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By Root 1489 0

Los Angeles was, if not exactly illegal, an apparent violation of the most basic ethical standards for government officials. Newell had let Lippincott off with another fatherly lecture, but everyone in the Reclamation Service had heard about it, and since the Service had been created as an answer to the epic graft and fraud associated with the General Land Office, some of Lippincott’s associates were furious with him. By July of 1905, Newell realized that the whole thing might blow up in his face; he had to do something to contain the damage. As a result, he decided to appoint a panel of engineers to review the conflict between the Reclamation project and the water needs of Los Angeles and decide whether the Owens Valley Project should move forward, be put on hold, or be abandoned. Newell felt that Lippincott, as the senior engineer most familiar with the project, should sit on the panel. To his and Lippincott’s astonishment, several Reclamation engineers said they would refuse to sit next to him. Lippincott now realized that he, too, would have to mount a damage-control operation in a hurry. On July 26, the night before the panel was scheduled to convene, he dashed off a telegram to Eaton that read, “Reported to me and publicly accepted that you had represented yourself as connected with Reclamation and acting as my agent in Owens Valley. As this is entirely erroneous and very embarrassing to me, please deny publicly or the Service will be forced to do so.” The truth of Lippincott’s denial can best be judged by Fred Eaton’s reaction, which was incendiary. He received the telegram in the federal land office in Independence, where he was still trying to masquerade as Lippincott’s agent. After reading it he felt compelled to vent his spleen on the nearest person available, agent Richard Fysh. “Eaton said he had a telegram from Mr. Lippincott and it was a damned hot one,” said Fysh later in a deposition, “and he, Eaton, did not like it a little bit, as it put him in a wrong light.”

Newell’s panel of engineers was convened in San Francisco on July 27. After two days of hearing divided opinions (Clausen testified in favor of continuing, Lippincott in favor of abandonment), the panel reached a unanimous verdict. The Owens Valley Project should not be sedulously pursued, they recommended; the needs of Los Angeles had become too great an issue. But neither should it be formally abandoned until a more persuasive case could be made for doing so. Los Angeles would have to demonstrate that it had absolutely no choice but to go to the valley for water, and it would have to prove that it had the resources to carry out such a gigantic undertaking on its own. Such a recommendation, the panel added, was of course based on the assumption that the Reclamation project was still feasible.

Which, unbeknownst to anyone but Eaton and a select handful of Los Angeles officials, it was not. Four months earlier, after completing his consultant duties for Lippincott, Eaton had gone back to see the stubborn Thomas Rickey, who held the key piece of land in the valley—the land the city had to have in order to block the federal project—but who had refused to sell. In Eaton’s hand was his recommendation that Rickey’s hydroelectric company be allowed to usurp its competitor’s claim on the main power sites on the river. That, Eaton thought, was the sweetener that would surely make Rickey sell. After hours of pleading and cajoling, however, the rancher still held out. In disgust, Eaton finally stood up, roughly shook Rickey’s hand, and stomped out the door. As he was standing at the railroad depot, waiting for the train that would take him back to Los Angeles, Rickey raced up in his carriage. He had had a sudden change of heart; for $450,000, he told Eaton, he would sell him an option clear on the ranch, including the Long Valley reservoir site.

Eaton’s jubilation was so great he couldn’t restrain himself. He ran to the telegraph office and shot off a cryptic message to Mulholland. “The deal is made,” he wired. All it had required was “a week of Italian