Here - I found out more about our William Mulholland for you. Maureen William Mulholland "There it is. Take it." -- William Mulholland, 1913 William Mulholland (1855-1935) was born in Ireland, took to sea as young man, and arrived in San Pedro in 1877 where he found work as a ditch tender with the Los Angeles City Water Company. A self-educated engineer with minimal schooling, he went on to become superintendent and chief engineer of the city’s water department, a position he held for more than 40 years. A natural leader, Mulholland, known affectionately as "The Chief,"  was entrusted with building a 233-mile aqueduct, the world’s longest at the time, to bring water from the Owens River north of Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley, where developers awaited conversion of dry land into farms and housing tracts.  Some called the project "the rape of the Owens Valley," and Owens Valley farmers sometimes violently protested the project.  The story, in greatly fictionalized form, became the inspiration for the movie "Chinatown." Dubbed the "Panama Canal of the West," the project required the massing of 3,900 workers and the digging of 164 tunnels, almost 52 miles in all. The first Owens River water flowed into a San Fernando Valley reservoir on Nov. 5, 1913. At the ceremony marking the occasion, the laconic Mulholland uttered what may be the five most famous words in the city’s history, "There it is. Take it." Fifteen years later, on March 12, 1928, Mulholland’s career took a tragic turn when the St. Francis Dam, one of several dams built to increase storage of Owens River water, collapsed, sending 12 billion gallons of water into the Santa Clara Valley, north of Los Angeles. The flood claimed over 400 lives. The Coroner's Jury that investigated the failure of the St. Francis Dam reached three conclusions: 1) that the underlying rock structure was of poor quality and the design of the dam was not suited to the inferior foundation; 2) that there was an error in engineering judgment in determining the character of the foundation of the dam site and in deciding the best type of dam to build there; and 3) that there was an error in regard to fundamental policy related to public safety, in that excessive responsibility was vested in one person and no independent experts were authorized to check on his work. In essence, the Jury found that Mulholland, although not criminally liable for the deaths, did make serious errors.  "The Chief" took full responsibility, saying: "If there is an error of human judgment, I am the human." Several months later he retired.  His final years were lived in the shadow of the St. Francis Dam collapse. Mulholland remains a legendary and controversial figure in Southern California history, the man credited by many with making modern Los Angeles possible. In a gesture of civic gratitude for building the aqueduct, the city named its most scenic highway in his honor. To this day, a trip along Mulholland Drive is a "must" for anyone wishing to grasp the immensity of the metropolis he helped to build. -- Contributed by Albert Greenstein, 1999