Pacific municipalities . , we have an artesian basinwhich has already been demonstratedto be from 50 to 60 miles long, and whichwe think in all probability is twice thatlong. We expect to utilize these artes-ian areas to supplement the stream flowparticularly during seasons of extremedrought. The city of Los Angeles owns about80,000 acres of land in Owens Valley,an area twice as large as Catalina Is-land. Every acre has been bought atthe sellers price, and we have not con-demned an acre in the Valley. We have also used a hydraulic suctiondredge in our work there, although wefind that the first
Pacific municipalities . , we have an artesian basinwhich has already been demonstratedto be from 50 to 60 miles long, and whichwe think in all probability is twice thatlong. We expect to utilize these artes-ian areas to supplement the stream flowparticularly during seasons of extremedrought. The city of Los Angeles owns about80,000 acres of land in Owens Valley,an area twice as large as Catalina Is-land. Every acre has been bought atthe sellers price, and we have not con-demned an acre in the Valley. We have also used a hydraulic suctiondredge in our work there, although wefind that the first one illustrated, thedipper dredge, is the most economical ofthe two, and we have now discontin-ued the hydraulic dredge. One£»f our most serious problems wasthe transportation problem, in connec-tion with the building of this had to deal with a desert for thegreater portion of the aqueduct, a placewhich had no railroad, and no watersupply, no telephone, practically nopostoffice,—practically nothing but a. 154 PACIFIC MUNICIPALITIES desert. The first thing we had to dowas to get the best of the desert. Itwas 140 miles from Mojave to Inde-pendence. While the aqueduct startsout in an open plain, it has many milesof its course in a rough mountain re-gion. That is indicated by the fact thatout of the 217 miles of aqueduct proper,there will be 43 miles of tunnels. Be-ginning with transportation by teams,we then reached the point where weused what we calkd a catepillar type oftraction engine, and that we used forhauling materials up roads which wehad to construct ourselves. I suppsewe built 150 miles of wagon road. Weestablished a telephone system of over200 phones. We have, by contract with the South-ern Pacific Company, succeeded ingetting a railroad built for the transpor-tation of our freight from Mojave to In-depenence, parallel with the line of theaqueduct. In getting this railroadbuilt, the Southern Pacific treated thecity very handsomely. It was a case oftheir
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