This is a chapter in California’s history filled with deception and conflict. More than a century ago, agents secretly working for Los Angeles posed as farmers and ranchers and bought land and water rights throughout the Owens Valley. Their plan laid the foundation for the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which in 1913 began transporting the valley’s water to the growing city 333 miles away.
In the 1920s, residents became enraged and some carried out a series of attacks, including blowing up the aqueduct with dynamite.
But there is also one large-scale nonviolent protest, an act of civil disobedience from 100 years ago, and a series of free community events will be held in Lone Pine this weekend to commemorate it.
In an act of defiance on November 16, 1924, a group of approximately 70 unarmed men occupied the spillway and control gate north of Lone Pine and diverted all water into the dry channel of the Owens River. I started going back to . The act, known as Occupy Alabama Gates, saw more than 700 residents of all ages gather during a four-day festival to celebrate the occupation by bringing food and having barbecues, and protests sparked a wave of protests in the area. It expanded as it became a picnic.
“This is an important historical event that needs to be highlighted,” said Kim Stringfellow, an artist, educator and author who is organizing the centennial event. “This community deserves recognition in Owens Valley history for standing up to this great metropolis with so much power and resources.”
Stringfellow lives in Joshua Tree, and his interest in the history of resistance in the Owens Valley grew out of his research into California’s water history.
The weekend event, called Alabama Gates 2024, begins Friday with an afternoon opening reception featuring panel discussions with conservationists, local Native leaders, historians and other experts, as well as local bluegrass bands. There will also be a picnic in the park where they will perform. Participants can sign up for a walking tour of dry Owens Lake bird habitat.
Stringfellow said the history of the aqueduct takeover is relevant today and will be part of a broader discussion about the past, present and future of water in the region. She said she hopes the gathering will bring more awareness to that history and how much of L.A.’s water supply continues to come from the Eastern Sierras.
“We really need to look back to think about what’s going to happen next,” she said.
Stringfellow said one of her goals is to generate discussion about how Los Angeles can reduce its dependence on water imported from the Eastern Sierra Mountains and other sources hundreds of miles away. He said that this is true.
Another focus is the history of the Paiute and Shoshone indigenous peoples. Their ancestral lands had been taken and occupied by white settlers decades before LA’s water acquisition.
Native Americans called their homeland of Payahunadu “the place where the water always flows,” said Kathy Bancroft, tribal historic preservation officer for the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Tribe.
“This valley provided everything we needed. There was water everywhere,” she said.
Runoff from heavy snowfall in the Sierra Nevada mountains entered Owens Lake in 2023.
(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)
The Paiute and Shoshone tribes suffered hardships after the arrival of settlers, including in 1863, when the military marched about 1,000 Native Americans from the valley to Fort Tejon, about 275 miles away. Bancroft’s great-grandmother, a young girl at the time, was among those who escaped from the fort and returned safely home on foot.
In the early 1900s, Native Americans had recently come out of hiding and worked in mines and ranches, but did not participate in the 1924 Aqueduct Resistance because “they were in survival mode,” Bancroft said. That’s what it means.
Her tribe’s reservation was established in 1939 along with three other tribes’ reservations. But their water rights were never resolved, and Bancroft plans to discuss the issue during the event.
“We are responsible for managing everything in this valley, and it’s hard when you don’t have water where there was water before,” she said. “This is a really, really complex issue that just needs to be brought to the forefront and solved.”
She and other participants said they would like to see Los Angeles withdraw less water from the Eastern Sierras.
“Our ecosystems, and our species, continue to suffer greatly here due to unhealthy levels of mining,” said conservation group Friends of the World, which is co-organizing the event. said Wendy Schneider, executive director of The Inyo. “If we can reduce mining by a significant amount, say 25% to 30%, it will make a huge difference to the ecosystem here.”
Schneider said the effects of water withdrawal are being seen in areas where native vegetation has died due to low groundwater levels. She said she believes some environmental mitigation projects in Los Angeles are working and others are not.
“I hope this event reminds people that not everything is okay,” Schneider said. “We all need to work together to make this huge institution do the right thing and work with us in more meaningful ways to maintain a healthy ecosystem.”
The Los Angeles Aqueduct carries water south through the Owens Valley.
(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
The environmental effects of Los Angeles’ water diversion have been a source of tension for years. Over the past 30 years, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has conducted extensive dust mitigation projects on the dry bed of Owens Lake and has invested approximately $2.5 billion in the effort.
Stringfellow said he invited DWP to participate in the event and requested access for the group to visit the Alabama Gates facility.
DWP spokeswoman Ellen Chen said: “Unfortunately, key staff were unable to attend on this day and were unable to respond to requests.” “We regularly participate in and support many community events in the Owens Valley and Eastern Sierra, and we welcome the opportunity to participate in events in the future.”
She said the DWP supports and partners with a variety of local organizations in the region. And this week, agency leaders joined Inyo County supervisors and residents for commission meetings and a tour of the Lower Owens River Project, a major river revitalization effort.
Chen said that over the past 30 years, DWP has reduced the amount of water flowing through the LA Aqueduct by 50% to “fulfill our environmental commitments in the Eastern Sierra region.”
Water flows through the taps by gravity, making it more economical to supply than other imported water sources in the city that require energy-intensive pumping. Chen said water from the Eastern Sierra “remains an important and cost-effective part of Los Angeles’ water supply.”
For the past five years, Los Angeles has imported nearly 90% of its water, drawing from the Colorado River, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, and even the Eastern Sierra Mountains.
Los Angeles residents have made great strides in water conservation in recent years, and even as the city’s population grows, they now use less water than they did half a century ago.
DWP has also invested in developing more local sources to reduce dependence on imported water and prepare for droughts exacerbated by climate change.
In one such project, the city will soon begin construction on a $740 million facility in the San Fernando Valley that will turn wastewater into purified drinking water.
