William Mulholland Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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William Mulholland (1855 -1935) is remembered as a central figure in the struggle to make sufficient water resources available to the then nascent cities of California that were to grow into the metropolitan superpowers of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Most notably, he had a pivotal role in changing the course of the Owens River to water Los Angeles, much against the wishes of those people then living on its banks and deriving their living from it. Lives were lost in the subsequent struggle and Mulholland has frequently been held up subsequently as something of a scapegoat, although the extent of culpability remains contested.

The development of the western United States was hampered by insufficient convenient water resources. In order for great cities to be born out of the desert and other unfriendly areas, it was necessary to rearrange the deployment of water resources. This was hampered by technical factors-e.g., the need to build extensive aqueducts to change the course of rivers-as well as human factors, such as the presence of people in the way of development plans. Indigenous peoples were mostly driven away from their traditional homes in a series of military campaigns (one of which Mulholland participated in personally), while so-called “Americans” were dealt with in a variety of different ways. At the beginning of the 20th century, Mulholland shared the vision for Los Angeles, then a humble town, to become a great city. He had arrived in America from his native Ireland having supported himself by a series of low-wage jobs, which may have helped to forge him into the tough and hard-minded individual that some believed him to be. To realize the vision for Los Angeles, it was necessary to divert the course of the Owens River, which flowed more than 200 miles away. Accomplishing this against the wishes of the settlers of the Owens River Valley required extensive and complex negotiations and transactions, including land deals and political wrangling, which were apparently partly facilitated by Mulholland’s various connections, although such a substantial undertaking could never be the work of one person alone.

The initial aqueduct was completed by 1913 and Los Angeles began its ascent. However, the water resources provided exceeded what was required by the young city and Mulholland was obliged to enter into a second round of private sector irrigation and dam project dismantling in order to redistribute the water to the extent that it would make the scheme sufficiently profitable. Armed resistance broke out among the settlers in the region who were forced by this drive to move, and a series of environmental problems were unleashed. This led in due course to the disaster of the St. Francis Dam, which collapsed in 1928, allowing a massive flood of water to flow down toward the sea, sweeping away all in its path. Unknown numbers of people were killed, made homeless, or dispossessed by this disaster, for which Mulholland was eventually found responsible; he was obliged to live out his days in disgrace.

Transforming the environment to this extent, Mulholland managed to create both winners and losers, though it was not always immediately obvious who had won and who had lost. Those who proved to be winners by benefiting from the newly organized irrigation systems tend to have louder and more persistent voices than those who lost out in the past.

Bibliography:

Abraham Hoffman, Vision or Villainy: Origins of the Owens Valley-Los Angeles Water Controversy (Texas A&M University Press, 1992);
Catherine Mulholland, William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2002).