While looking for an item to post on the social media page, I discovered an interesting newspaper article from the California Water Documents collection on the building of the ‘Colorado Aqueduct’. The article talks about the speeding of the work related to building of the aqueduct by certain citizen groups and the engineers. The idea of the aqueduct was conceived by William Mulholland but the construction was headed by Frank E. Weymouth, the Metropolitan Water District chief engineer. This aqueduct was one of the largest projects that existed in California during the Great Depression. This project had given employment to more than 10,000 people in a year. It was one of the primary sources of drinking water for Southern California.
While I was doing research on the Colorado Aqueduct, I was directed to the page of the ‘Los Angeles Aqueduct’ that was the basis for the movie ‘Chinatown’ (1974), directed by Roman Polanski. The movie talks about the murder of the chief engineer who refuses to build an aqueduct, which was set on the background of the water wars that existed in California. There were a lot of controversies surrounding the ‘Los Angeles Aqueduct’ as it had completely sabotaged the agricultural land that existed in Owen’s Valley. ‘Chinatown’ (1974) being one of my favorite movies and screenplays, I was highly intrigued on finding an item on similar grounds.