William Mulholland brought water to L.A. He failed to stop a disastrous flood

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Set us as preferred The call that might have averted disaster came into William Mulholland’s office that morning.Stubborn, single-minded and tireless, lionized and controversial, the Los Angeles water boss was 72.

Fifteen years earlier, he had opened the great aqueduct that carried Sierra snowmelt to the San Fernando Valley and made the metropolis possible.Now, on March 12, 1928, a supervisor at the St.Francis Dam was calling to say there might be a problem.

Water was seeping from under the structure.It looked muddy, which might indicate real trouble — erosion in the foundation.Mulholland grabbed his assistant and told his chauffeur to head there.

The curved concrete gravity dam towered 1,835 feet above sea level in the San Francisquito Canyon, about 30 miles northwest of L.A.The reservoir recently had filled to its 12.4-billion gallon capacity for the first time.It was Mulholland’s 19th and final dam.

He had willed it into existence in his characteristic way, fast and without faultfinding inspectors to impede his vision.He gave the construction job to city workers, rather than invite bids (and complications) from contractors beyond his control.With little formal education, Mulholland had left his native Ireland in his teens, worked steamer ships on the Great Lakes, labored in lumber camps and prospected for gold.

He stowed away on a ship to reach the Pacific Coast but was thrown off and forced to cross the Isthmus of Panama by foot.In 1877, he got to Los Angeles, then a 10,000-person backwater, and began working for the water company as a zanjero, or ditch-digger.

He studied hydraulics, civil engineering and Shakespeare at the public library and impressed everyone with his pluck and problem-solving prowess.Now he was “The Chief,” the unquestioned czar of the city’s water department, with vast sway.As The Tim...