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By Root 1594 0

capacity of Los Angeles was not adequate for this one project, so a huge concrete plant would have to be built near the limestone deposits in the grimly arid Tehachapi Mountains. Since there was virtually no water along the entire route, steampower was out of the question and the whole job would be done with electricity; therefore, two hydroelectric plants would be needed on the Owens River to run electric machinery that a few months earlier had not even been invented. The city would have to maintain, house, and feed a work force fluctuating between two thousand and six thousand men for six full years. And it would have to do all this for a sum equivalent, more or less, to the cost of one modern jet fighter.

The workers would have to supply their own hard-shelled derby hats, since hard hats did not yet exist, and even if they had the city couldn’t afford them. They would live in tents in the desert without liquor or women—although both were available nearby and ended up consuming most of the aqueduct payroll. They would eat meat that spoiled during the daytime and froze at night, since the daily temperature range in the Mojave Desert can span eighty degrees. Nonetheless, the men would labor on the aqueduct as the pious raised the cathedral at Chartres, and they would finish under budget and ahead of schedule. If you asked any of them why they did it, they would probably say they did it for the chief.

The loyalty and heroics that Mulholland inspired in his workers were a perpetual source of wonder. For six years he all but lived in the desert, patrolling the aqueduct route like a nervous father-to-be pacing a hospital waiting room—giving advice, offering encouragement, sketching improvised solutions in the sand. In sandstorms, windstorms, snowstorms, and terrifying heat, his spirits remained contagiously high. Pilfering, which can add millions to the cost of a modern project, was almost unknown. Although the pay was terrible—Mulholland simply couldn’t afford anything more—he initiated a bonus system that shattered records for hard-rock tunneling. (The men were in a race with the world’s most illustrious tunnelers, the Swiss, who were digging the Loetchberg Tunnel at the same time.)

Throughout the entire time, Mulholland showed the better side of a complex and sometimes heartless character. If he wandered through a tent city and discovered that a worker’s wife had just had a baby, he would stop long enough to show her the proper way to change a diaper. He would sit down and eat with the men and complain louder than anyone about the food. In lieu of newspapers, his wit was breakfast conversation. Once, when a landslide sealed off a tunnel with a man still inside, Mulholland arrived to check on the rescue effort.

“He’s been in there three days, so I don’t suppose he’s doing so well,” said the supervisor, a mirthless Scandinavian named Hansen.

“Then he must be starving to death,” said Mulholland.

“Oh, no, sir,” said the supervisor. “He’s getting something to eat. We’ve been rolling him hard-boiled eggs through a pipe.”

“Have you?” said Mulholland archly. “Well, then, I hope you’ve been charging him board.”

“No, sir,” said the flustered Hansen. “But I suppose I should, eh?”

And Los Angeles loved Mulholland even more than the men, because its reward would be infinitely greater than theirs—to the thirsty city, he was Moses. And he was that greater rarity, a Moses without political ambition. When a move was afoot a few years later to run him for mayor, Mulholland dismissed it with a typical bon mot: “I would rather give birth to a porcupine backwards than become the mayor of Los Angeles.” But nothing that William Mulholland ever said or did quite matched the speech he gave when, on November 5, 1913, the first water cascaded down the aqueduct’s final sluiceway into the San Fernando Valley. It had been a day of long speeches and waiting, and the crowd of forty thousand people was restless. Mulholland himself was exhausted; his wife was very ill, and he had slept only a few hours in several nights. When the white crest of water