USA > California > Merced County > A history of Merced County, California : with a biographical review of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 33
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The question of the duty of water thus brought into the light is, with reference to the streams running down from the Sierras, such a complicated and difficult one, that the facts will afford pretty good support for arguments on either side. This matter was one of the factors of the problem then, and again when the later and successful attempt to organize a district was made, and needs to be noticed here briefly.
The Merced River, pretty much like all the other tributaries of the San Joaquin from the east which rise in the high mountains, is subject to great variations of flow during the year, and to very ma- terial variations from year to year. Records of its flow have been kept for a considerable number of years, and the information in pretty reliable shape was available as early as this 1914 attempt on how much water, on an average, the river might be expected to carry. But there was room for a good deal of difference of opinion as to how much would be needed for a district such as proposed, and how much storage reservoir capacity would be required to meet that need. The average annual flow of the river amounts to about 1,100,000 acre-feet, but this is subject to variations as wide as from 400,000 in abnormally dry years to about 2,000,000 in abnormally wet ones. The records showed cases of several abnormally dry years coming in succession, and the question was thus presented of how much water the district would have to carry over in its reservoir or reservoirs to be safe for such periods as these.
In addition to this, the flow of the river within any one year, as has been said, varies greatly. The days of greatest flow will be found during December or January ; the greatest day's flow recorded is about 55,000 cubic feet per second, about thirty times the stream's average flow, which occurred in January a number of years ago when the ground was well soaked with previous rains, and when a soft snow had fallen to low down on the foothills, and there then came a warm rain. The resulting run-off washed out the old power dam at Exchequer, which proved unable to withstand a flood that ran many feet deep over its crest. The months of greatest flow, however, come in May or June, when, owing to the rapidly melting snows in the mountains, the stream runs high every day until the bulk of the snow is melted, after which it falls very rapidly until there is scarcely any water at all for a system depending on the mere flow of the river with- out storage. The small prior rights for the Ruddle mill and the small ditches of the Merced River bottom set a somewhat earlier date for the last water that could be run in the canals, for a point was reached while there was still some water in the river when these prior rights took practically all of it. This point came as a general thing about July, and the remaining portion of the summer was without irri-
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gation water for the farmers under the canal system. The much greater flow of the time of the melting snows, however, furnished a surplus of water which could be stored without depriving the irri- gators of any water needed for their spring and early summer needs -which would only run to waste to the ocean unless it were stored. There was enough water there; the problem was simply to distribute it over the whole irrigation season instead of the first part of that season. With these several variations of the river, both from year to year and from month to month or day to day within a given year, to reckon with, it is no wonder that the problem was at least compli- cated enough to afford plenty of ammunition for argument in support of any view of the advisability of a district which the viewer chose to take.
At any rate, the attempt of 1914 came to naught. It remained for the Merced County Farm Bureau, then quite newly formed, to start the attempt which was at last carried through to the point where the 300-foot-high Exchequer Dam, to store about 300,000 acre-feet of water, is now in process of construction on the river about six miles above Merced Falls, and about thirty above Merced. The election which resulted in the actual formation of the Merced Irrigation Dis- trict took place on November 25, 1919; but as much as two years before this, on November 10, 1917, we find the irrigation committee of the Merced County Farm Bureau, consisting of A. H. Poore, E. G. Adams, and Manuel Marshall, reporting in favor of the forma- tion of an irrigation district "under the Maddux bill." A conference with Professor Frank Adams of the University of California resulted in a recommendation from him that the work to be attempted should be confined, for the time being at least, to the one project on the East Side, the Crocker-Huffman system. The first discussion had included the West Side as well. Professor Adams further recommended that as a method of proceeding a committee of three be appointed to con- fer with the State engineer and the College of Agriculture on the subject. Pursuant to this recommendation a committee consisting of Horace G. Kelsey, C. H. Edwards, and George T. Parr was appoint- ed. By the December meeting, E. G. Adams reported to the directors that the matter had been submitted to and approved by every farm center in the county except Planada, which had not yet had an oppor- tunity to consider it. In January, Adams reported that data were be- ing gathered on the Crocker-Huffman system. He was appointed a committee of one to confer with the company to ask them their price for their system, including the so-called Dry Creek reservoir site, and to outline approximate boundaries. At the February meeting Mr. Kel- sey reported the conclusion that tentative boundaries should include the existing system and 60,000 acres around it, approximately 100,000
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acres east of it, and 10,000 acres on the north side-briefly, all land commanded by the reservoir site-leaving the acreage, however, to be determined by the sentiment of the owners.
The matter proceeded through the summer and fall of 1918, with conferences with the State engineer and federal engineers. On November 16, 1918, Adams recommended that the farm bureau accept the State engineer's report and proceed to form a district of approximately 175,000 acres, about ten per cent of which consisted or road and railroad rights of way. The scheme at that time was to exclude the Le Grand section. At this meeting George T. Parr re- ported that a finance committee would soon be appointed in the matter. The next month we find a report that the committee has been enlarged by the addition of (or, as it is put, a sub-committee has been formed to include) C. H. Edwards, F. E. Crowell, E. G. Adams, Ward Minturn, and H. E. Carmichael, of Livingston; H. G. Kelsey, of Merced Falls; George T. Parr, of Atwater; and John R. Graham and J. D. Wood, of Merced. Community committees were to be created to circulate petitions for the formation of the district. It was at this meeting, in the language of the minutes of the farm bur- eau, that "the project of the Farm Adviser called the Irrigation Project, covering this plan to form an irrigation district, was sub- mitted and adopted." The farm adviser, the first man to hold that position in the new Merced County Farm Bureau, was J. F. Grass, Jr. Acting in strict accordance with the policy of the extension ser- vice, Grass did nothing, either before or after this, to thrust this pro- ject upon the farm bureau in the least degree ; but he had formulated the project, and credit is due him for thus early doing some of the constructive work on it.
These activities had not gone this far without opposition. In the minutes of a meeting of the farm bureau directors on January 3, 1919, we find it recorded that four representatives of those opposed to the project were present and stated their objections to it, and that the directors voted to proceed and back up the project. At this time it was reported that about 300 signatures to the petition had been obtained.
At a meeting on February 15, Adams reported a change in the boundaries to conform more nearly to recommendations of the State engineer, and that new petitions would be circulated. He also reported that Walter D. Wagner had been appointed campaign manager and would soon start a wide publicity campaign. On December 13, 1919, we find a report by Adams that the district is now formed and the matter out of the hands of the farm bureau. As a matter of fact, it was practically out of their hands early in the year. The appoint- ment of Wagner as campaign manager was not made until there had
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been organized a strong campaign committee which no longer repre- sented exclusively the farm bureau, although it was engaged in carry- ing on the work they had started. The financing of the campaign, for which George T. Parr had reported the previous November a finance committee would soon be formed, had drawn other forces into the matter. The Merced chamber of commerce contributed $300 to a fund for the purpose. Individual citizens and business men made contributions. The campaign committee numbered some fifteen members; and C. M. Cross, of Merced, was chosen as its chairman. To him, more than to any other one man, from this time on until his defeat as director in February, 1923, is due the credit for carrying on the work. He gave of his time, his energy, his means-this much others did also-but more than all he gave of his splendid business ability and experience, and of his ability to stand firm under fire. He was the target for lies and vilification; but his hand guided the district through its critical days.
The opposition to the district held a mass-meeting at the city hall in Merced and formed an organization called the Merced Protection League, the name signifying their purpose to protect themselves and those who might become associated with them from what they be- lieved would prove a too great burden of assessment. They opened offices and employed a publicity man, and took other steps to make their opposition to the project effective. There was a hotly waged campaign throughout the summer and fall of 1919, until the election for voting on the question of whether the district should be formed, and for electing officers for it in case it carried.
It is necessary to add here that the proposed boundaries of the district had been laid out definitely, and the district divided into five divisions, each to be represented by a director. At the election the project carried by something over 1900 votes for to something over 900 against. L. L. Burchell was elected director for Division One, around Le Grand; C. M. Cross, director of Division Two, including an easterly portion of the City of Merced and the country out towards Lingard; C. E. Kocher, director of Division Three, including the remainder of Merced and the McSwain, Robla, and Franklin neighborhoods ; Mrs. Matie Root Langdon, director of Division Four, including the Atwater country; and L. D. Love, director of Division Five, including the Livingston country. L. A. Paine was elected col- lector ; W. D. Snyder, assessor; and C. B. Harrell, treasurer. The board organized on December 8, 1919, by electing C. M. Cross chairman, and employed Walter D. Wagner, who had carried the campaign for the organization of the district to a successful termina- tion, as manager.
The task which confronts the directors of any newly organized irrigation district is a heavy one. This one had several complica-
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tions of its own thrown in for good measure. There was the strong and active and well-organized opposition. There was a system of irrigation canals ready constructed, it is true; but they belonged to the Crocker-Huffman Land & Water Company, who were quite na- turally inclined to get as good a price as they could for them. We may be sure that the efforts of the farm bureau's committee to get a price from them had not produced any tangible results; there was no one with authority to deal with them for their system until the district was organized. One of the problems which hung over the district board from the beginning was this one of the purchase of the Crocker-Huffman system.
Besides this, and in fact constituting the chief difficulty as soon as it came to be known that the reservoir site at Exchequer was the one to be worked on, there was the hard and unescapable physical fact that the Yosemite Valley Railroad Company had its tracks up the Merced River Canyon, within less than a hundred feet of the water, and the reservoir would necessitate the relocation of a long section of this railroad-something like seventeen miles, it eventually proved. Another problem which presented itself as soon as it became definitely known that the 300-foot-high dam at Exchequer was the one deter- mined upon, was the disposition of the large quantity of hydro-elec- tric power which would be developed, and for the sale of which a con- tract was afterward entered into with the San Joaquin Light & Power Corporation for twenty years, with an option on the part of the dis- trict to renew it for another twenty, at a price which under the con- tract was to be fixed by the Railroad Commission of California, and which was so fixed at four and one-half mills per kilowatt-hour.
The railroad and power problems, however, did not immediately present themselves. Surveys of a sketchy nature previously made had led to the general conclusion that what had come to be known as the Dry Creek reservoir site would be the one chosen. This had been the site contemplated when the attempt was made in 1914 to form a dis- trict, and was the one in most people's thoughts now. This site the Crocker-Huffman Company, when the 1914 plan was in contempla- tion, had taken pains to purchase at a price which was considerably higher than its value as range land, for they had been unable to keep their purpose secret and the owners had seized the opportunity to get a good price. The site consisted of some 20,000 acres forming the large shallow basin of Dry Creek, beginning just over the bluff some two or three miles north of Snelling. Any layman could see that dams could be built and water impounded in it-a lot of water. No one up to this time had been in a position or found it worth while to find out how good a site it was, what its drawbacks might be, beyond the obvious fact that it was not on the river, or what it would
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cost, or to find out what other possible sites there might be and how they compared with this one.
The board of the new district was now in a position to find out these things with exactness for the first time, and they proceeded to do so. On February 3, 1920, they employed J. D. Galloway, of San Francisco, to make an engineering investigation and report on the best water supply for the district, and the cost of the necessary works to store and deliver it. Mr. Galloway put on a considerable force of engineers, surveyors, and draftsmen and made a very complete investigation and report. The report was filed with the board of directors on January 18, 1921, and consisted of about 500 type- written pages, accompanied by maps, tables, and graphs.
Galloway's investigation of the Dry Creek reservoir site showed him that some of its defects were very serious. It would necessarily be shallow, and evaporation would be great. Investigations by Pro- fessor Andrew Lawson, geologist of the University of California, indicated that seepage would also be great. It would require a large and expensive diverting canal, some seven miles in length, to bring the water from the river; and when the water was there, it would be on the wrong side of the river, so that the plans necessarily would include another canal to run it back to the river at the present divert- ing dam and across as it was needed. The type of dam it called for was an earth dam, or rather one large and several smaller ones. The soil of the site consisted of only a few inches of earth upon a hard Ione formation, and material would have to be scraped from a prohibitive distance. The low dam would afford no praticable hydro- electric power development possibilities. To cap all of these, the site was so low that when it had been drained as low as any canal delivering water across the river at the diverting dam could drain it, there would remain 80,000 acre-feet of water still in the reservoir -more than a quarter of the whole contemplated storage. And in addition to all of these things, or partly because of them, the cost was prohibitive, or so near so as to indicate that it was desirable to seek another site if possible.
With the idea of finding a site suitable for power development as well as storage, to reduce the total net cost by bringing the dis- trict back part of what it would have to expend, Galloway turned to the Merced River Canyon. Here he had a deep and narrow gorge, which would mean a high dam and a consequently high head of water. Moreover, the got away from the expensive canals for divert- ing the water several miles from the river and bringing it back across the river again; but he at once ran hard and fast against the fact that the Yosemite Valley Railroad occupied the canyon. He did not con- fine his investigations to Dry Creek and Exchequer alone. The Dry
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Creek project included smaller reservoirs on Burns Creek and another small creek south of the river; and he also investigated possible sites further up the river, even as far up as Little Yosemite. Weighing all his facts, he recommended the Exchequer site. He estimated that the total cost of the project, with this reservoir, including building the dam and power house, relocating the Yosemite Valley Railroad, purchasing the Crocker system or paralleling it, and extending and enlarging it to carry water to the whole district, would be about $14,- 500,000, and that from the sale of the power which could be developed the district should realize approximately $500,000 a year, enough to capitalize something over $8,000,000 of the total cost.
The board submitted Galloway's report to the State Bonding Commission as required under the law. The State engineer worked over his estimates. Henry Hawgood was employed by the district. at the request of the Bonding Commission and the State engineer, one of the commission's members, to make a special investigation and report on the matter of the relocation of the railroad. He made some reduction in Galloway's estimate of $3,000,000 for this item. The result of the Bonding Commission's investigation of the matter was that they recommended that a bond issue of $12,000,000 be what should be submitted to the people to vote on. The district put on a vigorous campaign for the bonds, and the $12,000,000 were voted on November 22, 1921, just three days short of two years after the district had been carried at the first election. A majority was re- quired; the vote was 2027 for and 1146 against.
Meanwhile, on May 20, 1921, after a good deal of negotiating back and forth, the district had entered into a contract with the Crocker-Huffman Company for the purchase of their system of $2,250,000.
The job for which Galloway had been hired was finished. He had been paid $25,000 a year. The board now advertised for an engineer to carry on the construction work, and on January 3, 1922, employed Rex C. Starr, who had recently completed the Kerckhoff power dam on the San Joaquin for the San Joaquin Light & Power Corporation, as chief engineer of the district at a salary of $15,000 a year. On January 18, 1922, pursuant to the contract made the 20th of the preceding May, the district purchased the Crocker-Huff- man system for $2,250,000. This included the canals and laterals, the diverting dam on the river, the small Lake Yosemite Reservoir, and the company's water rights.
Starr set vigorously to work. There was the canal system to enlarge and to extend to a region which had suddenly grown from about 50,000 acres to about 173,000, including the entire Planada and Le Grand sections in the new part besides a lot of land else- where. There were the dam and power plant to be designed. There
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was the railroad relocation survey to be made in final and detailed form, for both Galloway's and Hawgood's surveys had purposely been limited, as a matter of economy, to sufficient work to give such an idea as was needed for the purpose of the estimates. There were permits to be obtained from the federal power commission for the construction of the dam, by reason of the fact that some government land was to be flooded; and there was the approval of their engineers of the plans for the dam.
One change that had been made in Galloway's plans involved the canal to supply the Planada and Le Grand region. Galloway's plans contemplated that the water for these sections would not be run through the power plant at the foot of the dam, but would be diverted near the top of the dam and carried through a high line canal through a cut across a pass in the foothills and around at a height sufficient to command the whole eastern part of the district by gravity. During 1921 a committee from the Livingston section, which with the adop- tion of the Exchequer site for the reservoir had become hostile to the prosecution of the plans, appeared before the board of directors and asked that an engineer be employed to seek further with a view to finding out if some other reservoir site could not be found. This com- mittee and those it represented had an idea that one might be found on Canal Creek in the vicinity of Amsterdam. Pursuant to their request the board employed E. C. Eaton, who had been an assistant of Galloway during the work of 1920. Eaton, as was to have been expected after the careful survey of the whole situation which Gallo- way had made, found no adequate new reservoir site, but he made a recommendation that the plans be so changed that the high line canal to the eastern part of the district would be eliminated, all of the water be run through the power plant, thus increasing the power developed, and the water for the Le Grand section be carried in the main canal to Lake Yosemite and thence through a canal as high as practicable, and that the portions of the land which could not be reached otherwise be supplied with water by boosting it by large pumping plants situated in the country back of Planada. This modi- fication was adopted.
Starr did no construction work on the dam, power house, or rail- road-what had come to be designated as the upper works. He did, however, carry the canal system practically to completion. This was a big job in itself; but this actual construction work, part of which was done under contract and part under the direction of the district's engineers, was perhaps the least trying part of Starr's job. There was a tremendous lot of work in the matter of plans for the dam and power house. There were numerous and difficult negotiations with the Yosemite Valley Railroad Company with reference to the reloca- tion, both as to engineering features and as to the compensation which
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the company was to receive from the district. The matter of the compensation was finally settled by a board of three arbitrators.
In February, 1923, W. D. Wagner resigned as manager of the district and E. V. Givens was elected director from Division Two in place of C. M. Cross. The opposition forces had waged a strong fight against Wagner, and among other things they had raised the cry of economy as to the $500 a month salary he received. The board, after the election of Givens, consisted of L. L. Burchell from Division One, who had held from the beginning; Givens from Division Two; C. E. Kocher from Division Three, who had also served from the beginning; George S. Bloss, Jr., from Division Four, who had succeeded Mrs. Matie Root Langdon, resigned; and Dr. C. L. Gar- vin, the third director from Division Five at Livingston, L. D. Love having been succeeded by L. E. Danley there, and Danley having afterwards been recalled and Dr. Garvin elected in his place. The board determined, in response to the cry for economy, to dispense with a manager, and Starr assumed the duties of that office for the time being in addition to those of engineer. The office of secretary, which Wagner had held as well as that of manager, was filled by the appointment of H. P. Sargent.
Starr was young and vigorous, and was a worker of the "high pressure" type. On the Kerckhoff job he had suffered something in the nature of a nervous breakdown, and the fear of a repetition of this appears to have haunted him now. He carried on his heavy duties, however, took a part in the civic and social life of the com- munity, and bucked the difficulties presented by the opposition. The strain proved too much, and on May 2, 1923, the community was inexpressibly shocked to learn that his body had been found in the shallow water of one of the large new canals back of Planada, dead of a shot self-inflicted while he had been temporarily deranged.
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