American History Tellers - California Water Wars - “There It Is—Take It” | 3

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

By 1912, the Los Angeles aqueduct project was nearing completion. But as it approached the finish line, fears were growing among the public of a vast conspiracy, fanned by socialist Job Harriman. With the formation of the Aqueduct Investigation Board, engineer William Mulholland found his methods and his purpose suddenly under a microscope. Land deals from nearly a decade ago would threaten to derail the entire project, just a year shy of its completion.As the roaring Twenties loomed, Los Angeles would grow exponentially. But far north, in Inyo County, the ranchers whose water had been taken from them were gearing up for the first of many retaliations.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 1912 and you're riding a streetcar through the crowded streets of Los Angeles. You're a printer by trade, and you've just left your office, one of the few shops in Los Angeles that still follows union practices. It's getting near impossible to keep a job in this city, and the union is all you've got. But with every day that goes by, the powers of the city's capitalists get stronger and stronger. Olive Avenue.

You climb down the steps from the streetcar and hurry to the home of your friend Job, Job Harriman. He's been depressed since his failed mayoral campaign, but you've found something that might rally his spirits. Job doesn't keep his door locked. A small sign next to it reads, Property is theft. Come on in. So you walk straight into his small house without knocking.

Who is it? It's me. Listen, I want you to take a look at something. Job? You take in the sad state of Job's house. Coffee cups and old campaign flyers are scattered everywhere. Hand-scrawled notes and newspaper clippings have been pinned to a wall. Two cats jump off the dining room table. The place is a mess.

I'm in here! You find him lying on the rug, tossing a rubber ball at the wall and catching it. Looks like he hasn't slept for days. Listen, a friend at work passed this book onto me. Thought you might be interested. Joe picks himself up from the floor and takes the slim, hardbound book you hand him.

He flips through the pages. The Conspiracy by W.T. Spillman. This is everything you were talking about in your mayoral campaign. This fella has gone through and laid out a very good case, both against the Aqueduct and against Harrison Otis and the land speculators. I've never heard of Spillman. I haven't either, but copies are spreading all over the city. Fully sitting up

now, Job leafs through the pages. Yeah, this is incredible. It's just like you were saying in the campaign. Mulholland and his aqueduct are both rotten to the core. When the people of Los Angeles discover the graft and self-interest right under their nose, they'll have no choice but to condemn the entire project and shut it down permanently. Do you think we can get more copies of this book printed? I can try. Job climbs up from the floor and walks towards the wall to study his pinned news clippings. Suddenly, he's filled with a burst of energy. You'll have to do better than try.

The investigation board hearings are in less than a month. Use your connections at the printers. Start handing out free copies of this book. We need to send it to every newspaper. I can go to the meeting hall this evening, see if anyone's available. Seeing Job excited makes you excited. You start clearing off space on the dining room table. Progress should be for the people. Water should be for the people, not just the fat cats at City Hall and the Water Department. And Job's right. There's no time to waste. The investigation board

is coming up, and Job will be there to put their feet to waste. The investigation board is coming up, and Job will be there to put their feet to the fire. When it's all over, you, Job, and the rest of the workers will help bring Mulholland and his corrupt gang to their knees. From Wondery comes a new series about a lawyer who broke all the rules. Need to launder some money? Broker a deal with a drug cartel, take out a witness. Paul can do it. I'm your host, Brandon Jinks Jenkins.

Follow criminal attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. By the middle of 1912, the Los Angeles Aqueduct was at a crossroads.

Construction was nearly complete. A long finger of steel tunnels and conduit stretched in a nearly unbroken line for 200 miles from the small town of Independence in Inyo County all the way south to Los Angeles. Engineer William Mulholland's self-imposed deadline of mid-1913 seemed very much within his grasp. Still, there were those who doubted the intentions of the engineer, and of the entire project itself. Mulholland would find his work buried under an avalanche of criticism and the focus of an investigation backed by the city. And even as the waters of the Owens River finally flowed into a parched Los

Angeles, doubts would trail the idealism surrounding the aqueduct and Mulholland's part in its creation. This is episode three. There it is. Take it. In the spring of 1912, Job Harriman suddenly found himself a popular man. Fresh off a stinging loss as the socialist mayoral candidate in the previous year's race, Harriman continued his call for an investigation into the construction of the aqueduct. The entire project, he declared, had been theft from the beginning, and his charges began to gain traction among a wary public. He went so far as to publish a pamphlet in which he laid out the details of what he called a water plot. Many of these were cribbed from a book by W.T. Spillman

called The Conspiracy, which went to great lengths to prove the city's new water source was less about civic interest and more about personal profiteering. Like all good conspiracies, Spillman's mixed fact and conjecture until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. The plan, he wrote, involved gobbling up all the available lands in the San Fernando Valley while securing Owens Valley water to irrigate them. He named William Mulholland and former Los Angeles mayor Fred Eaton

as complicit in the plot. Other alleged co-conspirators included LA Times publisher Harrison Otis, along with Otis' son-in-law Harry Chandler and streetcar magnate Moses Sherman. Harriman argued all these men stood to profit handsomely while Los Angeles taxpayers footed the bill. Some newspapers began to wonder if they had also been duped. The aqueduct was the largest public works project the city had ever attempted. It seemed impossible that there wasn't a nasty

secret lurking somewhere underneath it. To combat the swirling rumors, Mulholland recommended the creation of an aqueduct investigation board. It would be made up of five members from the city's various political parties, and Job Harriman, the former socialist candidate for mayor who was now hammering the aqueduct for waste and corruption, would lead it. Mulholland felt he had nothing to hide. If this board wouldn't put an end to the matter he reasoned, then at least it would be a good act of faith. The Aqueduct Investigation Board hired detectives to comb through the project's expense reports and budget sheets. It interviewed site foremen and made structural integrity assessments at the dams

and reservoir sites up and down the aqueduct line. Over several aggravating months, Mulholland dashed from the desert job sites to a stuffy chamber room in the city to answer questions from the investigation board. The affair quickly turned into a political wrestling match. The board, humorless and often snide, interrogated Mulholland with questions designed to trip him up. When asked about the percentage of runoff for all the watersheds above 2,500 feet, Mulholland with questions designed to trip him up. When asked about the percentage of runoff for all the watersheds above 2,500 feet, Mulholland barked, What kind of memory do you think I have?

The board member retorted that he's been making a study of these things for years, and yet Mulholland can't answer that question? Mulholland retorted that the board member had been studying law for years, but he couldn't give a citation without going to a book and looking for it. For every statistic Mulholland presented, based on decades of research, all for years, but he couldn't give a citation without going to a book and looking for it. For every statistic Mulholland presented, based on decades of research, the board presented a hand-picked witness to refute it. The proceedings led more than one spectator to dismiss the whole affair as a kangaroo court. Mulholland was feeling strained, not just by the board. There were several tragic episodes along the aqueduct as well. In July, a dynamite explosion caved in the roof of the Clearwater Tunnel in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Three men were killed and four others badly injured, had to dig their way up to the surface to live. Mulholland arrived at the scene to find John Gray, his old foreman from the Elizabeth Tunnel, wracked with grief. Gray was the superintendent of Clearwater, and his son Lewis was one of the injured men who'd crawled their way out of the darkness. More violence followed a month later when two workers nearly killed each other while fighting with miners' picks. Not long after that,

three workers near Mojave were coating the inside of the pipeline with a sealant of oil paint. While trying to light a pipe or a cigarette, one of them struck a match. The fumes ignited, killing all three men instantly. In all, 43 men were killed in accidents related to the aqueduct's construction. Mulholland could take some comfort that fatalities were much lower than at the Panama Canal or at the Catskill Aqueduct in New York, but it was cold comfort at best. Mulholland could take comfort that the efforts of Job Harriman and the investigation board were finally dwindling away.

Two of the five board members quit in protest. In a letter of resignation, they wrote that they'd heard quite enough to come to their own conclusion. There has not been brought to our attention

one particle of evidence that would reflect in any way upon the integrity of management of the aqueduct proposition from its inception to the present time. In short, the two resigning members integrity of management of the aqueduct proposition from its inception to the present time. In short, the two resigning members had had enough of the sniping. Harriman, however, had not.

His inquisition struggled on for a few months, but by then the public had lost interest. To many, it had become clear that the investigation board was a political mudslinging operation. And besides, the aqueduct itself was nearly complete. The board had uncovered no conspiracy big enough or nasty enough to stop the Owens River water from flowing into Los Angeles the following year. Nonetheless, the board did announce its findings. Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, the board declared that the Los Angeles watershed could,

even without the aqueduct, support three times the city's current population. It noted that the Owens River water was contaminated by high levels of alkaline and unfit for drinking purposes. And finally, that the general lack of supervision during the pipeline's construction had resulted in immense financial loss to the taxpayer. However, the report regretfully concluded, it could find no direct evidence of graft or illegality. An exasperated Mulholland was relieved to put the whole mess behind him.

He privately worried that by creating the review board, he may have, in fact, opened a Pandora's box of conspiracy and criticism. But since the board didn't have the power to enforce its findings, he declared the matter closed. Still, he couldn't resist taking one last parting shot of his own. Mulholland told a reporter, The concrete of the aqueduct will last as long as the pyramids of Egypt or the Parthenon of Athens. I will tell you that the aqueduct will at least endure until Job Harriman is elected mayor of the city of Los Angeles. His quote appeared on the front page of every newspaper in California. And by the summer of 1913, the last miles of the Los Angeles Aqueduct

were about to be complete. Mulholland finally was ready to finish what he'd started. Imagine it's November 5th, 1913, the day of the Aqueduct's grand opening. You wanted to see it for yourself, so you enlisted your grandson to drive you up from your home in Boyle Heights. At 83, you've seen most of everything, but the crowds leading up to the cascade point are something to behold. And as for the aqueduct itself, it's marvelous.

Like a staircase cascading down from the top of the hill, where a large gate stands at the crest. Men from the city are standing at a podium, giving speeches. And then... With the crack of a 21-gun salute, the gates open and water spills down the causeway. It's beautiful to watch, white and frothy and rushing down the hill so fast. You remember how it used to be, how water was always hard to come by. The city has been your home ever since you were little. Your husband is buried here. Your daughter married a banker and

started her own family here. This water is a gift for all of them, for their future, and even your grandson, who right now is peering over the edge. Gotta say, Grandma, this is impressive. Oh gosh, darn it. Leaning over to look down, your grandson's hat fell right off the top of his head. You can see it now, flat and soaking wet, following the top of the waterline down the spillway. Yeah, just might luck, isn't it? That's when a voice from behind startles the both of you. I see gravity got the better part of your Stetson. William Mulholland himself is standing next to both of you, peering over the ledge.

Don't worry, you'll find your hat at the bottom dam in about seven minutes. You serious? Well, the water's moving about 300 feet per minute. Seven minutes seems about right. Maybe we can have one of our men fish it out. The grandson thanks him and hurries down the hill after his hat. But you stay, looking up into the man's eyes. He's taller than you recall.

You only ever saw him from a distance. You used to be neighbors many years ago. Your grandson and his children used to play together in Hollenbeck Park. Do you remember Boyle Heights, Mr. Mulholland? He looks at you, expecting you to perhaps say something more. Yes, of course I do. It was a wonderful place for my family. Hope you feel the same.

A smile begins to form on his face. I do. I'm glad it was for you too. Perhaps he recognizes you from all those years ago, perhaps not. But in that moment, you're just two people sharing a memory of the city they love while a torrent of fresh water streams nearby. Enough water, you hope, to keep the city growing long after you're both gone. The grand celebration of the aqueduct's opening continued throughout the day and into the night. Pressed to say something at the moment the gates were opened, Mulholland kept his thoughts succinct. He turned to the mayor and the 30,000 spectators who gathered to watch and tried to make his voice heard over the water rushing down the spillway. There it is, he said. Take it. At a boozy banquet following the Cascade ceremony, Mulholland was more verbose as he raised a toast to the city officials.

Failure cannot come to anything that Southern California undertakes with such citizens. What Mulholland had termed the big job was finished. Los Angeles had its water, and perhaps just as appealing to the civic might of Mulholland, the entire six-year project had come in at the original budget of $24 million. What was more, estimates showed that revenues from the cement and power generation plants that were built during construction, along with the sale of surplus equipment, would return about $3 million to the city. Mulholland kept his glass raised at the men around him, then continued with his toast. We are undoubtedly a people doomed to success. One guest, though, was conspicuously not present

for the celebrations. Fred Eaton, whose idea had sparked the whole affair, declined the invitation, saying that heavy rains prevented him from traveling. Mulholland still gave credit to his friend and former co-worker at the water department. I am sorry that the man whom I consider the father of the aqueduct is not here, former Mayor Eaton. To him, all the honor is due. He planned it. We simply put together the bricks and the mortar. But Eaton himself couldn't have cared less about the tributes. He'd made good on his promise to stay on his Long Valley ranch and raise cattle. But that didn't stop him from criticizing the project from afar. Eaton had taken a position as chairman of a water dish owner's group in the nearby town of Big Pine. While the aqueduct was being built, he'd ingratiated himself into the tight-knit community of valley farmers,

who gradually accepted him as one of their own. Eaton took to the ranching life, forming Eaton Land and Cattle Company to sell the chickens and steers he was raising. But pleasant his life away from the city was, Eaton was still playing the long game. He knew that the property his cattle grazed was worth much more to Los Angeles as a future dam site. He would wait, betting that eventually the city would be back, and they would be desperate for more water. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still have heard it.

It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus 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 whose 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. With the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, 58-year-old William Mulholland became a household name. A writer from American Magazine arrived to get quotes about water and was surprised to find a garrulous Irish engineer ready to discuss all kinds of matters other than the aqueduct. Mulholland held forth on everything from etymology to baseball to the talents of a French stage actress, Sarah Bernhardt.

The writer proclaimed Mulholland was a man with a mind remarkable for its breadth and wit. When pressed about his feelings towards his work on the aqueduct, Mulholland responded with a typical folksy quip. A man's worth is measured by his importance to society and to humanity generally. I never wanted to be wealthy. All I did want was work.

But by any estimation, Mulholland had become a wealthy man. His position as superintendent of the water department was paying him $10,000 a year, or $250,000 in today's dollars. And in 1912, he would purchase lands for his son Perry in the San Fernando Valley that would turn out to be worth far more than he paid for them. Yet he was careless and impulsive with his money. Known for sending extravagant gifts to friends, family, and associates, he would also often fail to deposit his own paychecks in the bank. But the man who delivered water from the desert to Los Angeles

maintained admiration and respect in the city, even if he was never seen without a cigar or a glass of whiskey. A group of businessmen approached Mulholland and asked him how he felt about running for mayor. The newspapers and the Chamber of Commerce would throw their support behind him, they said. He couldn't lose. Gentlemen, he replied,

I'd rather give birth to a porcupine backwards. Mulholland disdained spending time in political circles, nor did he care for the wining and dining socials favored by men with political ambitions. And besides, his current salary paid more than the mayor's did. But the engineer stayed loyal to the city he had called home since 1877, living in a house with his daughter Ruth on South St. Andrew Street. Seeing a for-sale sign on the roomy Victorian years before, Mulholland had wandered inside and surprised the real estate agent with an offer to buy it on the spot. He offered one caveat, though.

Mulholland wandered the narrow, circular staircase rebuilt straight. Always concerned with spatial dimensions, he patiently explained to the flustered salesman that he had planned to live in the new home until he died, and when he did, they would have a hard time getting his six-foot-tall body down that narrow, circular staircase. Considerations of death were no exaggeration on his part. His wife Lily had passed away in 1915 after a long illness. When the waters had first rushed down the Cascades that summery day in September, Lily had been too ill to attend. His children were all grown up and living their own complicated lives. Now, after his wife's death, Mulholland turned inwards, keeping long hours at his office, looking for the next big project to keep him busy.

With the flowing waters of the Owens River to sustain it, Los Angeles grew at a staggering rate over the next decade. Mulholland had done his part to engineer this growth, but other promoters, or boosters, helped spur the expansion. Harry Chandler, son-in-law of Harrison Otis, took over the management of the Los Angeles Times. He used the paper's position to tout the glories of the city to the rest of the nation. Chandler had gone from a young man delivering newspapers for the Times to running it himself. And of course, marrying Otis's daughter Marion hadn't hurt his ambitions. With his earnings from the Times, Chandler also began quiet land speculation throughout the county, developing properties in far-flung reaches of the San Fernando Valley. Chandler's ads, boasting permanently sunny weather, began appearing in East Coast

and Midwest newspapers, usually right around January, when those cities were at their coldest. He figured, who wouldn't want to pack up and leave New York or Chicago or Indianapolis when the promise of cheap land, good wages, and plenty of water was just a train ride away? With fellow land developer H.J. Whitley, Chandler helped form an alliance of businessmen that led a push to annex the San Fernando Valley, finally making the vast suburb a part of the city of Los Angeles. Real estate developments shot up in districts called La Brea and Hollywood and neighborhoods that carried the wealthy businessmen's names like Whitley Heights. A vast boulevard was named Sherman Way on behalf of Moses Sherman, whose red electric

streetcar lines stretched from one end of the county to the other. Like Chandler, Moses Sherman had seen the promise on the edges of a small desert city. Using capital from his railroad investments, Sherman built a transportation system that helped urbanize and connect the sprawling tracks of farmland. Many of the far-flung locations on his streetcar lines became neighborhoods for citizens who'd settled down on properties developed by Harry Chandler. All these men turned a handy profit from the city's water acquisition. Indeed, Sherman had been on the original board of the Water Department

and would have been one of the first to know about Owens River Valley water in 1903. Together, Sherman, Chandler, Whitley, and Harris and Otis had all been members of the land syndicate that bought the Porter Ranch properties that same year. Now that the aqueduct was finished, it brought water rushing into the city just north of that land.

The syndicate members made millions on their investment. Viewed in this light, the charges of graft and self-interest from Job Harriman and the anti-aqueduct socialists didn't seem so far-fetched after all. Had these businessmen cynically enriched themselves while arguing they were promoting a public good? From William Mulholland's common-sense standpoint, there was always someone who stood to profit in matters like these. There's lots of land yet up here to be bought by anybody, the engineer testified during

the board investigation. It is no crime to buy it, no sedition against this city to buy a piece of land there. Ever the engineer, Mulholland reasoned that Los Angeles could not grow without a new water source. The most geographically logical place for it to end up was at the top of the San Fernando Valley. He had done his job to help the city grow, and anything having to do with the syndicate was based merely on timing, conjecture, and point of view. But the city grew in other directions as well. A company named Sunkist used the plentiful citrus groves to promote a new concept called orange juice.

The burgeoning aviation industry also found plenty of space to develop airplanes for Lockheed and Boeing. Ford opened a Model T plant in the city, followed by tire makers Goodyear and Firestone. And in 1915, a filmmaker named D.W. Griffith would release the first feature-length motion picture shot entirely in Los Angeles. It seemed like there was nothing the bustling metropolis didn't have to offer the thousands of people arriving every year. But Job Harriman would not be interested in anything Los Angeles had to offer. Having failed at his run for mayor and his campaign to expose the hypocrisy of the aqueduct, he decided to form his own community. 75 miles from the city, just over the Angeles Forest, Harriman started a utopian colony called Llano del

Rio on the very edge of the Mojave Desert. There, he felt he could finally escape the corrupting influence of the capitalist machine. But Harriman and the idealists who followed him to Llano would discover that no matter how far they went, the politics of water would follow them. Imagine it's 1916. You're a homesteader in the new colony of Llano del Rio, one of 800 proud individualists who've chosen to set off on your own and govern yourselves by socialist principles. You and your husband moved to this deserted, boulder-strewn landscape a year ago. There was a sense of promise in the air then. Los Angeles had grown too stagnant, too corrupted by business interests. Arriving at Llano, you first lived in a tent alongside Job Harriman and the colony's other founders. No one would have hired a female

carpenter. But here, you helped build the hotel that would attract curiosity seekers and perhaps convert them to your way of life. Now, you're finally building a house of your own. You're driving in another nail when you see your husband walking toward you from the alfalfa fields. He looks exhausted, but there's something else in his eyes. The city denied us the dam permit.

I mean the dam permit, not the dam permit. They're both the same, though. Does Job know? He's the one who told me. The state corporations commissioner said we were too inexperienced to take on a dam project ourselves. That's a rotten excuse. That's a political excuse. It absolutely is.

But we can't make it out here without a dam. And we can't build a dam without the state granting us the permits. This is terrible news, but you remain steadfast. Yeah, but there's been good rain this year. We own the water rights of the land we live on. That should be enough. But your husband shakes his head. I don't think it will.

But Llano is growing. We have the hotel. We have the cannery. There's still plenty of ways we can make ends meet. We have a post office. If we can't farm, though, it won't matter. The carpentry and the cannery won't be enough. We don't even have a house with walls yet.

We'll find a solution. We'll apply again next year for the damn permit. Or we'll wait until there's a new commissioner and we can lobby him. We left Los Angeles to get away from all this. Yet here we are, the same politics. We used to talk about forming our own system. You set down your hammer and put your arms around your husband. That's right.

We're going to do it together. But he pulls away. Well, I don't think we can. Not even out here. He leaves without turning back. You watch him go, then turn back to your tools. This is your new life,

your new world. There's always a way. So you're going to stay and build it yourself, no matter what your husband does. Despite the determination of its residents, the colony of Llano wouldn't last. Around a thousand people bought shares in the cooperative community and constructed a small town with a hotel, farmland, and a school for their children. But only two years later, the town would be deserted.

Llano del Rio was part of an idealistic effort to counter the wheeling and dealing of the city's real estate tycoons, to forge a new path that might be able to sidestep political corruption and provide a safe environment for free individual expression. But by 1917, Llano was forced into bankruptcy by lawsuits from its members and denials of legal permits by the state of California. After Yano failed, Job Harriman left California for good,

trying one last time to form the same kind of cooperative community in Louisiana. There, he hoped, the plentiful water would be enough to sustain his vision. But back in Los Angeles, Harriman's legacy stubbornly endured. Mulholland was dumbfounded when a newspaper headline suddenly appeared proclaiming aqueduct water is poison and then aqueduct water is liquid manure.

A Chicago bacteriologist had published a report substantiating these claims. And as the left-leaning papers began to publicize them, two members of the original Aqueduct Investigation Board filed a petition for an injunction against the city.

The water, they claimed, was a menace to public health. Mulholland couldn't believe it. The Pandora's box had opened again. Dracula, the ancient vampire who terrorizes Victorian London. Blood and garlic, bats and crucifixes. Even if you haven't read the book, you think you know the story. One of the incredible things about Dracula is that not only is it this wonderful snapshot of the 19th century, but it also has so much resonance today.

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Ever since Los Angeles agents bought up the land and water rights around the Owens River, residents of Inyo County had been furious. But what could they do? It seemed impossible to fight a city the size of Los Angeles. But then suddenly, there was a chance. Dr. Ethel Langdon Leonard was, by her mid-30s, a woman of remarkable achievement in the medical field. She'd attended college and medical school at the University of Southern California and briefly held the position of city bacteriologist for Los Angeles. But she'd returned to practice in

her hometown of Chicago, and while there, she wrote a report stating that the waters of the Owens River were contaminated. If she was correct, the waters flowing into the city of Los Angeles were also contaminated. Her report read, In Los Angeles, the city itself is deliberately poisoning the entire water supply of the whole population. They are committing one of the worst offenses in all the category of crimes known to man, and the facts of my report prove it. A furious Mulholland branded the attempt an effort to

create public hysteria to promote private ends. He had dared anyone to find any instances of sickness in the city caused by water. But there was enough interest over the possibility of a massive public health scandal to form another board of inquiry. The aqueduct had been funded with taxpayer dollars, and if the taxpayers wanted to get to the bottom of this, the city had no choice but to allow it. Two men from the original Aqueduct Investigation Board

prepared to call witnesses and question members of the Water Department. One of these witnesses, an Inyo County resident named George Watterson, testified that dead animals had been left to rot upstream of the aqueduct's intake point, thus polluting the water supply. Taking the stand once again to defend his water system, Mulholland explained for the court how the aqueduct's massive length was a built-in purification system. It took one drop three or four years to flow from the first intake point to the city's water mains. Each reservoir acted as an additional purifier,

not to mention the knobby surfaces of the aqueduct walls themselves, which churned and oxidized the water as it ran. His was an informed defense, full of facts and figures. But the case wasn't settled yet. It was time to produce the inquiry's leading witness, Ethel Leonard, the Chicago doctor whose reports started the scandal. When she was called to testify, the doctor suddenly notified the court that she was too busy in Chicago to travel,

although she would consider doing so for a fee of $1,000 and round-trip train fare. It took a subpoena to finally make her appear in the courtroom, and when she did, she appeared sheepish. She reported her bacteriological findings for the prosecutors, but under cross-examination, she quickly backtracked. Leonard admitted to having written the report, but said that it had been published without her knowledge. The prosecution could only watch in disbelief

as their key line of inquiry disintegrated. After testimony for the defense from dozens of other engineers and health experts that refuted any claims of contamination, the case was closed. Mulholland clapped the city attorney on the back, happily exclaiming, I knew it. Let's go

drink some of that polluted stuff just to show them how good it is. Dr. Ethel Leonard's reasons for writing the report in the first place and how she'd become embroiled with the anti-aqueduct causes remain a mystery. Some claim she had socialist sympathies. Others thought she'd been paid off by Inyo County business interests. But at the end of the trial, Leonard returned to Chicago, presumably on her own dime. Mulholland's confidence in his engineering had once again been proven. But he refused to rest on his laurels. The water department superintendent kept himself busy with an unceasing work schedule. Water, he now knew, would be an unending problem for his city, and he was starting to see solutions in very unlikely places. Imagine it's 1925, and you're a superintendent at Yosemite National Park.

You've been on the job for a year, and it's been the best year of your life. True, training the new park rangers can be tough and tedious, and the paperwork never seems to end, but you've always been drawn to the great outdoors. But tonight, you're inside, invited to a ceremonial dinner for a California senator in Los Angeles. The politics of your position didn't allow you to say no. But a free dinner in a fancy setting isn't all bad. And what's better, you found yourself seated at the same table as William Mulholland.

Towards the end of the evening, with a whiskey glass in hand, he turns to you. You're from Park Service, aren't you? Yes, yes, I am. It's a pleasure to meet you. Mulholland just shrugs this off. You have a very beautiful park up north, a majestic park. Yosemite, you've been there, have you? His eyes flash, intent and boring into yours. I certainly have. I'm the park superintendent.

An incredible coincidence. I've have. I'm the park superintendent. An incredible coincidence. I've had an idea for your park. I was wondering if you could hear me out. You lean forward. They've invented this new photographic process. It's called Petit. Makes everything seem extra lifelike. And if I were custodian of your park, I'd hire a dozen of the best photographers in the world.

I'd set them up for a year. Let them take photographs in every season, all the beautiful colors and shapes of the park. I think that sounds like a great idea. There's so much variation from season to season. Yes, yeah. So then you have all these photographs, waterfalls, all the colors, the snow, the majesty. Then I'd print the pictures in thousands of books and send them to magazines and libraries. I'd make certain that every in thousands of books and send them to magazines and libraries. I'd make certain that every American in the country could see them. You're already starting to envision some of these images yourself. You get to see them every day. Why not everyone else? And then you know what I'd do? I'd go in there and build a dam from one side of that valley to the

other and stop the goddamn waste. You sit back, horrified. Is Mulholland joking? You can't tell. I'm not sure what you mean. What I mean is all that water up there is going to waste. What good is a resource, I ask you, if it doesn't serve mankind? You don't have an answer. You're flabbergasted. So quickly you excuse yourself and begin to make your way towards the foyer. Is that the great engineer's idea of conservation? Taking photographs of nature's greatest work and then destroying it all. William Mulholland was beginning to show the effects of a lifetime spent nursing a non-stop work habit. Myopic and obsessed, he realized that his masterwork of engineering

still wasn't going to see enough to keep pace with the growth of Los Angeles. By the early 1920s, the city was set to outpace even the monumental growth Mulholland had predicted. At half a million people, the former lawless, crime-plagued Pueblo was now a bigger metropolis than its haughty cousin to the north, San Francisco, and so there would need to be more water. The city engaged Mulholland once again to try and work his magic. Mulholland proposed a plan that would look east to the Colorado River, but that plan was shelved by Harry Chandler, who himself was using the Colorado to irrigate an 830,000-acre ranch in northern Baja, Mexico. So reluctantly,

Mulholland began to look north once again. While negotiating the locations for storage sites and aqueduct placement back in 1905, Mulholland had been forced to make an omission. There was no reservoir on the line big enough to provide storage for water year in and year out. The reservoirs he'd constructed along the aqueduct were only used for a few months at a time. Los Angeles won a right-of-way claim to buy the salt-filled Mono Basin in Congress that year, a saline lake just north of the Long Valley site. Mono was a step in the right direction, but it was still not a step far enough. The spot Mulholland wanted was above the town of Bishop.

Between there and Mono Lake lay the Long Valley Ranch site, owned by none other than Fred Eaton. Mulholland and Eaton hadn't been on speaking terms for some time. By 1921, their friendship had become strained by Eaton's determination to finally make the profit he felt he deserved. Eaton knew full well the geographical value of his ranch to the city. Mulholland tried to renegotiate with Eaton time and again, offering him as much as half a million for the land, but Eaton wouldn't budge. In his mind, the matter was settled. It was either a million dollars or nothing. Rejected, Mulholland bitterly complained to a water department

official that he would simply wait and buy Eaton's lands three years after Eaton is dead. Los Angeles owned water rights all along the southern points of the Owens River, but the northern part of the river, above the town of Independence, remained untapped. Mulholland decided he could make do without the dam site and the Long Valley Ranch. But the city wanted water now, not water later. And with this in mind, the city would once again invade the Owens River Valley. Mulholland sunk wells in the lower valley, and agents from the city went into the upper valley, attempting to buy up water rights.

This would put the city and William Mulholland on a collision course with the valley citizens, already angry at the theft of their water 15 years before. But this time, the Owens Valley residents weren't going to take any incursions lying down. They were going to fight back. The results would be explosive. Next on American History Tellers, an Owens Valley family takes on the mighty city of Los Angeles, and a series of dynamite attacks against the aqueduct begin a multi-year feud that pits Valley farmers against city interests.

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. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louis. Created by Hernán López for Wondery.

In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that defined their journey, and the ideas that transformed the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually

curdles into desperation, and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.