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dam-building hub — and proud of it. By 1923,
every major drainage system in the county,
except the Santa Margarita in the north,
included at least one reservoir.
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Spreckels owned The San Diego Union and he
used the newspaper to promote his Mountain
Water Company’s projects and to deride those
of his competitor, the San Diego Flume
Company. His water company also published
the book The Story of
Water in San Diego in
1909, which contained breathless descriptions
of the “stupendous” water works as a “miracle
beneficent.” The book
gushed over the Morena
Dam: “Here, in this awful rift
the dam is building — as if
the pygmy,
Man, defied the
Titan, Nature.” It clai
med
Morena would hold enough
water for seven years without
a drop of rain, while New
York City only had storage for
six months. “What this
means to the future of San
Diego it would be i
mpossible
to overesti
mate … No other city
50 ti
mes her size has anything comparable with
this great water system, not half a dozen cities
on earth have anything better.”
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22
Chapter 5: Creating Water Companies
starting with Lower
Otay Dam and
Reservoir in 1897.
Over the next
decade, the
Southern
California
Mountain Water
Company began
building the Morena
and Barrett Dams on
Cottonwood Creek, a
tributary of the Tijuana
River. It also began building the Dulzura
Conduit, a flume connecting the Barrett and
Cottonwood water supplies to Lower Otay
Reservoir, which was in turn connected by
the Otay Pipeline and the Bonita Pipeline to
the city's water distribution system.
ENTHUSIASM AND EXAGGERATI
ON
Today, dam construction evokes mixed feelings
in many people because of the environmental
i
mpact of such massive projects. A century
ago, however, large dams were a sign of
progress and prowess, and people celebrated
them as “titanic miracles of engineering.”
8
With its Southern California Mountain Water
Company and San Diego Flume Company,
San Diego County was the nation’s
John D. Spreckels
Crossing the San Diego River at the foot
of Eagle Peak Grade, 1907
Ed Fletcher, driver;
George Marston, front seat;
John Nolen, back seat
John D. Spreckels portrait
both from the San Diego Historical
Society