Quest for Water

 

     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

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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 20^th 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.