- A century ago, people in the Owens Valley carried out a defiant act of protest, taking over part of the L.A. Aqueduct and releasing water.
- An event this weekend focuses on the history of that resistance effort, and Los Angeles’ continued reliance on water from the Eastern Sierra.
It’s a chapter of California history filled with subterfuge and conflict: More than a century ago, agents secretly working for Los Angeles posed as farmers and ranchers as they bought land and water rights across the Owens Valley. Their scheme laid the groundwork for the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which in 1913 began sending the valley’s water to the growing city 233 miles away.
Residents were so enraged in the 1920s that some carried out a series of attacks on the aqueduct, blasting it with dynamite.
But there was also one major nonviolent protest, an act of civil disobedience 100 years ago that is being commemorated this weekend with a series of free community events in Lone Pine.
In that defiant act of resistance on Nov. 16, 1924, a group of about 70 unarmed men took over an aqueduct spillway and control gates north of Lone Pine and began releasing all the water back into the dry channel of the Owens River. That act, called the Alabama Gates occupation, grew as more than 700 residents of all ages came to celebrate the takeover during four days of festivities, bringing food and barbecuing as the protest became a community picnic.
“It’s a significant historical event that needs to have a light shined on it,” said Kim Stringfellow, an artist, educator and writer who is organizing the centennial event. “It’s worthy of recognition in the history of Owens Valley, to show how this community stood up to this huge metropolis with lots of power and money.”
Stringfellow lives in Joshua Tree and her interest in the history of the Owens Valley resistance effort grew out of her research on California water history.
—Ian James for Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2024