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to operate flour mills, and, incidentally, it is recorded,
one of the town's first newspapers was printed on a press
driven by this form of water power.
It is a far cry from the water cart and the slow-
movi~g water-wheel to the gigantic water and hydro-
electric systems now owned and operated by the City of
Los Angeles. Where once a single barrel on wheels
sufficed to meet the people's needs, today 3,700 miles of
mains are maintained to carry water to the city's resi-
dents. Where once a crude old mill wheel supplied
the power demands of the village, today the largest
municipally-owned hydro-electric generating and distrib-
uting plant in the world flashes energy over eleven thou-
sand miles of copper wire to light the homes and operate
the factories of more than a million people.

CHAPTER II

The Search for Water

N RECENT years the Los
Angeles River has been pic-
tured by local wits as a
stream whose bed must be
sprinkled regularly to keep
down the dust.
Despite all the merry quips
coined at its expense, the
fact remains that, save for
a few scattering wells, the
Los Angeles River, for a period of 133 years, served
as the sole water source for this community. From the
day the pueblo was founded, in 1781, the river continued

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