Long Beach owes much
of its water to both the Los Angeles, San Gabriel and Santa Ana rivers. Significant
amounts of water from these three rivers percolates to the gravel, sand and
clay laying underground forming an artesian basin. Before 1868 water was drawn
almost entirely from these rivers. Periods of drought meant dry riverbeds and
calamity. But though the drought erased surface streams, it had little effect
upon the underground reservoirs. These subsurface basins were finally tapped in
August 1868, when workers employed by former
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| John Downey. Wikipedia |
Governor John Downey drilled a
hole into the ground some two and a half miles west of the village of Compton,
and water came gushing out in a fountain four feet high. They had bored Los
Angeles’ first free-flowing artesian well.
I’ve already
written about General Edward Bouton (August 2022) and his big artesian well of 1898 which, when
finally capped, had created a lake a half mile long and 500 feet wide. Today, much
of the City of Lakewood sits atop an area once occupied by “Bouton Lake.” But what did the pioneers of Long Beach do for
water?
Long Beach Pioneers’ Pursuit of
Water
In 1914 Clarence
Wheeler Coseboom told a reporter from the Long
Beach Press (1/23/1914) about his uncles starting a farm in what is now
downtown Long Beach. Around 1874, Walter
and his brother Matt, both fresh from Kansas,
arrived with 28 horses and pitched a tent at present day Pine and First. They
found a gulley running to the ocean and sunk a 28-foot-deep water well nearby.
They were lucky to have found water because many before them hadn’t. Earlier farmers had given up the idea of
raising crops in the area because of the lack of water.
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| Pacific Park 1889. Source: Long Beach Public Library |
Later, another
well was dug at the north end of Lincoln
Park, formerly known as Pacific Park,
about sixty feet west of Pacific Avenue. It was used to some extent for
watering sheep.
There was also the Cook family well, located just west of Pine
Avenue, between Third and Fourth streets. Other wells were dug west of Locust
Avenue between Seventh and Eighth streets on the north side of Anaheim Road,
fifty to one hundred feet west of Daisy Avenue; and on Frank Butler’s property
south of Willow Street and west of California Avenue. These wells belonged to
individual property owners and were not used to supply the community at large.
They were sunk in the mesa on which the greater part of Long Beach was then
located. Since the mesa area was not a
water-bearing formation, the water was brackish and of poor quality.
In 1882, realizing
that water was the paramount consideration, Judge Robert M. Widney, one of the
early investors in Long Beach along with city founder William Willmore,
concentrated on the water problem and its development and distribution. Widney
utilized the services of William Mulholland, who later became nationally known
for his development and management of the Los Angeles water system. In the Cienega
north of 27th Street and west of Orange Avenue, there were springs which were
seldom or never dry (near where Willow Springs Park is today). A well drilled on this site developed an
abundance of artesian water which Judge Widney piped into town replacing the
first distribution system---an old white horse, a spring wagon and a few
barrels. This six-inch pipe line was the beginning of the Long Beach water
system of today.
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| Robert Widney. Wikipedia |
Judge Widney also
constructed a small brick reservoir at the southwest corner of American Avenue (now
Long Beach Boulevard) and Anaheim Road, which he never used because it gave
almost no pressure in the downtown area. It was enlarged by later water providers
and put into service, much to the dissatisfaction of the consumers, many of
whom found it necessary to leave their faucets open all night in order to
accumulate a sufficient supply of water for the following day.
Running into
financial difficulties, Judge Widney
disposed of his holdings in what was then known as Willmore City, as did William
Willmore, and water management was taken over by realtors Pomeroy and Mills, who
changed the name of the town to Long Beach.
What Happened to Lake Bouton
Much of Lakewood
is sitting on top of what was once called Bouton Lake. It’s hard to imagine the
arid acres of bean fields that once dotted the area prior to the arrival of
Civil War General Edward Bouton. Cashing
in on the railroad wars of the late 1880s when fares dipped greatly and many
flocked to Southern California former Civil War General Edward Bouton, like
many others, had plans for development.
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| General Edward Bouton |
In 1887 Bouton
purchased 7136 acres of Rancho Los Cerritos land to build a town. Though there
were already six artesian wells on the property, Bouton discovered more water
and he soon abandoned his original plan, forming the Bouton Water Company
instead.
Artesian wells became
plentiful throughout the region. So great was the pressure from the centuries
of accumulated underground water that in many cases farmers merely stuck a pipe
into the ground and got a steady stream. Such wells, known as “artesian”
because they were first discovered in the French province of Artois, occur in
certain geologic formations such as those found in many sections of Southern
California.
But Bouton’s “Big
Bouton” of 1898 (not 1895 as some sources state) was special. It shot out water
as if from a fire hose, spouting a cascade 80 feet or so into the air. Long
before the well could be capped it had formed a lake, which extended more than
a half mile in a northeasterly-southwesterly direction and was 500 feet wide. Carson
Street and the westerly extension of Harvey Way pass across the area that was
once below the surface of Bouton Lake.
By 1890 local
artesian wells were irrigating a land mass as large as the combined areas of
San Diego, Long Beach, San Francisco, Oakland and Portland, in a region which
only a few years before had been laid barren by drought, and the end was not in
sight. But those were the days of free enterprise. Competitors drilled wells in
the Lincoln Park and Recreation Park areas of Long Beach. In 1901 rivalry, rate wars, and equipment failures forced
Bouton’s company and its major competitor, the Long Beach Development Company to
merge. This, and other water company mergers, raised water rates, which
infuriated customers. This anger by residents resulted in the City of Long
Beach setting up its own city water system in 1911.
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| Bouton Lake and Golf Course 1935. Pinterest |
By 1911, Bouton
Lake was drying up and continued to dwindle even though Bouton’s wells
continued to produce water for the city. Within a few years the area north of
Carson and east of Cherry was more a bog than a lake. In 1929, Long Beach voters
decided to trade 113 acres of former Bouton property to the Montana Land Company
for land that could be added to a growing city airport. Three years later the Montana Land Company turned
the acreage surrounding the old lake into a championship golf course. In
addition, about four hundred fifty acres around the course were then developed into
one to five acre estates. Today there is a .78 acre Bouton Creek Park at Atherton and Litchfield in Long Beach.
Afterword
At the beginning
of the 20th century the US Geologic Survey discovered there were
2500 artesian wells in the Southland flowing at a rate of no less than
7,000,000 gallons an hour. But as the years passed and agricultural use
continued, more water was required and many of the artesian wells stopped
flowing altogether. Today even the location of most of them is forgotten.
The good news is
that over the years underground water has been replenished and is still flowing;
the bad news is that much of it is contaminated by decades of toxins that have
seeped into the water table, especially in the San Fernando Valley. Getting rid
of contaminants, Steve Lopez pointed out in a recent article in the Los
Angeles Times (7/31/2022), and the costs involved in treating and using
this water, such as is done at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and at UCLA, is
expensive.
Let’s end with
more good news: Those problems don’t exist in Long Beach. According to Lauren
Gold at the Long Beach Water Department, 60% of Long Beach water comes from
aquifers. All the water is filtered to rule out contaminants.
