A chapter in California history full of intrigue and conflict: More than a century ago, agents working undercover for Los Angeles posed as farmers and ranchers as they bought land and water rights across the Owens Valley. Their plan laid the foundation for the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which in 1913 began sending the valley’s water to the growing city 233 kilometers away.
Residents were so angry in the 1920s that some staged a series of attacks on the canal, blowing it up with dynamite.
But there was also one major nonviolent protest, an act of civil disobedience 100 years ago that is being commemorated this weekend with a series of free community events in Lone Pine.
In that brazen act of resistance on November 16, 1924, a group of about 70 unarmed men took control of the spillway and control gates north of Lone Pine and began to release all the water back into the dry channel of the Owens River. That action, called the Alabama Gates occupation, grew as more than 700 citizens of all ages came to celebrate the takeover during four days of festivities, bringing food and barbecue as a protest. it became a community picnic.
“It’s an important historical event that needs to be highlighted,” said Kim Stringfellow, an artist, teacher and author who is organizing the centennial event. “It deserves to be recognized in the history of Owens Valley, to show how this community stood up to this big city with a lot of power and money.”
Stringfellow lives in Joshua Tree and his interest in the history of the resistance effort in the Owens Valley grew out of his research on California water history.
A weekend event, it was called Alabama Gates 2024begins Friday, with an opening luncheon that includes discussions with conservationists, local Native leaders, historians and other experts, and a picnic in the park where a local bluegrass band will perform. Attendees can sign up for birding tours of dry Owens Lake.
Stringfellow said the canal’s history is still relevant today and will be part of a wider discussion about the past, present and future of water in the region. He said he hopes the rally will bring greater awareness to that history and that much of LA’s water continues to come from the Eastern Sierra.
“We really have to look behind to consider what is ahead of us,” he said.
Stringfellow said one of his goals is to help create a conversation about how Los Angeles can reduce its dependence on water from the Eastern Sierra and other sources hundreds of miles away.
Another focus is the history of the Native people, the Paiute and the Shoshone, who decades before the LA water was taken saw their ancestral lands taken and taken by whites.
Native Americans call their land Payahuunadü, “the place where water always flows,” said Kathy Bancroft, historic preservation officer for the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Tribe.
This village gave us everything we needed. Water was everywhere,” he said.
Heavy snow flows in the Sierra Nevada flowed into Owens Lake in 2023.
(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)
The Paiute and Shoshone suffered after the arrival of the settlers, including 1863, when the soldiers. it forced about 1,000 Aboriginal people marching out of the village to Fort Tejonabout 175 miles. Bancroft’s grandmother, who was a little girl at the time, was among those who escaped the castle and made the journey home safely on foot.
In the early 1900s, Aboriginal people were just coming out of hiding to work in mines and farms, Bancroft said, and they didn’t take part in the 1924 aqueduct protests because they were “in a survival mode.”
His tribe’s reservation was established in 1939, along with those of three other tribes. But their water rights have not been resolved, an issue Bancroft plans to address during the event.
“We are dealing with taking care of everything in this valley, and it is difficult when there is no water where it used to be,” he said. “It’s been a really weird issue, and it needs to be prioritized and resolved.”
He and other stakeholders say they would like to see Los Angeles take less water from the Eastern Sierra.
“Our environment, our species are still suffering here because of unhealthy levels of emissions,” said Wendy Schneider, executive director of Friends of the Inyo, the conservation group that co-sponsored the event. “If we could reduce the base significantly, like 25% to 30%, it would make a big difference to our ecosystem here.”
Schneider said the effects of water withdrawal are visible in areas where native vegetation has dried up because the groundwater level has decreased. He said he thinks that while some environmental mitigation projects in Los Angeles have worked well, others have not.
“I hope this event will remind people that everything is wrong,” said Schneider. “We all need to work together to make this great organization do the right thing and work with us in a meaningful way so that we can have a healthy environment here.”
The Los Angeles Aqueduct carries water south through the Owens Valley.
(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
The environmental effects of water diversion in LA have been a source of contention for years. Over the past three decades, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has been doing a lot of work dust reduction projects in a dry lake at Owens Lake, and he went invested approximately $2.5 billion in efforts.
Stringfellow said he invited the DWP to participate in the event and requested access for the group to visit the Alabama Gates facility.
“Unfortunately, key staff were unable to attend on the day and we were unable to accept the request,” said Ellen Cheng, DWP spokeswoman. “We regularly participate and support many community events in the Owens Valley and Eastern Sierra and would welcome the opportunity to participate in an event in the future.”
He said the DWP supports and collaborates with various local organizations in the region. And this week, the agency’s top officials joined Inyo County officials and residents for a committee meeting and tour of the Lower Owens River Project, a major river restoration effort.
Cheng noted that over the past 30 years, the DWP has reduced the amount of water flowing into the LA Aqueduct by 50% to “meet our environmental obligations in the Eastern Sierra.”
Water flows by gravity through canals, making water more economical than other imported city wells, which require electricity-intensive pumping. Cheng said water from the Eastern Sierra “remains an important and cost-effective part of LA’s water supply.”
Over the past five years, Los Angeles has imported nearly 90 percent of the city’s water, drawing supplies from the Colorado River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and the Eastern Sierra.
LA residents have made great strides in conserving water in recent years, using less today than they did a century ago, despite the city’s population growth.
The DWP has also invested in improving many local resources to reduce reliance on imported water and prepare for the increasing drought associated with climate change.
In one such project, the city will soon begin construction of a $740 million facility to turn dirty water into clean drinking water in the San Fernando Valley.
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