The Center for Land Use Interpretation

Diversions and Dislocations
An account of the CLUI Bus Tour of the Owens Valley - Day 1

In late April, 2004, the Center organized a public tour to examine the fabled “backspace” of California, the remote, isolated, and notorious Owens Valley. The tour was part of a month-long exploration of the Valley, which featured an exhibit and the publication of a tour book. Because the valley is narrow and has only one road running its length, and because it takes a few hours just to get there from Los Angeles, the tour was divided into two parts, split evenly by time, space, and theme. Day one, going from south to north, Los Angeles to Bishop, looked at the valley as a displaced place. In other words, as a place where its materials and resources are removed and relocated elsewhere, such as water to Los Angeles, mineral resources mined and shipped away, and fish extracted by fishermen/tourists. The second day, heading south from Bishop, we looked at the Owens Valley as a place in itself, a place of the displaced.

DAY ONE 9:05 am - Culver City

The gleaming white luxury tour bus, provided by California Excursions and piloted by driver Larry Hansen, leaves from the Center’s main office in Culver City, after tour participants have a moment to browse the Owens Valley exhibit. After a brief welcoming and introductory address by the tour guide for the duration, CLUI program manager Matthew Coolidge, the tour begins, long before reaching the Owens Valley itself. The extensions of the valley are clear even in the city. Just up Interstate 405, the bus passes the Budweiser brewery that supplies most of Los Angeles with product from the “King of Beers.” Anheuser-Busch, the world’s largest brewer, has 12 such breweries in the United States, each of which is a major consumer of water. In L.A., the water that is converted into the millions of bottles of beer comes, of course, from the Owens Valley.

A few minutes up the highway, after the 405 joins the 5, the bus passes the Van Norman Complex, where the city of L.A. filters and stores water from Owens Valley, where electricity from the power plants along the aqueduct enters the city’s grid, and where the Department of Water and Power bases their fleet of helicopters that daily scan the length of the aqueduct for potential problems. On the other side of the highway are the Cascades, where the first and second Owens Valley aqueducts emerge from the hills, and spill into the city. It was here, in 1913, that William Mulholland turned the valve that brought the water to the city, saying “Here it is. Take it.”

At this point, a half hour into the tour, the bus transitions onto the 14 freeway, leaving the city, and the first element of the video program for the tour begins. A selection from the PBS series “Cadillac Desert” is shown which tells the Los Angeles aqueduct story. The author of the book on which the series is based, Mark Reisner, describes the turning of the valve at the Cascades, and e see interviews with William Mulholland’s daughter, and ample appropriate moments from the film “Chinatown,” discussed by screenwriter Robert Towne.

A brief stop at the Lamont Odette Vista Point offers a remarkable view of the Antelope Valley, including Palmdale Lake, the city’s water supply, built in a depression in the San Andreas Fault. Beyond, Plant 42 and even Edwards Air Force Base are visible, as the bus continues to the desert town of Mojave. At the north end of town is the DWP Aqueduct Division’s Southern District headquarters, where approximately 65 employees operate and maintain the 160 miles of the aqueduct system between Los Angeles and the Haiwee Reservoir, at the south end of the Owens Valley. The maintenance station is built on the site of one of the original aqueduct construction camps, established in 1907.

11:15 am - Jawbone Canyon

North of Mojave, after over two hours on the bus, passengers disembark at Jawbone Canyon, where the massive pipes of the two parallel Owens Valley aqueducts, the 1913 and the 1970 system, dramatically dip down and up the sides of the canyon. This is a moment to physically interact with the pipe, to touch it, to listen to the water inside, walk on it. This is the point on the aqueduct where the water pressure is at its greatest, and where, in 1988, the pipeline burst after a prolonged freeze. Jawbone has been dynamited a few times by protesters of the aqueduct.

Back on Highway 14, heading north, the highway is soon absorbed by Highway 395, the main road through the Owens Valley, merging from the east. The hills too begin to converge here, indicating that the land is coming together to form the valley. At Pearsonville - the “Hubcap Capitol of the World” - and home of the “No Name Trailer Park” the highway crosses into Inyo County. This is an area that is larger than Vermont, and home to the lower 48’s highest and lowest points (Mt Whitney, over 14,000 feet tall is less than 70 miles from Badwater, which is 200 feet below sea level), and the “world’s oldest living thing” (the Methuselah Tree, a 7,000 year old bristlecone pine in the White Mountains). 92% of Inyo County is federal land. The Owens Valley is the only developed area in the county, and is a narrow strip, just a few miles wide, with nearly inaccessible mountains as high as 14,000 feet on either side. Most of the 19,000 people here live in the four towns along the main road through the valley, Highway 395. Of the 6% of the land that isn’t owned by a state or federal entity, only 1.7% is in private hands. Of the rest, 4% is owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

North of Pearsonville, the bus, running next to the Aqueduct, passes under high voltage transmission lines, another linear element exporting resources from the valley to Los Angeles - the “P” of LADWP. There are two primary sets of lines running the length of the valley, the Owens Gorge Transmission Line and the Pacific Intertie. The 230,000 volt Owens Gorge Transmission line delivers electricity generated at three hydroelectric plants in the Owens River Gorge to Los Angeles. The Pacific Intertie, a DC line, distinct as having two main cables instead of three on its anthropomorphic towers, carries a million volts for 846 miles, the world’s longest distance and highest voltage transmission line, bringing power from the hydroelectric plants of the Columbia River area in Washington state to Southern California. It uses the Owens Valley as a highway, one without any exits.

Besides being one of the deepest valleys in the world, Owens Valley is full of active vulcanism, and as we approach the valley, the bus seems to be heading directly towards a volcanic cindercone. This is Red Hill, which has been mined since the 1950s. Its lava rock is valued for its porous, lightweight characteristics, and is generally used as an aggregate for making cinder blocks. One of the largest uses of the material from this hill is for blocks used to construct sound barrier walls along the freeways of Los Angeles. Another displacement of the Owens Valley. A few miles up the valley, the bus passes the road to Coso, a geothermically active area, with a geothermal electric power plant and an abandoned hot springs resort from the 1920’s. The hot springs are located entirely within China Lake Naval Weapons Center, a million acre Navy landscape where, among other things, the Sidewinder missile was developed. At the rest stop at Coso Junction is information about the Native Americans first displaced from the valley in the 1860’s, and again when the City of Los Angeles bought much of their land. The Indians now live on small reservations in the valley.

12:30 pm - Haiwee Reservoir

The bus heads down a dirt road to the Haiwee Reservoir, one of three reservoirs built by the DWP to manage the Owens River water. The water emerges at the base of the Haiwee’s south dam, contained inside two tubes for its journey south. As a spokesman for the DWP has said, this is where the double barrels are loaded. The passengers disembark at the edge of the reservoir, and are asked to consider the function it serves. At the seven mile long, double reservoir at Haiwee, Owens Valley water slows and pauses for the last time. Sediment drops out, and it is exposed to sunlight and air, a natural purification process, before entering the pipes, tunnels and conduits which convey it to the City. The reservoirs also serve a regulatory function since they can retain inflow during shutoffs of the aqueducts downstream, or sustain flows into these aqueducts if the canal north of Haiwee is out of service.

The Haiwee Reservoir is actually two reservoirs - the North Haiwee and the South Haiwee - that are separated by an earthen dam called the Merritt Cut. At the Cut, a bypass channel can divert the water around the south reservoir through a channel. At the south end of the South Haiwee Reservoir is a dam and a hydroelectric power plant that can use the drop in elevation to generate electricity, one of five similar plants built by the DWP in the valley. At the north end of the North Haiwee Reservoir is another dam, next to the channel where the aqueduct water enters the reservoir. Swimming is not allowed in the Haiwee, though fishing with rubberized waders is permitted.

Back on the highway heading north, Owens Lake comes into view, and we approach the settlements of Olancha and Cartago. We pass the Cabin Bar Ranch, which looks abandoned. It was bought by Anheuser-Busch in 1986 for the water rights, during a drought. Apparently, by not pumping water from the wells it owns in the valley, the company has been able to negotiate with the DWP for a water credit that allows it to use more of the Aqueduct water downstream, at the big beer plant we passed in Van Nuys. Some local residents talk bitterly about other stealthy corporate land purchases like this, for companies that bottle water from municipal sources in Los Angeles. One company that still bottles water at its spring source, for the most part, is Crystal Geyser, the most popular bottled brand in Southern California. In Olancha, the bus passes the sprawling blue plant on the east side of the highway, which sits on top of the captured spring, near the shore of the dried up Owens Lake. Truckloads of Crystal Geyser water drive south on the 395, carrying water from this plant, paralleling the Aqueduct.

1:10 pm - Cartago

Cartago, 130 years ago, was a port on the west side of Owens Lake, where steamships, such as the “Bessie Brady” and the “Molly Stevens” docked, unloading silver from the Cerro Gordo mines, in the mountains across the lake, to be transferred to the roads and rails leading to Los Angeles. When the 100 square mile lake dried up after the aqueduct was built, soda ash plants processed brine at Cartago. The American Potash company plant, which once had a 600 foot tall stack, is now enigmatic walls, blocks, and stepped stabs of concrete, next to a gleaming mountain of unused soda. The bus lumbers through these ruins and stops for a picnic lunch. Sandwiches, prepared by the Ranch House restaurant in Olancha, are laid out in a chow line on the edge of an empty slab.

After we have lunch, the bus heads out onto the lakebed itself. This side of the lake surface is dominated by its history as an extractive resource. DWP diversion of the sources of water that fed the lake, starting in 1910 or so, accompanied by a severe drought in the early 1920’s, caused Owens Lake to desiccate completely by 1928. By this time, companies had already established mining processes on the lake bed, using the dry air to evaporate water and concentrate material in evaporation ponds. With the entire lake bed exposed, the job of mining it just became easier.

Sodium carbonate mined from the lake has been used in the production of fiberglass, in powdered detergents, in medicine, as a food additive, in photographic chemicals, for pH control of water, and in a host of chemical industry applications from scrubbing sulfur from smokestack emissions to explosives. The primary use of the material has been to make glass, and a large abandoned Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company plant, between the highway and the lake, is the most scenic ruin in the valley. The active mining areas of the lake are now operated by the US Borax Company, which leases over 16,000 acres on the west side of the lake, and has an extensive network of ponds, dikes, roads, and storage pans. The owner of the 100 or so square miles of the lake surface is the State of California, which owns all navigable waterways within the state. Owens Lake of course was one, in 1913, when the lake area was surveyed before its disappearance.

2:00 pm - US Borax Owens Lake Operations

At the gate of the US Borax property, we are met by Paul Lamos, who boards the bus to guide us through the startling landforms of the mining operation, where pools of bright red water enclosed by crystalline crusts and accreted salt cones create a landscape of severe desiccation.

Back on 395 North, the bus passes the Cottonwood Hydroelectric Power Station, the oldest DWP power station in service today. The first of two turbine generators there went “on line” November 13, 1908, to power the electric dredges building the aqueduct, and is still producing energy for the DWP’s Owens Valley electric system. As at other remote hydroelectric plants and pumping stations, the DWP has a small village of a few houses for the maintenance crew of the plant and their families. At Cottonwood, the old wooden houses and the tree lined street is illuminated at night by the same old lamp posts that have long since been removed from most neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Three miles further up the road the ruins of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass plant appear, with its low slung modernist lab and administration building near the road, and its Sheeler-esque metal sheds and silo complex behind. The number of disabled RVs at the plant has increased dramatically in recent years, indicating a change in tenants, and the emergence of a new chapter in the intriguing and unformed history of this place. For most of the time since its closure in 1968, it was owned by a Dr. McCabe, who invented some sort of heart valve, and who had some connection to a community of Hollywood actors, who seemed to use the buildings as a place for interesting parties. Since his passing, the buildings, which by now have been disconnected from any utilities, have changed hands a few times, but have continued to be a residence for some remnants of this social circle. Upstairs in the old lab building is an unpacked museum of the accomplishments of Dr. McCabe. As we pass the plant, we leave its mysteries intact, and now Owens Lake is behind us. We look forward to the rest of the sites of displacement in the valley ahead.

One of the most famous sites of the ongoing battle between Owens Valley residents and the Department of Water and Power is the Alabama Gates, a set of valves on the aqueduct with the ability to divert the flow of the aqueduct into a spillway that leads to the old Owens River channel. Located next to the highway, they still look as they did in 1924 when a few dozen locals took control of the site, and opened the gates. The local occupation of the site was well publicized, and as the crowds swelled, it became a festive period lasting for days. The film star Tom Mix sent a band to entertain the crowd. Eventually, of course, order was restored, and the gates were closed. With the construction of Crowley Lake, above the north end of the valley, which can hold large amounts of water, the function of the gates, to remove water from the aqueduct in times of over abundance, has ended. But someone still lives on the premises for security and maintenance.

3:15 pm - Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery

Continuing up the road of displacement, we arrive at the next subject of the tour, and a major resource extracted from the Owens Valley - fish. While no figures exist for the Owens Valley itself, state-wide the sport fishing industry is a three billion dollar per year activity. Our tour was held on the opening of the trout fishing season, and people could be seen wading in streams and floating on reservoirs throughout the valley. The bus pulls up to the Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery, a stone institutional building with a three story tower, built in 1917, the grandest and the oldest of the three state run fish hatcheries in the valley. Here we meet with the only employee on site, who shows us around the cavernous hatchery room, with rows of tanks and tables, only a few of which were in use. In fact, this hatchery hasn’t hatched any fish in over a decade, and will not ever again, as in the late 1980s it tested positive for whirling disease, a parasite that attacks the nervous system of fish and makes them swim in spirals. Though it still manages unhatched eggs, the echoing, hatchless hatchery feels more like a mausoleum then a nursery.

Not that there ever was any trout in the Owens Valley to begin with. All the game fish here were created by the state run Department of Fish and Game to generate a recreational industry, which is now supported largely through fees collected for fishing licenses. The Owens Valley, while it drains the snowy eastern Sierra, is dry, and has been connected to the ocean for less than a hundred years, through the plumbing constructed by the DWP. Its drainage channel, the Owens River, historically terminated at Owens Lake, or in the desert beyond. The fish that are indigenous are more like those found in desert waterways, small pup fish and suckers, left over from the larger lakes and rivers of the last ice age. Trout, and other game fish now in the streams and lakes of the valley were artificially introduced to the watershed in the 1870s, brought over from the western Sierras or elsewhere. The golden trout, for example, the official State Fish of California, was said to have been introduced to the eastern Sierra from the Kern River, which used to connect to the ocean, via the Golden Gate, but which now dissipates into the industrial agriculture of the San Joaquin Valley. Like other game fish here, the golden trout has its eggs collected from pregnant females in the lakes, then the eggs are fertilized at the Mount Whitney Hatchery, then moved to other hatcheries to hatch and be raised into fingerlings that are loaded on board a tanker airplane that takes off from Mammoth Lakes Airport and dumps the fish back into lakes in the Sierras. If this cycle were to stop, all game fish in the eastern Sierra would soon disappear.

The tour continues on, while contemplating the implications of this artificially created and maintained system, and the assumption by many that it is a natural phenomenon. Further evidence, as if more were needed, of the involvement of humans in the “natural” order.

5:00 pm - Los Angeles Aqueduct Intake

The bus arrives at the last stop for the day, at perhaps the most iconic landmark of displacement in the valley: the Los Angeles Aqueduct Intake gate. It is here that the Owens River, coming in from the north, is diverted towards this structure and officially enters the original Los Angeles Aqueduct system. By now, the system has been extended to the Mono Basin to the north, and a second aqueduct has been built. But this isolated cement structure still looks, feels and is, significant. The Owens River rounds an artificially constructed and leveed right angle turn into the concrete archway of the gate, flowing under the words and letters “Los Angeles Aqueduct Intake MCMXI” etched into the concrete above, and into a concrete lined channel. Besides the bermed up waterway, the land is flat and reedy, and there are no other structures in the area. Its a lonely place, with the aqueduct quietly, perpetually, at work, whether anyone is there to see it or not. From here the water flows by gravity 233 miles, through power plants, siphons, tunnels, and reservoirs, until it spills out of the hillside in the north end of the San Fernando Valley, next to the new Cascades office park.

The bus pulls into the visitor center parking lot in Bishop, in the middle of the main (and only) drag in the largest and northernmost town in the Owens Valley. The passengers disembark for the brief walk to their motels, where despite the quantity of rooms in this relatively small town, reservations had to be made in advance, because this was, after all, the opening weekend of fishing season.

Continue to Day 2 of the Tour