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Developin2 the State's Water EARLY DEVELOPMENT The American Indians who first inhabited the territory altered streambeds by driving in poles and erecting simple dams for catching salmon. The first signifi- cant development of California's water resources began in the late 1700s when Spanish padres used ditches to irrigate mission fields from nearby streams. But the Gold Rush of 1849 was the impetus for extensive development. The discovery of gold at John Sutter's mill on the American River brought thousands of miners to California to comb the Sierra Nevada toothills for riches. These fortune seekers built the state's first hydrau- lic works - reservoirs and more than 4,000 miles of ditches and flumes - to sluice out the elusive shining metal. Water was harnessed and blasted into hillsides to dislodge gold in a practice called "hydrau- lic mining." Debris resulting from these mining practices washed down from the mountains and choked rivers, inundated native salmon spawning grounds and caused serious problems with flooding for navigation and downstream water users. The American Indians, \\'110 {rrsl inhabited ,he territory, . . altered streamheds by dril'ing in poles and erecting simple dams for catching salmoll. As the gold began to diminish. California's new settlers sought their fortunes elsewhere - many in the fertile soils of the Central Valley and Delta. As farming grew, so did the need for a dependable water supply. While many areas experienced too liWe water, others had too much. In the maze of swamps. sloughs and marshlands that form the Delta, farmers began building levees around periodically sub- merged islands and pumped water trom behind them 6 to reclaim the land for agriculture. Between 1860 and 1930. most of the Delta's 350.000 acres of fresh water marsh were leveed, drained and planted. Elsewhere, groundwater pumping enabled farms and cities to flourish despite the aridity of southern and central California. However, groundwater levels be- gan to drop which caused an increase in pumping costs. This pointed out the need for a more efficient distribution of the state's surtace water supplies. Groups of farmers banded together. and coopera- tives and development companies were formed to finance and construct water projects in the San Joaquin Valley and southern California. The inherent problems associated with placing control of such a vital, public resource in private hands brought a move toward increasing public control. Numerous attempts were made to find a workable law under which public irrigation districts could be formed. It was not until a young Stanislaus County school teacher named C.C. Wright was elected to the state Legislature that those efforts came to fruition and the Wright Irrigation District Act of 1887 was enacted. The first irrigation district formed under the new law, Turlock Irrigation District, was organized the same year and others quickly followed suit. The act evolved into the California Irrigation District Act ot 1917. and paved the way for other types of water development and delivery districts. such as county water districts and special services districts. As early as 1875. the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) began work on the Sacramento and Feather rivers to improve navigation. In 1920, Col. Robert Bradford Marshall of the U.S. Geological Survey proposed a comprehensive, statewide plan for conveyance and storage of California's water supplies. This plan served as the framework for an eventual State Water Plan which later formed the basis tor the federal Central Valley Project (CVP). However, the history ot early water development in California also tells stories of tragedy. William Mulholland, Los Angeles' chief engineer at the turn of the century and moving force behind the Owens Valley aqueduct, also designed more than a dozen reservoirs. These included the San Francis Dam built in the San Francisquito Canyon. which was filted with water from the Owens Aqueduct. After reaching full capacity for the first time on March 12. 1928. the dam began to leak. Just betore midnight. the dam