Basic HTML Version
19
Chapter 5:
Creating Water
Companies 1870s - 1920s
THE BOOM OF THE
1880s
LEADS TO WATER WOES
W
hen the railroads came to San Diego
— first the Southern Pacific in 1877
and later the Santa Fe in 1885 —
the county thought it had arrived. Now it could
rival Los Angeles and San Francisco in power
and prestige. Real estate boomed and people
flooded into the county. In the period from
1870 to 1887, the population of the city of
San Diego grew from 2,300 to 40,000.
Then the bubble burst.
Farmers wanted to grow more of the highly
profitable citrus crops, like they were doing in
Orange County to the north. However, the
water demands of citrus farming overwhel
med
small
water companies. William Jennings, the
future attorney for the Water Authority, grew up
on his family's farm near Lakeside. He wrote,
“A good farm depended on having a good
water supply and with … very few water distrib-
utors of any kind, everyone
was dependent upon their
own ability to develop
water.”
2
Being a farmer in
San Diego County in those
days also meant being a
dam builder, and the
unpredictability of the rainfall
made such engi-
neering nearly i
mpossible. Jennings' father
never built his dams high enough because he
could never predict the ferocious flooding that
someti
mes occurred.
City folk, in the meanti
me, wanted green
lawns and tree-lined streets. The San Diego
Water Company was si
mply unprepared to
meet the demand. With no planning tools in
place for dealing with growth, the land boom
went “bust” in the 1890s and the population
plummeted from 40,000 in 1887 to a more
manageable 16,000 in 1890. By that ti
me,
several new and larger water companies had
been formed, paving the path for the county’s
modern water supplies.
ENTREPRENEURIAL
PLANNING AND INNOVATI
ON
The first
major water company was formed
in 1886, inspired by Theodore Van Dyke.
Van Dyke was, among other things, a writer
and artist from Minnesota who loved to hike in
the mountains. He came to the San Diego
area for health reasons and realized the incred-
ible i
mpact a reliable water supply would have
on the region. While hiking in the Cuyamaca
Mountains, he envisioned a large lake that
could feed water into the lowlands and the city
“There is probably no greater
duty that can be undertaken
by a man or men than in
the creation of a pure and
wholesome water supply for
mankind.”
Fred A. Heilbron,
Vice President of Southern California
Mountain Water Company, 1910
1
Fourth Avenue and El
m Street
following the real estate collapse, 1887
The San Diego Historical
Society