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During the early 1900s, Eaton, then-mayor of Los Angeles, was faced with a problem: a burgeoning population that threatened the city’s water supply. Desperate to find a new water source for the city, Eaton recalled a camping trip in the Sierras where he “gazed down upon the Owens Lake and thought about all the freshwater flowing into and going to waste. Yes, Los Angeles was some 200 miles away, but it was all downhill. All one would have to do to move it to the city was dig some canals, lay some pipe and let gravity do the rest.” In other words, Eaton realized an opportunity to sustain Los Angeles’ growth and took matter into his own hands to save the city.

Notes

Eaton was the mastermind supporter of the early 20th century Los Angeles Aqueduct—"Owens Valley Aqueduct" project, designed by William Mulholland.

Introduction

Frederick Eaton was born in Los Angeles in 1856, into one of the prominent and founding families of what became Pasadena on the Rancho del Rincon de San Pascual. As an adult Eaton was a Radical Republican. He was a promoter of: the Civil War Reconstruction; of new railroads; of Southern California water supplies; and the city as the Mayor of Los Angeles.

Controversy

During the time that Eaton was surveying the Owens Valley land for his personal water project, the federal government was also in the process of reclaiming land in that area for a large irrigation system, in response to the newly-signed Newlands Reclamation Act. Many local farmers willingly gave up their land to make this project possible. However, since Eaton was also buying thousands of acres of land at the same time, “it was a common but ill-founded assumption in the valley that Eaton was representing the Reclamation Service. Eaton did nothing to correct the inference that his activity in the valley was related to the government project.” In addition to knowingly withholding information, Eaton and other Los Angeles agents also posed “as Reclamation Service employees in order to gain a foothold for the city’s veiled plan.” By doing so, Eaton angered thousands of Owens Valley residents who believed that they were lied to. In response, these residents actively protested against the aqueduct's construction, even dynamiting the aqueduct's concrete canal. Although this deception created the Los Angeles of today, the controversy on whether or not his actions were justified remains unanswered.

A few years later, Los Angeles was faced with a problem: a burgeoning population that threatened the city’s water supply. Desperate to find a new water source for the city, Eaton recalled a camping trip in the Sierras where he “gazed down upon the Owens Lake and thought about all the freshwater flowing into it and going to waste. Yes, Los Angeles was some 200 miles away, but it was all downhill. All one would have to do to move it to the city was dig some canals, lay some pipe and let gravity do the rest.” In other words, Eaton realized an opportunity to sustain Los Angeles’ growth and took matter into his own hands to save the city.