In 1902, there were over 100,000 people living in Los Angeles, but there wasn’t enough water to go around after ten straight years of drought. In fact, William Mulholland said that the water supply was “at least ten years behind the actual needs of the city.” On top of the water crisis, the already limited supply of water was drying up from incessant heat. Entire lakes in the mountains were drying up into mud puddles, and cattle were dying in the Antelope Valley from the lack of water. This was around this time where Fred Eaton and William Mulholland took their first trip to the Owens Valley to look for a solution to the water crisis.
During the time that Mulholland arrived in LA, there was a huge population spike due to a newly constructed long-distance railroad. This railroad went from northern California to southern California, so it brought a lot of people from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Business owners would try to advertise living in LA to get more customers. They described Los Angeles as an “American Italy” and “a Mediterranean land without marshes or malaria” to try to boost their income. These two factors made Los Angeles easy to get to, and desirable. Not only did northern Californians want to come to LA, but east-coast Americans did as well. Moving to LA was strongly encouraged by dropping train ticket prices. Tickets from Chicago to Los Angeles that were usually $125 had dropped to as low as $1. This created a huge surge of incoming people that caused the city to need more water.
More and more people settled in Los Angeles to live a better life, causing a population boom.
Owens Valley in the 1900s during Fred Eaton and William Mulholland’s camping trip.