William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles

By Catherine Mulholland

In the decade preceding the Roaring Twenties, two great construction projects, both involving water and both profoundly affecting the future of Los Angeles, were completed.  In 1914, the Panama Canal reduced the sailing times for vessels moving between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  The Panama-California Exposition, spearheaded by Bertram Goodhue, who would later design the Los Angeles City Library, held in San Diego the following year led to the popularity of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, the style used in designing La Casa Nueva.  This occurred one year after the Los Angeles Aqueduct began delivering water from the Sierra Nevada mountains to Los Angeles.  The chief engineer of the aqueduct was William Mulholland.  This biography, written by his grand-daughter, details the life of perhaps the most controversial person in the history of Los Angeles.  The life is covered with scant attention paid to the controversies that William Mulholland was involved in.

Without external sources of water, Los Angeles and southern California could not support the millions of people that have settled here.  Water from both the eastern and western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains as well as water from the Colorado River, with which William Mulholland was also involved, enabled Los Angeles to grow into a mega-city.  As with any monumental construction projects, there were many problems, both political and physical.

The reader learns that in the 1920’s the controversy and subsequent violence came to a head.  The water enabled Los Angeles to grow, but the Owens Valley paid the price.  Almost a century later, the controversy remains as the Department of Water and Power attempts to mitigate the dust problem in the valley.  History is frequently influenced by Hollywood as the movie “Chinatown” presented its own fictitious take of Mulholland’s life.

Along with the construction issues, the author discusses the political issues as newspapers took sides in the issues of labor, water and municipal ownership of water and power.  Newspapers were, and remain, house organs for the political parties; however, then there were diverse opinions.  It was an era of emerging union power aided by the Progressives and abetted by friendly newspapers.  The issues then have not gone away as labor struggles to maintain its pre-eminence in California aided by its political allies.