Water Wars By Eric J. Brandenberg

Facts: On May 21, 1924 the aqueduct from Owens Valley to Los Angeles has a large hole blown in its side north of Lone Pine. Six months later on November 16, 1924, more than sixty men from the Owens Valley removed the guard from the Alabama Gates spillway and turned the water back into its river channel.

The farmers in the Owens Valley and the people in Los Angeles (where the water was going) both had very different views of the events. Read the opinions below which were taken from interviews and newspapers and think about these questions.

1. Which side is telling the truth?

2. Who do you agree with? Why?

3. If you are the historian, how would you write it in a history book?

To answer these questions you need to decide for both sides:

1. Who blew up the aqueduct?

2. Why did the aqueduct blow up?

3. Who do you think are the "good guys"? the "bad guys"?

4. How did you reach your decision?

OWENS VALLEY 1905 Headline: Los Angeles Plots Destruction, Would Take Owens River, Lay Lands Waste, Ruin Peoples, Home and Communities Inyo Register "I don't think anybody from this counry ever dynamited any thing. I don't think anybody from Inyo County ever dynamited anything….they [Los Angeles] mentioned a Mr. Sexton that dynamited, but the screwy part was that Mr. Sexton was their [the city's] building inspector. He worked for them…They [Los Angeles] got the valves mixed up and they imploded it and they claimed it blew up, but it didn't." -Ray "Fish" Milovich
"Well, I can remember one time when Daddy was in on the bombing of the aqueduct. All I know is that he was gone for two nights, and Mother would not tell us what happened." -Polly Hankins .
"My grandmother was one of the few who would not sell out to the city of Los Angeles. They threw rocks at her windows, and she moved her children to town for several months while the violence was taking place. But she stuck it out, too." -Howard Holland
"Some of the houses here were burned. My brother said the City of Los Angeles burned our house, but I don't know that for a fact. But that is one of the things they [the City] would do if the farmers wouldn't sell their property." -Polly Hankins

LOS ANGELES 1905 Headline: Titanic Project to Give the City a River Los Angeles Times

The Examiner called it "pure vandalism" The Los Angeles Examiner called them maniacs. Anarchists or Wobblies.

The Los Angeles Times referred to the "known Red leader" who had been fired from the aqueduct.
The Los Angeles Daily Times stated, "The men implicated in the dynamiting plot came from points north of Big Pine…all of them planned and plotted the wrecking of the big ditch some weeks before the explosion." May 23, 1923
According to a booklet released by William Mulholland, "Never in its history has the Owens Valley prospered and increased in wealth as it has in the past twenty years."
Chief Engineer Mulholland described the valley residents this way, "Dissatisfaction in the valley? Yes, a lot of it. Dissatisfaction is a sort of condition that prevails there, like foot and mouth disease." Cadillac Desert, p. 92.
"The greatest good for the greatest number." -Gifford Pinchot and President Theodore Roosevelt