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Valley near today’s Escondido. The San
Pasqual
Water District built a second canal in
1887 to connect the valley to a potential dam
site at Pamo Valley (which has never been
built).
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This developing water supply and deliv-
ery system would later spawn several dams
and reservoirs that the city of San Diego would
acquire in the 1920s.
CITY AND BACKCOUNTRY
NEED MORE WATER
At the dawn of the 1880s, the county had a
water supply company for the city and several
for the backcountry. They served different
constituencies: urban/domestic users and
agricultural irrigators. As the county population
grew with the coming of the railroad and the
“boosterism” that followed, each constituency
needed more water.
To meet those growing needs, water
development began in earnest. It started a
transition from depending on well
water to
i
mpounding river water in the mountains.
With this larger-scale development in the
1890s, urban and agricultural interests began
to clash. The next few decades were
characterized by dueling water companies
and overblown promises for water delivery, as
well as the usual extreme cycles of drought
and flood.
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Chapter 4: Early American Period
main economic activity through the 1870s.
All too often, however, the cattle succumbed to
drought. Many ranchers started raising sheep
instead, but the sheep died, too. The ranchers'
need for water was acute.
As early as 1853, some farmers throughout the
region started making the transition from dry
land farming and ranching to irrigated agricul-
ture — and lucrative citrus crops. In 1862,
25,000 orange trees were i
mported from
Mexico. In 1873, Brazilian naval orange trees
arrived. With the prospect of large profits from
citrus crops, farmers scrambled to develop
local
water supplies for irrigation. First, they
used up their surface supplies and then they
drilled ever-deeper for groundwater.
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A pair of enterprising brothers stepped in to fill
the increasing demand for water in the back-
country. They organized the Ki
mball
Brothers
Water Company in 1869, bought rights to the
Sweetwater River and then built a reservoir with
a 90-foot-high dam and distribution pipes.
Their water supply spurred the development of
National
City and Chula Vista.
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To the north, si
milar enterprises were develop-
ing. For example, in 1853, an agricultural
canal
was built to divert water from the San
Dieguito River system to the San Pasqual
Laying water pipe, 1911/1915
The San Diego Historical
Society