Desert Gazette

Timelines

List

Tag: water diversion

  • Independence, California

    and the Southern Owens Valley

    Independence, California, is a small town in the Owens Valley’s southern stretch, backed by the towering Sierra Nevada to the west and the Inyo Mountains to the east. With around 600 residents, it serves as the Inyo County seat and a quiet gateway to rich history and dramatic desert landscapes.

    The town was founded in 1861, during the mining boom, and named in honor of the Declaration of Independence. While gold rush ambitions shaped its early days, Independence is better known for its historical and cultural sites today. The Eastern California Museum offers an impressive collection of Native American artifacts, pioneer relics, and mining tools, showcasing the region’s layered past. Just a few miles away is the Manzanar National Historic Site, a powerful and sobering reminder of World War II, where thousands of Japanese Americans were interned during a dark chapter in U.S. history.

    But the story of this region runs deeper than its buildings and monuments. In contrast, the southern Owens Valley, from Poverty Hill to Rose Valley—including the Owens Lake basin—is a geological and ecological study. This broad alluvial plain was once home to a large lake fed by snowmelt from the Sierras. During the Ice Age, Owens Lake sometimes overflowed southward, but it’s mostly dry today. Its water has been diverted to supply Los Angeles for a long time.

    The valley’s surface tells the story of time and erosion. Quaternary sediments—old alluvial fan deposits, lakebed clays, and basin fill—comprise much of the ground. You’ll also find volcanic rock from ancient lava flows like the Aberdeen Lava, along with rugged outcrops such as the Alabama Hills and Poverty Hill, made of granite, old volcanic, and metamorphic rock.

    The land is mostly flat to gently sloping, though it rises in places from 3,000 to 6,000 feet. Soils vary from gravelly and well-drained on the fans to fine and occasionally saturated in the low-lying basin. Many playa surfaces remain barren, having only recently reemerged from beneath the former lake. Vegetation reflects these conditions—on the basin fill you’ll see greasewood and saltbush, while the alluvial fans support shadscale, hop-sage, blackbush, and creosote bush. Grasslands include saltgrass and alkali sacaton. Though sparse, woodland species like mountain mahogany and water birch hang on in a few upland areas.

    The climate here is dry and extreme. Rainfall averages 4 to 8 inches annually, mostly falling as rain. Summers are hot, winters are cold, and the skies are often crystal clear, making Independence a draw for stargazers and astrophotographers.

    Water now runs in limited channels. The Owens River still threads through the valley, but much of it is captured and diverted south. Natural outflow from the region is rare, and the lake that once anchored the valley is now a dusty remnant of its former self.

    Still, there’s something magnetic about Independence and the valley that surrounds it. Maybe it’s the blend of natural beauty and historical depth. Perhaps it’s the vast open space. Either way, this stretch of the Eastern Sierra remains a place worth exploring for its past, present, and the ever-changing story written in its land.

  • Hesperia Ditch

    The Hesperia Ditch was the heart of a bold dream to turn part of the Mojave Desert into a thriving agricultural community. Built in the late 1880s, it was the centerpiece of an irrigation system designed to carry precious water from Deep Creek to the dusty, sun-baked mesa where Hesperia began taking shape.

    The story starts with a group of investors led by Dr. Joseph Widney, a former University of Southern California president. Along with the Hesperia Land and Water Company, Widney believed they could make the desert bloom by diverting water across rough terrain and under the Mojave River to what they hoped would become a green and prosperous settlement.

    In 1886, they began building the ditch. It wasn’t a simple trench—it was an engineering project that included miles of open canal, flumes, and a steel pipeline that dipped under the Mojave River. The water came from Deep Creek, a rocky stream that runs through a canyon just south of modern-day Hesperia. The company built a small concrete dam at the intake point to raise the water level and direct it into a ditch blasted and dug along the canyon wall. That channel clung to the hillsides, sometimes cut into solid rock, and sometimes supported by stone walls or wooden flumes. The route was carefully graded to use gravity to keep the water moving.

    One of the most impressive features of the system was a steel pipeline—about 14 inches in diameter—that crossed under the Mojave River in a kind of inverted siphon. From there, the water continued to a reservoir near present-day Lime Street Park in Hesperia. That earthen reservoir held about 58 acre-feet of water and was a local irrigation hub. Farmers could draw from it to water their fields, orchards, and gardens.

    At its height in the early 1890s, the ditch helped irrigate over a thousand acres of land. Apples, peaches, alfalfa, and other crops were planted, and the new town of Hesperia began to take root with a hotel, train station, and grand ambitions. Optimists thought it would become the next great inland farming colony.

    But dreams can be fragile in the desert. The irrigation system was expensive to build and even more complex to maintain. The 1880s land boom fizzled out, and Hesperia’s growth slowed. Legal disputes over water rights and the unpredictable nature of Deep Creek’s flow added to the difficulties. Floods often damaged the steel pipeline under the river and had to be repaired multiple times. By the early 20th century, much of the system was falling apart, and the amount of water it delivered had dropped significantly.

    In 1911, a new group took over under the name Appleton Land, Water and Power Company. They made some upgrades, including installing a larger 30-inch steel pipeline for part of the route and reinforcing the intake works. Still, only a few hundred acres remained in cultivation. In 1916, just 90 acres of orchard and 220 acres of alfalfa and corn were being irrigated—far less than what had once been envisioned.

    Even so, the ditch left its mark. Parts of the original channel along Deep Creek still exist today. A section of the Pacific Crest Trail follows the old ditch grade—its flat path a silent reminder of the engineers who carved it into the canyon wall over a century ago. The route is visible as a narrow shelf lined with old stonework along the hillside.

    At Lime Street Park, where the reservoir once stood, a historical plaque honors the day in 1886 when “life-giving water” first reached Hesperia. Without the ditch, the town might never have taken hold. Though modern wells and pumps eventually replaced the irrigation system, the ditch was the first to prove that water could be brought to the high desert—and with it, the chance for people to stay, build homes, and try to make the desert bloom.

    Today, the Hesperia Ditch is part of local lore, remembered as both a technical feat and a symbol of frontier determination. While the system didn’t fulfill all the lofty hopes of its founders, it made settlement possible in a place where nature had said no, and that’s no small thing.