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World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2017 394

William Mulholland: Father of the Los Angeles Municipal Water Supply System

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J. David Rogers, Ph.D., P.E., P.G., F.ASCE

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Professor and K. F. Hasselmann Chair in Geological Engineering, Missouri Univ. of Science
and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409. E-mail: rogersda@mst.edu

Abstract

William “Bill” Mulholland (1855-1935) a self-taught civil engineer, who at the zenith of his career
was the highest paid public official in California and the most respected man in Los Angeles in
1926. His storied career came to an abrupt end with the catastrophic failure of the St. Francis Dam
in March 1928. A native of Belfast, Mulholland took to the seas at age 15, and in 1878 took a job as
a ditch tender for the Los Angeles Water Company. He rose through the ranks to supervise the
drilling of wells and constructing a system of distribution. When the water company was absorbed
by the City in 1902, Mulholland hired as the general manager of a metered municipal water system.
He possessed a willingness to work in the field under difficult conditions and was a natural leader
and problem solver, who brought all of his projects in on time and on budget. For Bill Mulholland
and the hundreds of civil engineers whom he influenced, their challenge was that of harnessing
nature to build a better world, providing the water that was essential to the growth of southern
California. His crowning achievement was the First Los Angeles Aqueduct, constructed in 1906-
13. With a gravity fall of 3,260 feet and a length of 233 miles, no one imagined that its delivery
capacity would be found insufficient less than a decade after its completion.

FROM IRELAND TO LOS ANGELES

Most people raised in Los Angeles County are vaguely aware of the name Mulholland, because of
Mulholland Drive which follows the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains. Those living in the
Hollywood Hills may be aware of Mulholland Dam, the structure that retains Hollywood Reservoir,
or the Mulholland Memorial Fountain in nearby Griffith Park. Bill Mulholland was a giant of his
time, who, like the mythical Horatio Alger, who began his career as a common laborer, and capped
it as Chief Engineer of Los Angeles water supply system from 1886 until 1929.
Born in Belfast, Ireland on September 11, 1855, but raised in Dublin from age 5, going by
th
the nick-name “Willie.” When he was seven, his mother died shortly after delivering her 6 child.
Willie and his two brothers attended a local Christian Brothers School. Mulholland’s father re-
married three years later, and young Bill decided to took to the seas at age 15, during an age when
Great Britain sported the largest merchant fleet in the world. Willie landed in New York as a
journeyman sailor four years later (in 1874) and found seasonal employment in Michigan logging in
the winters and as a sailor on Great Lakes freighters in the summers. In the fall of 1875 he met his
younger brother Hugh at the home of their deceased mother’s brother, Richard Deakers and his wife
Catherine, who operated a dry goods business in Pittsburgh (Mulholland, 2000). Here they
remained for almost two years, until their aunt and her six children booked passage on a steamer for

California, departing New York on December 9, 1876 with Willie and his brother Hugh as
stowaways. Discovered shortly before reaching Panama, the pair were unceremoniously dumped on
the customs dock in Colon, where they were obliged to walk the 50 miles across Panama because
they could not pay the $25 fare charged by the Panama Railroad (their aunt and her children took
the train and continued onto Los Angeles).

World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2017