USA > California > Los Angeles County > Pasadena > History of Pasadena, comprising an account of the native Indian, the early Spanish, the Mexican, the American, the colony, and the incorporated city, occupancies of the Rancho San Pasqual, and its adjacent mountains, canyons, waterfalls and other objects of interest: being a complete and comprehensive histo-cyclopedia of all matters pertaining to this region > Part 68
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DIVISION EIGHT -SCIENCE.
year, or at some faster rate ;* but when it reached the open plain where the sun had longer and stronger power upon it, the process of melting away com- menced, and the ice sheet thinned out to a fine edge till it disappeared en- tirely, but formed terminal and lateral moraines and made its own peculiar deposits - thus leaving a record in the rugged language of its own day, which by careful and diligent study we can read and translate into the milder language of our day.
NOTE .- After this chapter was written, I met .Capt. D. M. Greene, of Co. E, 6th U. S. Inf .- a graduate of West Point, and thirty years in the government service, most of the time in California and adjoining territories, and often making official reports to the government on the topography, geology, and other natural features of unexplored regions of mountain and desert. I asked him to investigate the geological problem of glacial pheno- mena in this region, and let me know his conclusion about it. He did so and here is his report :
PASADENA, CAL., June 2d, 1895.
DR. H. A. REID,- Dear Sir :- Referring to the topographical and geological aspect of the country along the west slope of the Pacific Coast Range of mountains, and particularly that portion of it in the immediate vicinity of Pasadena, there opens to the scientist a wide field of speculation. The persons who have sought to determine the causes which have disturbed the primitive geological formation of the earth's crust have found sufficient evidence of the intense glaciation of the Pacific Coast. There are abundant traces of glacial action along the foot-hills and valleys north and west of this city. The gorge known as "Devil's Gate " presents strong evidence of glacial action. The position of the immense boulders found at that place show conclusively that they came there by glacial transportation. They are water-worn, but their size precludes the possibility of water carriage. Some of the rocks are peculiarly marked by grooves and scratches such as could not be produced by the action of water. Portions of some of the boulders are highly polished, as if glazed with potter's enamel. The scratching and polishing must be the result of the boulders being pushed or dragged along under a moving mass of ice, and this theory seems to afford the only satis- factory explanation of the phenomena. There are many other similar evidences of glacial action to be found in Verdugo canyon and along the south side of La Canyada. Yours truly. D. M. GREENE.
I am also informed by Harold S. Channing, our most proficient local metereologist, that he had noticed evidences of glacier work in Tejunga canyon and in La Canyada.
Glacial Till .- When deposits are made by running water they are sub- jected to an assorting process by which the coarser and heavier portions remain in place first, as large blocks or erratics ; then boulders, cobblestones, coarse gravel, fine gravel, coarse sand, fine sand, and last or farthest down the stream, will be the finer particles that eventually settle and cohere in beds of
*"I found its rate of motion to be little more than an inch a day in the middle, showing a great contrast to the Muir Glacier in Alaska, which near the front flows at a rate of from five to ten feet in twenty-four hours."-John Muir's "Mountains of California," p. 34.
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HISTORY OF PASADENA.
clay, mud, silt, or alluvium, according to their kind of mineral substance and amount of water in combination. But the materials brought down from moun- tains by the glacier or ice-sheet method are not thus assorted .* On the con- trary, they are intermixed, so that a section or vertical cut in this kind of a de- posit will show alluvium and sand and worn gravel and angular gravel [breccia], rounded stones and angular stones, all heterogeneously interblended. This is called "glacial till," and this is the sort of formation that we find all over the plain on which Pasadena is built ; yet there are frequent instances of assortation made by running streams in the melting edges or foot-line of the great ice-sheet, besides water washings of later and post-glacial time ; and this accounts for the special cobblestone beds, gravel beds, clay beds, sand beds, etc., which are often encountered in digging for cellars, cesspools, sewer pipes, railrood cuts, wells, and other excavations - all which do not change the main fact that "glacial till " is the type of our general surface soil, and in some places for a hundred or more feet down, until the gravel and boulder filling of the ancient pre-glacial river beds are reached.
Terminal Moraines .- It is the habit of a glacial ice-sheet to slowly, steadily, continuously slide down to the place where its foot is melted away, dropping there its terminal load of stones and debris from the mountains ; but here the rivulets formed from the melting ice will carry off to lower parts of the country the finer materials, leaving scarcely anything but a bed of stones ; and this sort of a deposit is called a "terminal moraine," the best example of which that I have yet noticed here is at the south front of Mr. J. E. Jardine's place, between Raymond creek and Los Robles creek, where the roadway winds around southeastward down the cobblestone bluff.+ [The cobblestone walls forming the bluff banks of an arroyo or valley of erosion since the glacial period, are a different type of formation.]
Lateral Moraines. - These are formed by the moving ice-sheet forcing stones into a heaped-together mass, or sort of rude wall-line along the edges of its path in a canyon or valley. But torrential streams rushing down across a valley or floodplain will also do the same thing on a smaller scale ; and while I have found plenty of these in the floodplains of the Arroyo Seco, and Eaton Canyon, and the San Gabriel river, I have not as yet noted any that seemed to be distinctively of glacial movement except worn boulders imbedded high up along the north slope of the Verdugo or La Canyada hills, and along the east contour of Pasadena's Arroyo hills.
Boulder Clay .- A glacial ice-sheet carries stones of all sorts, large and small, smooth and rough, frozen solid into its bottom and sides ; and as it moves they grind and scour the rock surfaces along the bottom and sides of
*"Till .- An unassorted, commingled, and chiefly unstratified mass of clay, sand, pebbles and boulders, deposited directly by glacier-ice, not by glacier-waters."-Standard Dictionary.
+ " The compact ice appeared on all the lower portions of the glacier, though gray with dirt and cobblestones embedded in it. *
* I noticed boulders of every size on their journeys to the ter- minal moraine-journeys of more than a hundred years withcut a single stop, night or day, winter or summer."-Mountains of California, p. 32-33.
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DIVISION EIGHT-SCIENCE.
the glacier's slow but powerful pathway. The particles thus rasped off are ground to finest powder between the upper and nether millstones and pulped with water to a paste, or are carried out as the impalpable coloring matter of muddy waters flowing from the sun-kissed foot of the glacier. This fine mud material is often deposited by gentle sedimentation in some part of a glacial lake, or a stream where there happens to be still water, or an eddy, and will thus ultimately form a bed of clay intermingled with boulders, cobblestones and other glacial products. And clay formations of this char- acter are found along our glacial-terrace line of water-bearing bluffs. It was first discovered by Judge Eaton when he tunneled for water at his " Hillcrest " home place on Sylvan Avenne, in 1882. It was later detected by J. De Barth Shorb in his numerous borings for artesian water, and he called it the " clay dyke." In 1894 it was cut into by Engineer Gervaise Purcell with the water tunnel which he made for Mrs. Gov. Stoneman in the foot of Oak Knoll canyon, and at other points. [See his letter in chap- ter on Hydrology.] But a surface deposit of boulder clay is also found near the foot of Lake Avenue, where the Simons Bros. are quarrying it for their steam brick factory at that location.
Pipeclay .- This term technically covers such clays as are suitable for the manufacture of common coarser grades of crockery, and earthenware pipes for drainage and other purposes ; and should be nearly or quite free from iron. A small bed of this material outcrops as a grayish-white deposit in the escarpment of the Arroyo bluff where the graded roadway leads down to the Linda Vista bridge ; but I think there is not enough of it to be of any commercial value. Lower down is another stratum of fine clay, but of ironrust color and quality. These are the clay formations which Harold S. Channing's well cut through in 1887, at a depth of 100 feet below the surface. [See chapter on Hydrology.]
Glacial Drift .- This is a general term, comprehending in some meas- ure all the foregoing forms of glacial deposits; but applied more technically to large areas of gravel and cobblestone deposits which were evidently of glacial or subglacial origin.
Glacial Meadows .- This term is applied by Prof. Le Conte and John Muir to filled-up and soil-covered glacial lakes which now form areas and stretches of treeless pasture lands. A considerable portion of Pasadena's area was of this character, and was utilized as pasture land by the old Spanish padres in the days when the San Gabriel Mission held possession here.
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HISTORY OF PASADENA.
CHAPTER XXX.
HYDROLOGY : Our Geological Basin .- Judge Eaton's Views .- Change of Climate .- Wells of Pasadena .- Artesian Borings .- Mr. Shorb's Geological Section .- Dry Tunnels .- The Glacial Terrace.
HYDROLOGY.
This comprises all that has been learned from geological investigations, and from actual work done by hydraulic engineers, water tunnelers, well diggers, and artesian drills, in regard to Pasadena's natural sources of water supply ; and this includes the mountain absorption of winter rains and snows, besides the great geological terrace basins-the filled-up ancient lakes over which the city of Pasadena is built. These lakes were filled at bottom with boulders, cobblestones, sand, gravel, and all sorts of debris from the mountains, and then a topping of tillable soil varying in thickness from one foot to over one hundred feet. The ancient gulf or lake basin under the city is over 1000 feet deep in some places, and the lower 900 feet of this is simply a vast water bed, up to the level of its natural outlets by the springs in the Arroyo banks on the west, and those of the glacial terrace on the south extending from Columbia Hill eastward to San Marino (J. De- Barth Shorb's place) and Winston Heights. In 1884 I had commenced my researches in regard to the geology and hydrology of Pasadenaland ; but in 1893 I spent several months at Echo Mountain and Mount Lowe, by gener- ous courtesy of Prof. T. S. C. Lowe, making a more close and careful investigation of our mountain formations and their water storage than I had been able to do before. Then in January, 1894, I submitted a report before the Science Association of Southern California on the results and conclu- sions I had reached ; and in this I spoke of Pasadena's great underlying water basin, with its lower lip at Raymond Hill and the canyon outlets in that east-and-west range of bluffs, giving numerous incidents of my own collecting to illustrate the case, and imagined that I " had a patent " on that geological basin or old filled-up lake theory. But when I set out to pre- pare a complete history of Pasadena I solicited some contributions for it from our veteran old settler, Judge B. S. Eaton, and he responded to my call with such a generous hand that in nearly half of my chapters I have something from him worth preserving. The water question had been one of his hob- bies since his first settlement here about twenty-five years ago; and among. the matters which he wrote out for this volume is a very clear and distinct grasp of the doctrine of our underlying water basins, which so far as I have learned, he was the first man to trace and define in their relations to Pasa- dena's fluvial interests. Thus my own "patent" on it is knocked out by the Judge's right of prior discovery, and here I present his narrative:
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DIVISION EIGHT - SCIENCE.
JUDGE EATON ON PASADENA'S WATER SUPPLY.
About the year 1882 I ran a series of levels around that section of the San Pasqual ranch embraced between Columbia and Buena Vista streets in South Pasadena, extending the survey as far east as the waters supplying Marengo Rancho (Raymond creek). Half a dozen wells had been sunk over this territory ; and taking their depth and comparing the height of the water in them with the levels of the natural outlets, the theory of there being a regular basin of water underlying the plain above was confirmed. A further survey demonstrated the fact that some four acres of my home- place was below the level of the surface of the water in the basin ; but there was no natural outlet for it on my premises ; so I determined to tap the hill with a tunnel. Before commencing this work, however, I sank a prospect- ing shaft at the top of the bench, on my extreme north line, in order to be sure and get on the inside of the supposed sandstone rim of the San Pas- qual basin which our state geologist, Prof. J. D. Whitney, had mentioned to B. D. Wilson as his explanation of the peculiar conditions of water supply existing here, and in which I fully believed at that time. My surveys in- dicated the level of the water in the basin to be about forty feet below the surface of the ground at that point, and, sure enough, at that depth we en- countered it. I felt satisfied then that the Professor's theory was correct ; and running levels down the hill to a point corresponding with the bottom of the shaft, I commenced tunneling. I had driven the tunnel a distance of ninety-one feet under the hill, and as yet encountered no sandstone or ledge of any kind, but had observed that the floor of the tunnel was very moist, as if water were near-in fact, we were only four inches above the surface of the water in the basin. But where was the rim of sandstone? Follow- ing back, we found upon examination water at the same depth up to a point thirty-five feet from the mouth of the tunnel. Here then must be the point of interception. Upon a critical examination a stratum about twenty inches in thickness, of very compact clay, was found to have been pierced, and outside of this no water could be found. So that constituted the dam .* A dozen tunnels have been driven into this same bench east of this point since, and in every instance the moment this stratum was passed, water was found. Where Pasadena is there was at some period in the past an im- mense depression. In truth, I believe there must have been at least two, if not three, distinct basins lying parallel with the Sierra Madre range of mountains. The first had for its boundaries on the west the country lying along the Arroyo Seco, where the Canyada ranch is, and on the south by a line drawn in an easterly direction from the Devil's Gate. The second basin was bounded on the south by a line drawn from the Orange Grove Avenue reservoir, also in an easterly direction. The third probably com- prised the section now embraced between Colorado and Columbia streets.
* Prof. Whitney caught the idea of a great geological water basin north of Mr. Wilson's spring" bearing line of bluffs. This was in 1861. No borings had at that time been made to detect the hidden local bed of boulder-clay, hence from surface indications he naturally supposed the barrier rim to be a saudstone formation. And he did not recognize the signs of glacial action, for at that time there was very little knowledge of glacier work in the United States; in fact, American glaciology has almost en- tirely been built up since that time ; and hence these two failures are no discredit to his proficiency as a geologist. The fact was, the state had sent him out to find mineral wealth, rather than purely scientific knowledge, and he had to chase for gold -all other geological knowledge gained being only accidental or incidental, as tributary to that oue main pursuit for precious metals. I make this explanation in justice to Prof. Whitney, who has been wrongfully criticized and censured for the incompleteness of his geological work in this part of the state. The Farnsworth pamphlet of 1883, page 51, says : " The theory was advanced years ago by Prof. Whitney that this entire portion of the San Gabriel valley is underlaid by a vast subterranean body of water."
36
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HISTORY OF PASADENA.
At some time the waters poured down through Fair Oaks Avenue and found their way into the San Gabriel river.
[NOTE .- This corresponds almost perfectly with the three ancient ter- race lakes which I had described in explaining the great antiquity of the stone implements found buried so deep on Reservoir Hill, which was before I knew anything about Judge Eaton's views on this matter. I give him credit for being the first to discern the true character and relative positions of these several water beds .- ED.]
Later on, and after they began to break away through and down the Arroyo, they were arrested by the bluff near Lincoln Park, which at that time probably extended to Garvanza and connected with the range of hills on the San Rafael ranch. [NOTE .- This is the same that I had described as a fourth terrace lake .- ED.] The waters turned through South Pasa- dena, and thence in a southeasterly direction to the bed of the San Gabriel river. But finally breaking through this last barrier they coursed on toward the Los Angeles river without meeting with further obstruction.
A phenomenon has occurred within the life of Pasadena with the water supply of the springs in the Arroyo Seco that goes far in my mind toward corroborating the theory of there being two or three distinct and separate basins. Ten or fifteen years ago my son Fred, civil engineer, and I were passing up the Arroyo, and noted the flow at the Sheep Corral springs. He estimated it at twenty-two inches -certainly not to exceed twenty-four. At a later period, Mr. Schuyler, the noted hydraulic engineer, was employed to measure the waters from the various springs in the Arroyo. Devil's Gate he gave as ninety-six inches, and two inches waste, making ninety-eight inches there. Under his direction, Mr. McQuilling, the zanjero of the Pasadena Water Co., measured the Sheep Corral springs, and from his data Schuyler gave as an approximate of the flow, fifty inches. In speaking of inches, miner's inches are meant, one of which equals about 13,000 gallons per day of twenty-four hours. Last year I visited the springs with Mr. P. M. Green, and at that time, midsummer, there was not less than 150 inches of water there ; and that after the water had been picked up and diverted into the pipes at Devil's Gate. Now comes the question, what had brought about this wonderful increase? My theory is that the water had been carried over the divide between the two basins in pipes and deposited in the lower basin for a term of years until the ground had become thoroughly saturated, thus augmenting the supply ; consequently there was an in- creased flow through the natural drain at the Sheep Corral springs. What strengthened my belief is that the springs above have not shown a correspond- ing increase, though their average discharge has increased of late years. That I attribute to the fact that the waters of all the little streams from the mountains, which formerly were principally lost by evaporation, have been gathered and poured onto the lands covering the upper basin until it has be- come saturated, and now add their volume to the supply of that basin. This is the only theory that I can evolve from the circumstances, since the water shed has not been extended, and the average annual rainfall has shown no material increase during the past few years.
EXPLANATION-CHANGE OF CLIMATE.
This increased flow from the springs is a very interesting fact, yet very simple of explanation, and is connected with the change of climate which is
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DIVISION EIGHT -SCIENCE.
going on here. From Devil's Gate eastward to Monks Hill and beyond there is a subterranean barrier ledge, or "divide," as Judge Eaton calls it, which serves as a submerged dam to hold the waters that are percolating , down from the foothills and highland slopes, and compel them to find an outlet at the lowest point of the barrier, which in this case happens to be the Tibbetts springs and flutterwheel springs at Devil's Gate. Next, from Orange Grove Reservoir Hill eastward to Summit and Marengo Avenues at Chestnut street, or above the Santa Fe railroad crossing, there is another barrier ledge which compels the percolating waters to find outlet at the low- est point again, which in this case happens to be at Sheep Corral springs. And a similar underground topography is repeated at Columbia Hill, Ray- mond Hill, and the Glacial Terrace line of bluffs extending thence eastward.
Here, then, are our three principal underground basins or lakes. Now, twenty-five or thirty years ago Pasadenaland was a parched, arid, barren desert, all through the "dry season," and from its plains a dry, hot air was radiated or reflected with scorching effect. The mountains held no less water in store then than now, but it all ran to waste down the canyons until lost in their sandy outwashes, instead of being piped out to moisten and fertilize the dried up plains. But since that time the piping has been done, and many thousands of acres that aforetime lay as a scorched plain during four to seven months of the year, are now supplied with moisture, and are covered with vines, fruit trees, flowers, shrubbery, grass lawns, hedges, and trees of stately growth. And thus by necessary consequence the local climate is changed- has become more moist, more humid, and in other ways modified both by increased evaporation from the soil and by the subtle chemistry of vigorous vegetation. The long stretches of railroad trackage and electric wires, the friction of moving trains, the diffusion of their volumes of steam and smoke into the atmosphere, etc., have also worked somewhat to change the electri- cal conditions prevailing, so that they, too, are different from what they were before this region was wrought upon by the art of man. These are points as to change of climate-both the fact of it and the factors of it. And now I will return to the matter of increased flowage from our springs, as mentioned by Judge Eaton. All the water piped out from the Arroyo Seco and Millard canyon and used either for irrigation or domestic purposes on any lands or lots south of Monks Hill, west of Los Robles Avenue and north of Villa street, is to this area a clear addition of that amount of water which would otherwise have gone to waste down the Arroyo bed, and never touched this land. This volume of water is not lost, except a little by evaporation, but after serving its special uses for man it sinks away into the ground, perco- lates down to the general water bed, and finds outlet again at Sheep Corral springs, thus increasing the flow there. Other areas and other springs are affected in a similar way and by the same processes; but waters that are used east of upper Los Robles or lower Marengo avenues do not return to
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HISTORY OF PASADENA.
the Arroyo Seco, but go to increase by so much the flowage in Mill canyon, Wilson canyon, Mission canyon, San Marino canyon, or the Craig Avenue swale which extends from foot of Craig Avenue down between the old Win- ston and Foord farms to the cienega or bog at county road angle, where Foord's, artesian well flows apace, and from which bog Foord's creek arises. And water used south of Villa or Walnut streets, and west of Marengo Avenue go to increase the flowage in the Raymond Improvement Co.'s tun- nel at Foothill street, and the flowage in Raymond creek. But this creek supply is now heavily tapped by the great well 8 x 12, and twenty- five feet deep, in the Electric R. R. car house : and also by the Santa Fe R. R. well 8 x 8, and sixteen feet deep at Raymond station.
In Pasadena's colony days much discussion was had and much experi- menting done in regard to a water supply for each household by digging a well on their own premises. During the winter of 1884-85, I made a careful research on this line and prepared a report which was printed in the Valley Union of March 20, 1885. This report was the first collection of data ever made here on the well-water problem, and led to my conclusions about Pasa- dena being built over subterranean lakes of very ancient geological contour. It is a matter of historic interest pertaining to the time before we were a city, and hence I quote the Union's article.
THE WELLS OF PASADENA.
Dr. Reid, while gathering up insurance business, has also gathered some statistics of the wells in Pasadena, which will be of curious interest as well as practical value to many of our readers. The list of locations, depth of digging and amount of water in these wells will throw much light on the problem of our permanent water resources, as well as on the geological char- acter of this portion of the San Gabriel valley.
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