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| | William Mulholland (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07) |
 | | 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 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. |
 | | 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. |
| www.socalhistory.org /Biographies/mulholland.htm (383 words) |
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