Page 5 - mcgroarty1923aqueduct

HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY 275

and are voiced by those who are so comparatively outnumbered that they
may be dismissed with scant notice. The proof of these statements lies
in the fact that when the bond issue was submitted to the people for their
approval on September 7, 1905, it was carried by a vote of approximately
15 to 1.
The engineers who surveyed and designed the aqueduct and later built
and carried it to completion were William Mulholland, J. B. Lippincott and
0. K. Parker. In the actual construction Mulholland and Lippincott were
the active spirits, with Mulholland as the real head.
In passing, it would seem that more than this mere mention of William
Mulholland should be made in these pages. In future generations it will
be his name that will be most remembered when the people of the future
recount with well-founded pride the achievements of the men who went
before them in the building of their great city. In those times, if not now,
some kind of lasting memorial in connection with the Owens River
Aqueduct will be erected in honor of Fred Eaton and William Mulholland
-the dreamer and the doer, the man who brought from the snows of the
high Sierras the great dream, and the other man who caused the dream to
come true.
It seems only natural that a city like Los Angeles should produce such
men as William Mulholland. The city, besides being a most stupdendous
practical achievement, is also a romantic dream. And out of the romance
of the town comes the romance of this man Mulholland, who rose from
his humble station as the tender of its water ditches when it was a sleepy
pueblo to become its chiefengineer and to stand in the front rank of the
world's greatest engineers when the city had come to take its place among
the great cities of the world.
I have been told that when William Mulholland was, a boy in Ireland,
where he was born, he had a longing for the sea. And that he ran away
from home, and that he was taken away on a ship, and that he held to the
sea till he served at last before the mast and became a real sailorman ; that
then he abandoned his sea-faring life and came ashore in America and
drifted westward with the restless tides that have ever drifted westward
in human history and that . are westward drifting still. Until one time, on
a sunny morning when he was still young, he found himself in the pueblo
of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels, where, happily,. he decided to locate.
Mulholland secured a job as "zanjero," which was the old Spanish title
given to the man who attends to water ditches. He lived by himself in a
cabin beside one of the ditches which were under his care. He followed
around about the pueblo on the trail of surveyors and the ·occasional engi-
neers that the community from time to time employed. At night, in his
cabin, he studied books-books on mathematics, surveyor's manuals and
works on engineering. His brain was alert and his desire for knowledge of
this special nature was insatiable. He plodded patiently and with undaunted
courage. And, step by step. he rose in knowledge and ability and in the
confidence of the people. He became superintendent of the city's water
system. He became known far afield, and was frequently called into
consultation to help other engineers solve big problems.
And the time came at length when his own city stood face to face with
aas big a problem as any city had ever faced in history-a problem requiring