In May of 1924 a group of Lone Pine residents headed towards the Alabama gatehouse in an attempt to damage the aqueduct. After the guards at the gatehouse were forced out of the building, the bombers set up their dynamite, and blew up the dam. At first, no one knew who had done the deed, but suspicion quickly fell on the local residents. Mulholland sued Owens Valley and tried desperately to find who had committed the heinous acts. Law enforcement officers were deployed, which began to worry the Lone Pine residents. They feared that their neighbors would give information of the perpetrators to Mulholland and the government. However, even after a $10,000 reward for any information on the felons, nothing was disclosed. Many L.A. residents were furious and wanted someone they could blame for the recent lack of water. However, due to nothing being found in the investigation and the unwillingness of any Lone Pine resident to give information, L.A. residents were left with no one to blame. In the end, Mulholland and most of Los Angeles concluded that everyone in Lone Pine knew who had bombed, but no one would tell.
The Alabama Gatehouse, in 2016. Since the bombing in 1924, the building has been repaired.
A local newspaper describes the aftermath of the bombing.
On November 16th, 1924, somewhere between seventy and one hundred men from Bishop drove to the Alabama gatehouse shortly before dawn. Mark Watterson, Karl Keough, and other members of the Owens Valley Irrigation District led this movement. They took the guards as hostages and opened the metal floodgates, releasing all the water in the reservoir. They then placed barbed wire at the foot of the hill in order to prevent any LA police and workers from stopping them. A sheriff then came to look for possible suspects. The bombers wanted to be associated with the crime, so they shouted out their names and even spelled them out to make sure the news got them correctly. After a while, more and more people came to see what the commotion was about, when they saw what it was, people began bringing things like barbeques and salads in hopes of starting a city-wide barbeque next to the floodgate as a form of protest. Four days later, the Banker’s Association offered to stop the barbeque protest only if the Alabama Gates occupation ceased.
The Calexico Chronicle talks about the immediate effects of the bombing.