fernando Valley,

the Porter Ranch just happened to be the exact location where the diverted water from the aqueduct would arrive. All these men had to do was sit back and wait for the aqueduct to be completed. What was now mostly dry farmland would become fallow, well-irrigated soil, and it would be worth millions of dollars. The Examiner, run by New York publishing titan William Randolph Hearst, used the syndicate to exemplify the greed and double-dealing on the part of Los Angeles. In article after article, the paper detailed how the Owens Valley residents had been swindled and how the aqueduct's construction was a waste of taxpayer money.

The timing for this bad publicity couldn't have been worse. The city was preparing to vote on the sale of $23 million in bonds to fund the aqueduct's construction. The Chamber of Commerce agreed there was no room for this kind of bad press. William Hurst was summoned to Los Angeles to meet with Harrison Otis and the Chamber of Commerce. The group met for an afternoon, and the next day the examiner publicly declared it had changed its mind. It would support the aqueduct's construction after all.

Pitching in to do their own part, William Mulholland and Fred Eaton had set out on a promotional tour of the city. The two former colleagues found themselves delivering lectures to women's clubs, to school children, and to meeting halls filled with working men. Once head of the Water Department, Eaton backed up Mulholland's claims of the necessity of the upcoming vote. Both men armed themselves with blueprints and financial statements at the meetings. Mulholland billed the vote on the bond issue as a matter of life and death. If you don't get the water now, you'll never need it, he was quoted in the Times. The dead never get thirsty. But behind the scene, Mulholland's relationship with his former friend

and colleague was strained. Fred Eaton still wanted to sell the Long Valley Ranch he'd purchased while acting as a Los Angeles land agent, and Mulholland still refused to buy. Eaton's ranch was located squarely in the path of the original plan of the aqueduct. Mulholland still refused to buy. Eaton's ranch was located squarely in the path of the original plan of the aqueduct. Mulholland was outraged when Eaton had bought the land for himself, then turned around and tried to sell it back to the city. Mulholland felt Fred Eaton had let greed get the better of him, and had no interest in rewarding it. He wanted no more charges of graft or self-interest to surround his aqueduct.

There were enough of those already. So even though Long Valley would be the perfect place for a dam site, Mulholland modified his plans. The water would go around it. Still, the two men continued to crisscross the city, waging what Mulholland referred to as his campaign of education. Critics of the project continued their assault, too, citing both the high cost and dubious feasibility.

$24 million of city money was a huge burden on the taxpayer, and Mulholland's ambitious plan for the aqueduct looked unrealistic, even foolhardy to some. But on June 12, 1907, the crucial vote came. The city overwhelmingly voted yes to the bond sale by a ratio of 10 to 1. Debt or no debt, the city was going to have its water. The aqueduct's construction would be informally christened the Owens River Project. Starting just above the town of Independence, the aqueduct's intake point would divert the Owens River from its course, guiding the water into a canal that gradually descended 60 miles past

the Alabama Hills to a reservoir near the town of Haywee. From this reservoir, the water from the Owens River would continue south, using only gravity as it descended in elevation. The water would stream across the Mojave Desert and through Jawbone Canyon, where inverted siphons would roller coaster the water up 850 feet and then swiftly back down again. The water would cross the Antelope Valley in a series of covered conduits, plunging down through a five-mile-long tunnel underneath the San Gabriel Mountains. It would emerge, finally, at the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley, where it would join the course of the already-running Los Angeles River.

In all, there would be 226 miles of canals, conduit and pipeline above ground, and 28 miles of tunnels running below. One federal government engineer suggested that the task seemed as likely as the city of Washington tapping the Ohio River. Addressing this criticism at a municipal league banquet, Mulholland demurred.

The man who has made one brick can make two bricks, he said. That is the bigness of this engineering problem. It is big, but it is simply big. As he often would, Mulholland understated the matter. He knew the scale of the project would be enormous. The line of the aqueduct covered forbidding and desolate terrain. Nearby mountains offered no timber for construction. The valleys offered no trees for shade. The temperature would drop from over 100 degrees during the day to freezing temperatures at night. Estimates suggested one million tons of building material would be needed and a workforce of 6,000 men.

Communication lines would have to be built and power sources would have to be summoned. The workforce would need food, supplies, and shelter. And as for moving those supplies, a stagecoach or saddled horse was the only method of transportation. Any mail sent from Los Angeles to the aqueduct's intake point near Independence would take three to five days. For all these reasons, Mulholland at first had difficulty sourcing contractors. Many of them scoffed at his budget for the city-funded project, declaring it would cost twice as much. But Mulholland needn't have worried. The 1907 financial crisis sent many desperate men looking for work, increasing his workforce pool. By the middle of 1908, he had over 400 men at work on the aqueduct, most of them baking in the scorching sun

of Jawbone Canyon or boring their way through a mountain. Mulholland knew that the way through that mountain, digging out the Elizabeth Tunnel, would be one of the most important and most dangerous aspects of the construction. He hired veteran wet tunnel miner John Gray to begin work as foreman on the north side. Working alongside his son Lewis, John Gray's task was to bore his way 250 feet under the San Gabriel Mountains. Simultaneously, a crew helmed by field engineer W.C. Aston began digging from the south. The two crews would meet in the middle. It was dangerous work, as cave-ins, flooding, and dynamite blast accidents could cause major setbacks. But on the bright side, it was a steady 58 degrees in the tunnels, a respite from the extreme fluctuations of heat and cold

that greeted the miners once they returned to the surface. At first, work proceeded at an agonizingly slow pace, but Mulholland soon instituted a bonus system for the two crews. Whichever crew tunneled more than eight feet per day would receive an extra 40 cents per foot per man. The work was punishing, but the extra money was irresistible. Mulholland continued to corral his construction team and make on-the-spot decisions and improvements across all the divisions of the aqueduct line,

trying to balance cost with speed. Because even with the deadline over five years away, he was already running out of time. Imagine you are a young photographer contracted by the Benjamin Holt Machine Company to document the construction of the aqueduct. This morning you rose early and made your way from the camp down to the south portal entrance of the Elizabeth Lake Tunnel. You watch a boxy, steam-powered machine hauling huge beams of wood across the ground. It looks like a small locomotive with a kind of metal rubber band encircling its back wheels. You're just beginning to set up your camera's legs when a Holt representative approaches you excitedly.

Good morning. Need any help with that? Not at all. Just about ready. You pull out a photographic plate and slide it into your camera's box. That's just fine. Have you had a chance to go over the specification sheets we sent you? Absolutely. I read them on the train. Actually, you flipped through the spec sheets on the details of the Holtz company new traction machine. They're already calling it a tractor, but the memos were pretty bland. Maybe you could explain a little while I take some photographs. Of course. Well, as you can see, our machine solves the problem of mud and loose gravel.

Large wheels wouldn't do the trick. They'd just get stuck. So here, we spread the weight across a continuous steel tread that encircles the wheels. The steel tread has no beginning and no end. It just loops and loops and loops. The whole company man prattles on, and you're starting to wonder if he just loops and loops. But you keep your opinions to yourself and slide another plate into your camera. This machine is going to single-handedly build this tunnel, while Holland himself contracted 28 of them.

As the tractor crawls across the ground, it slowly approaches a steep hillside and steams its way up the hill. You can't help but be impressed. That's climbing almost what? A 45-degree angle. Yep. We're very proud of it. The thing moves a little like a caterpillar. Caterpillar?

I believe you're right. Uh-oh, that doesn't sound good. Why is it stopping? The operator must need to make an adjustment. The man operating the caterpillar machine climbs out of his seat, cursing up a storm. He doesn't look happy. Oh, well, I think you can stop taking pictures now. You're about to toss the cover back on your lens when you notice the mule team on the other side of the hill.

There are about 50 of them by your count, all lashed to a large platform on wheels. It looks like the mules are getting along just fine. They're carrying a large section of steel pipe up the gradual incline. It's slow business, but it seems to be working. I can get a photo of that if you'd like. The Holt representative frowns. Oh, that's not waste of film. Those aren't company animals. You shrug. The Holt caterpillar machine is definitely a modern marvel, but it looks as though right now it's beat by a bunch of asses. The Holt Company's new caterpillars continued to work near the Elizabeth and Jawbone divisions, but repeated machine failures eventually forced the project to rely on more traditional

methods of hauling heavy steel, pipe, and lumber. It caused a bit of a stir because back in the city, the Board of Public Works was shocked to discover an order for 1,000 tons of hay to feed 200 mules that were also being purchased. The order was processed, and within the year, over 400 mules would be doing the work that no machine could. The problem was how to move the massive sections of steel siphon to their various positions along the aqueduct line. Each section of pipe was 8 feet wide and 36 feet long, weighing around 26 tons. But Mulholland's chief engineer designed a homespun solution.

Teams of 52 mules were attached to a pair of massive flatbed wagons rolling on two-foot-wide steel wheels. Driven by experienced mule skinners, the team proved more than agreeable to the arduous task of carting the equipment through the desert landscape. By the end of 1908, more than 1,000 men and animals were at work on the aqueduct. The Southern Pacific Railroad was nearly finished, with a new line into the Owens Valley that could expedite men and equipment from the city.

Mulholland had created nothing less than an army, mobilized across the desert, with makeshift camp towns springing up all along the aqueduct construction line. These men needed to be fed, sheltered, and in many cases hospitalized. With so many moving parts and more men joining the workforce every day, while Holland was a general marshalling an army, the last thing he needed was a mutiny. Are you in trouble with the law? Need a lawyer who will fight like hell to keep you out of jail? We defend and we fight just like you'd want your own children defended.

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In 1909, Mulholland presented an update on the aqueduct's progress to an audience of Board of Public Works members and curious citizens. Work was proceeding smoothly. The Jawbone Division near the Mojave Desert would be completed the following year. In the tunnel near Elizabeth Lake, crews dug towards each other at a record-setting rate of 660 feet per month. Alongside the new Southern Pacific Rail Line, the city had built three hydroelectric plants. These plants provided energy for over 160 miles of electric shovels, compressors, fans, and dredges. Over 200 miles of road had been cleared, and a copper wire telephone system stretched from central headquarters in Los Angeles to

every camp along the line, all the way up to the aqueduct's intake point near the town of Independence. The city was producing its own cement, too, from a plant just built near Bakersfield. It was, in sum, one of the largest public work projects ever attempted by any city. Yet in addition to engineering the aqueduct, Mulholland was still overseeing the water supply for the city. The water department was servicing over 60,000 customers with around 300 new accounts added each month. His system of water meters had brought both savings to the customer and a dip in consumption. Still, the population was currently using 45 million gallons of water per day, up from 23 million nearly a decade ago. The city was still desperate for water, and the completion of the aqueduct would be vital. As the meeting was wrapping up, the chairman of the Board of Public Works had one last question. With all the project

startup costs, the city had already spent $8 million of its $24 million budget, yet only 900 feet of aqueduct had actually been built. According to the chairman's calculations, Mulholland was over budget by about $3,000 per foot. Mulholland paused to consider the numbers. Well, by this time next year, he said, I'll have 50 miles completed at the cost of under $30 a foot, if you'll just let me alone. The room dissolved into laughter and applause at Mulholland's cheek. Go ahead then, Bill, the chairman told him. We're not mad about it. Dr. Raymond Taylor had been working as a superintendent at the Los Angeles County Hospital when he received word from the Board of Public Works. The board wanted him to oversee the care of thousands of men up and down the aqueduct line.

Taylor, just a few years younger than Mulholland, had already seen much of what life had to offer, but he was up for another adventure. So he acquired a small staff and began setting up nine field hospitals along the line with medical stewards at each large camp. Ailments were treated on-site, while severely injured workers had to be transported all the way back to Los Angeles. The payroll list for 1909 reported 3,200 positions on the line, but over 7,000 names. Many of these workers were short stakers, or men who drifted through, took work, and then drifted somewhere else. Taylor could not fail to notice the prevailing conditions among these working men who stuck around.

They labored over 12 hours a day, slept two to a room, and spent their money as fast as they earned it. On paydays, the dusty boomtown of Mojave, situated near the middle of the aqueduct line, found its saloons, gambling joints, and whorehouses filled with men eager to let loose. One foreman complained to Dr. Taylor that he was constantly rotating through one crew drunk, one crew sobering up, and one crew working. It was understood, though not repeated in the Los Angeles newspapers, that whiskey, as much as anything else, was fueling the aqueduct's construction. So the Board of Public Works moved to prohibit saloons within four miles of the aqueduct line,

though this only served to push those establishments back exactly four miles. As with their drinking habits, workers could be just as obstinate about their physical health. When men started coming to him with open, infected sores on their hands, Taylor gave a diagnosis of impetigo. Realizing the infection could be rapidly transmitted when men with infected hands shared shovels, Taylor ordered all men with infections to report immediately for treatment. But no one came. Taylor wrote later,

this was hard to put across. The ordinary hard rock miner is resistant to anything whatever that seems to look like an order, especially from someone they figured didn't know a pickaxe from a shovel. So Taylor tried a different approach, convincing the toughest, meanest men in each camp to spread the word themselves. Eventually, this worked, as the infected men grudgingly listened to the advice from men they respected, rather than orders from a distant, know-nothing physician. Dr. Taylor and his medical department was one of the few independent contracts the city had given out. Another, though, would be placed in the hands of 32-year-old Joe Desmond, who would become the camp chef. More of a promoter than anything else, Desmond had little experience in cooking, let alone running a commissary department of this kind of scale. But he was heir to the

wealthy Desmond's retail family and wanted to prove his own business acumen to the larger world. After helping organize soup kitchens that fed over 600 people in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, Desmond won his contract for the Board of Public Works in Los Angeles. He enthusiastically began setting up mess halls all across the aqueduct line. Each mess hall had a canteen where workers could spend their paychecks on cigarettes, clothing, and other items. Oblivious to any class resentment that existed along the hardscrabble workers he was feeding, Desmond traveled with a chauffeur, jaunting from camp to camp in a jet black Mitchell limousine. Workers were charged 25 cents for each meal, but opinions on the meals

themselves varied. The Times reported that the aqueduct workers gorged on three squares a day, fit for kings of the realm. But a sign posted over one mess hall spoke to a deeper truth. Don't make fun of the butter, it read. You'll be old and smelly yourself someday. Imagine you're a cook at the Cinco Camp mess hall. For the past weeks, every evening's been the same. Men come in from their shifts and take their food and complain. You keep your chin up and try and joke your way through their complaints night after night, but it's getting hard. What color is the meat you're serving?

Our finest vintage, as always. It's gray, son. The meat is gray as steel. I can't do anything about it. You could try keeping it in an icebox. One especially boisterous miner, Samuels, you know his name by now, takes his plate in silence,

then tips his tray sideways, letting his dinner slide to the floor. I'm tired of this embalmed beef and this piss-bitter coffee you're serving. And I'm not the only one. You know we're doing the best we can. But we're paying for the food. And every day we're down in the mines, and then we come up to be insulted like this? The least this could be is edible.

I've had enough of this garbage. What about the rest of you? The men around him are nodding furiously. Then another voice calls out from the back of the room. Can it, Samuels? I'm tired of hearing you run your mouth. Then something whizzes over your head. It's an apple. Samuels turns furiously. Who threw that? You aren't waiting to find out. You dive under the counter as mayhem erupts in the canteen. Peering around the edge of the counter, you see food flying in every direction. Small fistfights have broken out as the men begin settling old scores that have nothing to do with supper. You push through the door, diving outside into the dirt. That's when you notice the limousine.

It belongs to your boss, Joe Desmond. He's just getting out of the back seat when you rush towards him and jump inside. There's a riot in the canteen, sir. Oh God, not again. I would not stick around, Mr. Desmond. We should get out of here. At just that moment, Samuels and two other men burst out of the canteen. God dang, that's him. Him in his limo. Hughes shut the door. Drive! Drive! Joe Desmond and his cook escaped,

but mess hall rioting would continue up and down the line. Desmond's commissary department had its hands tied. Refrigeration was still in its earliest stages. The extreme desert temperatures melted the ice, and meat would often spoil, even when Desmond took to transporting it at night, long after the sun had gone down. Desmond's limousine driver would later write, Maybe the meals didn't suit everybody, but they were always the best he could do. If you ever want to try to feed fresh meat to 5,000 men in the desert

with the temperatures from 100 up and no refrigeration, men scattered over 200 miles, you just go ahead. Despite persistent complaints about the food, work still progressed up and down the line. Mulholland's system of bonuses had invigorated the workers, and in December of 1909, he happily announced that the aqueduct project would be finished in the summer of 1912, one year ahead of schedule. But the new decade would bring problems even the engineer Mulholland could not have foreseen.

Problems that would threaten to derail his entire operation. This is the emergency broadcast system. A ballistic missile threat has been detected inbound to your area. Your phone buzzes and you look down to find this alert. What do you do next? Maybe you're at the grocery store. Or maybe you're with your secret lover. Or maybe you're robbing a bank.

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how would you spend your last few minutes on Earth? You can binge Incoming exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for people's

murders. This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those who lives were in danger. And it turns out convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy. Follow Kill List on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening. By May of 1910, work on the Los Angeles Aqueduct was proceeding at breakneck speed. As the summer heat in the valley rose to record-breaking levels, word reached Mulholland's office that there was a problem. His men had been working too fast.

Because Mulholland's estimates now showed that the aqueduct would be done a year earlier than anticipated, the city had outpaced its ability to sell the bonds needed to fund the project. Mulholland had run out of money. In the three years since Los Angeles had voted for the bond sale, portions of those bonds were sold on a set schedule by a group of New York investment bankers. But the market for bond sales had slowed drastically. Now those bankers thought it would be impossible to suddenly make up the difference. Their message was essentially tough luck. Even though they'd had no problems making advanced sales the year before, this year was a different story. There wouldn't be any more money coming in. And the bankers just shrugged. The city would have to wait. In May 1910, Mulholland was

forced to abruptly lay off 2,700 men, three-quarters of his labor force. Work up and down the aqueduct shuddered to a halt. But there might have been a bright side, as far as Mulholland could see. The work stoppage also helped dampen a small labor strike that had been simmering. Earlier in the spring, demands for a pay raise by the Western Federation of Miners had led to a walkout of workers in the Elizabeth Tunnel. But after the May layoffs, it was difficult for the miners to get much traction for their demands. Many potential strikers had already drifted away to Arizona or Colorado in pursuit of more work. The Union had perhaps picked a bad time to strike.

Still, patrolmen from Los Angeles were quickly dispatched to guard the Elizabeth Tunnel's powder and dynamite stores. This was not an overreaction, as labor agitation in the city was also reaching a fever pitch. Job Harriman, the socialist candidate for mayor, had built a campaign on condemning the graft and monopolization he claimed was part and parcel of the Owens River project. The aqueduct was poorly designed, he told his supporters, and totally unnecessary. Harriman was a 50-year-old former minister who'd come to view organized religion as a trap. He saw the same kind of folly in the building of the aqueduct. He believed the present water supply of the Los Angeles River was more than enough to meet the needs of the city.

Furthermore, all those rumors of drought were started merely to fill the pockets of a few city businessmen. It was all a gigantic swindle set to enrich a few and pauper the masses. But it was the masses that funded the project, and its aim was solely to supply the entire city with water. But those facts didn't stop Harriman's anti-aqueduct views from gaining traction. After all, San Fernando land purchases had unquestionably made Harrison Otis and other city boosters very rich men. These clashes over the aqueduct and the upcoming election season put the city on edge. Then, in the early hours of October 1, 1910, an explosion of dynamite

destroyed the Los Angeles Times building, killing 21 people and injuring more than 100. Confusion reigned as to who could have been behind the blast, but the majority of fingers pointed at labor unions and their sympathizers. The Times and its publisher Harrison Otis had always been virulently anti-labor, but the unions themselves condemned the bombing. Still, when two brothers and union organizers, James and John McNamara, were arrested in faraway Detroit and quickly hustled back to Los Angeles, Job Harriman smelled a setup.

Many on the left came to believe that Otis and his cohorts had framed the two men. Some said that Otis had gone so far as to have the explosion set himself, all to discredit the union movement in Los Angeles. The McNamara brothers were held in jail while the investigation against them moved ahead. Harriman rallied to their support, and the case continued to inflame the elections. Harrison Otis, his Los Angeles Times, and the Los Angeles Aqueduct, what many had begun calling his aqueduct since the Porter Ranch scheme, had become intractable symbols of the city's corruption from within. Just before Christmas, the city resolved to buy half a million dollars of its own bonds, freeing up cash flow so that work could begin again.

Mulholland couldn't have asked for a better holiday gift. Calling the suspension of work a very expensive experience, he reluctantly admitted the aqueduct's completion date would have to be pushed back a year to 1913. The bureaucratic elements of construction, elements that Mulholland initially shrugged off in 1905, were beginning to weigh down on him. With only about 50 miles of construction left, the project was over 80% complete, but there was no doubt this last push would be the hardest. After a tough year, Mulholland was ready to finally receive some good news.

Imagine you're a miner, working for John Gray's crew on the north portal of the Elizabeth Tunnel. It's around noon, though you wouldn't know it in the darkness deep underground. Excitement has been growing throughout the morning, ever since word went out that only seven feet separate your crew of the north portal from Foreman Aston's crew on the south portal. You climb out of the mining car next to your foreman, Mr. Gray. He nods at the wall of rock ahead. Who do you think is going to make it through first? Better be us. There are bonuses to be had to the men who make it through. Well, the rock should be loose enough now.

We've just about lit the whole place up with dynamite. You join the men cleaning away the shattered pieces of rock. It's freezing cold and water nearly waist-deep. Engines rattle, pumping water to the surface. Hey, hey, the candle's moving. You rush over to see for yourself. Since this morning, a row of candles have been set up along the edge of the granite wall. Come on, back up, back up, don't breathe on it.

Everyone gathered around holds their breath, but the candle still flutters. That's it, boys, we've got some airflow. You reach to grab a pickaxe, but before you can... Watch out, boys. Watch out. A single air-powered drill bit breaks through the surface of the wall and it all comes crashing down. As the dust begins to settle, you make out two flickering candles moving toward each other in the darkness. Is that Aston? It is. Is that Gray? I can see your nose. Can you see mine? I can see it just fine.

Good work, Mr. Gray. With more light, you can see that a hole 21 feet high has opened. You're all filthy and cold, but there's a wide smile on every face as men from both crews shake hands and slap each other on the back. Good work, Mr. Aston. We've done it, haven't we? Finishing the Elizabeth Tunnel was a moment for jubilation. Work had gone on day and night for four and a half years as men, drills, and dynamite tunneled through just over five miles of granite.

Mulholland gave all the credit to his foreman, John Gray and W.C. Aston. They'd come in a year early and a half a million dollars under budget. But despite the victories in the tunnels, animosity towards the aqueduct rose to a fever pitch as the city moved toward the mayoral election of November 1911. Positions for and against the aqueduct became the main focus of the campaign of both Job Harriman and incumbent mayor George Alexander. That month, an exasperated Mulholland spoke before a city women's club luncheon. Never mind that the aqueduct's construction was nearly finished, he'd had enough of political distortion and flat-out untruths being shoveled into the public conversation. 80% of the project was complete. The other 20%, he said, will be built

with the other 20% of the money. The aqueduct, he asserted, was neither about graft nor land speculation. He told the women's club, some say it must not be sold to the San Fernando Valley because a syndicate owns a lot of land. Well, if you sell it to Cahuenga or the Redondo region, you will find that the land there is owned by somebody. In fact, anywhere you put it, someone owns the land. And as for the cries of conspiracy and corruption behind the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, events took a turn. That November, after nearly a year proclaiming their innocence, the McNamara brothers suddenly changed their pleas to guilty. It was a stunning reversal, and even more

stunning for Harriman and the Socialist Party, who'd supported the brothers while they languished in prison. As a consequence, support for Harriman's mayoral bid was extinguished, and the Socialist Party suffered a defeat from which it would never recover. Who could rally behind a political party that supported murderers and terrorists? Still, even after the election, shouts and speculation continued to trail the aqueduct project. By 1912, Mulholland had reached the absolute limits of his patience. Fed up, he sent a letter to the Board of Public Works. A committee should be created to research the building and construction of the aqueduct,

he suggested. The committee should investigate the physical aspects of the work, alongside field administration issues and any other aspects of their choosing. The citizens of Los Angeles, he wrote, could judge for themselves the true conditions of this work and whether it has been carried on in a proper manner. Mulholland's brash honesty was getting the better of him. He was proud of what he'd built.

He felt he had nothing to hide. And if the people of Los Angeles wanted to know what was what, Mulholland would throw open the doors and let them have a look. But over the next year, as the aqueduct hurtled towards completion, he would discover that perhaps he'd been too bold, too upfront. He'd wanted to throw the doors open, but he was about to learn that some doors were better left closed. On the next episode of American History Tellers, the investigation

into the aqueduct threatens to tear down the legacy of the project, and the land syndicate and hints of corruption become interlaced with the founding of the 20th century city. Meanwhile, Owens River Valley residents begin to fight back to regain control of their water. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by George Ducker, Edited by Dorian Marina. Edited and produced by Jenny Lauer Beckman. Our executive producer is Marshall Louis. Created by Hernán López for Wondery. I'm Tristan Redmond, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts.

But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up, I started wondering about the inexplicable things that happened in my childhood bedroom. When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me, someone I'd never met, was visited by the ghost of a faceless woman. So I started digging into the murder in my wife's family, and I unearthed family secrets nobody could have imagined. Ghost Story won Best Documentary Podcast at the 2024 Ambees and is a Best True Crime nominee at the British Podcast Awards 2024. Ghost Story is now the first ever Apple Podcast series essential. Each month, Apple Podcast editors spotlight one

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