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By Root 1493 0

a district engineer with divided loyalties could lead the Service into a thicket of conflict-of-interest entanglements. The centerpiece of the Service’s program in California was to be the Owens Valley Project, and there were already rumors that Los Angeles coveted the valley’s water. One of the Service’s engineers, in fact, had raised this issue with Davis; with Lippincott, a son of Los Angeles, in charge, a collision between the city and the Service over the Owens River might leave the city with the water and the Service absent its reputation. But the Service’s early leadership, unlike those who succeeded them, suffered from a certain lack of imagination. “On the face of it,” Davis scoffed, “such a project is as likely as the city of Washington tapping the Ohio River.”

The only person who seemed suspicious when Lippincott began showing Eaton and Mulholland around the Owens Valley again and again was one of his own employees, a young Berkeley-educated engineer named Jacob Clausen. His apprehensions had been aroused during Eaton’s second visit, when Lippincott and Eaton had ridden up to the valley from Los Angeles by way of Tioga Pass and Clausen, at Lippincott’s request, had met them at Mono Lake. On the way down the valley, Lippincott insisted that they stop at the ranch of Thomas Rickey, one of the biggest landowners in the valley. Rickey’s ranch was in Long Valley, an occluded shallow gorge of the Owens River, hard up against the giant Sierra massif, which contained the reservoir site the Reclamation Service would have to acquire in order for its project to be feasible. Eaton had told Clausen that he wanted to become a cattle rancher and was interested in buying Rickey’s property if he was willing to sell. As they visited the ranch, however, he seemed much more interested in water than in cattle. Clausen understood the dynamics of the Owens Valley Project—the streamflows, the water rights, the interaction of ground and surface water—better than anyone, and Lippincott asked him to explain to Eaton how the project would work. Eaton hung on his every word, and that, Clausen was to testify later, “was exactly what Lippincott wanted.” The two Los Angeleans were good friends, and Eaton had been the first to dream of Los Angeles going to the Owens Valley for water. Was it so farfetched, Clausen would remember thinking to himself, to believe that Lippincott was out to help Los Angeles steal the valley’s water?

If Clausen’s suspicions were aroused, those of his high superiors remained utterly dormant, even though they would soon have equal reason to suspect Lippincott of being a double agent for Los Angeles. In early March of 1905, Lippincott had sent his entire engineering staff to Yuma, Arizona, on the Colorado River, to move the Yuma Irrigation Project forward at a faster pace. Work on the Owens Valley Project had been held up by winter and by the delayed arrival of a piece of drilling equipment which was on order. During the hiatus, the Reclamation Service received a couple of applications for rights-of-way across federal lands from two newly formed power companies in the Owens Valley. Each was interested in building a hydroelectric project, and Lippincott had to decide which, if any, of the plans could coexist with the Reclamation project. Unable or unwilling to look into the matter himself, Lippincott might have waited for one of his engineers to return later in the spring, but he wanted to dispose of the issue, so he decided to appoint a consulting engineer to look into the matter for him. And though there were dozens of engineers in Los Angeles and San Francisco among whom he could have chosen, he decided to turn to his old friend and professional associate Fred Eaton.

The news that Lippincott had hired Fred Eaton to decide on a matter that could affect the whole Owens Valley Project left his superiors stunned, but their response, typically, was one of bafflement rather than anger. “I fail to understand in what capacity he is acting” was the only response Arthur Davis managed to give.

Eaton himself had no questions