William Mulholland

William Mulholland (born September 11, 1855 in Belfast , † July 22, 1935 in Los Angeles ) was a prominent and influential hydraulic engineer in southern California , who made the growth of Los Angeles possible.

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Mulholland emigrated to New York City in the 1870s and traveled to San Francisco in 1877 ; shortly thereafter he worked in the copper mines of Arizona . Eventually he moved to Los Angeles, where he spent the rest of his life.

Water for Los Angeles

The later self-taught engineer first dug drainage canals as a laborer at the Los Angeles Water Company (LAWC). The city's outdated water supply at the time was largely based on open canals branching off the Los Angeles River and was entirely in private hands. The LAWC belonged to the entrepreneur Frederick Eaton, to whom Mulholland was later closely linked in a long friendship. Thanks to his talent, Mulholland rose quickly within the company and in 1886 Eaton transferred the management of the company. In the same year he became an American citizen. In 1902 the city of Los Angeles bought the LAWC, made water supply a public task and transferred the company to the authority responsible for water and electricity from then on, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). Frederick Eaton was able to get the city council through that Mulholland was taken over as head of the authority. Few positions in local government have had a similar effect on the fate of a metropolis as this authority, for Los Angeles was actually an undergrowth-covered desert that Mulholland with its public water canal system turned into a habitable city. Mulholland's office and headquarters were on the top floor of the " one million US dollars Theater " Sid Grauman , along Broadway Street in downtown Los Angeles . Today the actor Nicolas Cage owns this area, which he had renovated and refurbished.

Construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct

Mulholland and Eaton first made a joint trip to Owens Valley in 1904 to acquire water rights for the city of Los Angeles. At the time, land development and water supply companies were competing with local ranchers and settlers for the coveted concessions. The United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), a division of the US Department of the Interior, founded in 1902, planned the establishment of a regulatory system for the even distribution of water in the Owens Valley. Eaton and Mulholland used various tricks and tricks to acquire more and more water rights for Los Angeles and did not shy away from bribing the local USBR director or lying and deceiving. Frederick Eaton pretended to be a private cattle breeder and bought a large amount of pasture land with the associated water rights on his own account, in order to later sell this at a profit to the city of Los Angeles. William Mulholland, on the one hand, dramatized the supply situation in his hometown and, on the other hand, appeased the inhabitants of the Owens Valley with the false claim that Los Angeles only needs water to supply households, but not to irrigate agricultural properties. Many farmers sold their property to the City of Los Angeles, and ultimately Eaton and Mulholland succeeded in bringing down the USBR's irrigation project. In 1907, construction began on the Los Angeles Aqueduct , an aqueduct that stretches 233 miles from Owens Valley (near Yosemite National Park ) through the Central Valley to Los Angeles. 2000 construction workers dug 164 tunnels during construction. In November 1913, Mulholland officially opened its masterpiece in the fast-growing state , which got its water from the tributaries of Mono Lake ; fifteen years later (1928) Owens Lake was completely dry.

The acquisition of permits and water rights was legally and morally imperfect. The film Chinatown with Jack Nicholson addresses this issue. The farmers in the Owens Valley area fiercely resisted the project because the previously fertile valley threatened to dry out due to excessive diversion of water. The aqueduct at Jawbone Canyon was blown up in 1924 ; other opponents of the project opened a lock and drained water for four days, causing prices to rise. This situation forced the Los Angeles City Council to negotiate with the farmers. It wasn't until the 1990s that the Farmer and Los Angeles reached a final out-of-court settlement. Mulholland himself was adamant. He said that he regretted the loss of so many trees in the valley, in part because a sufficient number of trees were now missing to hang every troublemaker living there.

End of career

Mulholland's career ended on March 12, 1928. The St. Francis Dam burst, with the result that approximately 45 million cubic meters of water flowed into the Santa Clara Valley (north of Los Angeles). A 30 meter high wave rolled along the Santa Clara river bed into the mouth of the Pacific at Ventura at a speed of about 30 km / h . The consequences were devastating. The small town of Santa Paula was buried under eight feet of mud, rubble and debris; in other places it was nearly 25 meters. Rescue teams worked for several days, but 450 people were killed, including 42 children in a primary school. Because of this disaster, Mulholland resigned from office. In addition, he accepted unconditional responsibility for the breach of the dam, which at the time was considered to be the worst disaster in American civil engineering. During the judicial investigation, Mulholland said, "I envy the dead". In the end, however, he was acquitted because the instability of the rock layers on which the dam was built was found to be the cause of the dam breach; According to the judges, this was not apparent to Mulholland.

His legacy

Despite this disaster, Mulholland has a place in Los Angeles history. His vision and initiative enabled the city's subsequent success, which at the beginning of the 20th century had barely 100,000 inhabitants - without Mulholland, the permanent lack of water would have limited the future of the city. His water supply system still works today and one of the most famous highways in Los Angeles, Mulholland Drive , is named after him.

William Mulholland died in 1935 and was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale .

literature

• Margaret Leslie Davis: Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the Inventing of Los Angeles . HarperCollins, New York 1993, ISBN 0-06-016698-3

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Torsten Meyer, Journey through the City of Angels, ISBN 978-3-7386-2083-2