Imperial (203 page)

Interview with Tim: Rosalyn’s notes—Rosalyn Ng report, 2003. Some parentheses and other punctuation which I considered extraneous was omitted.

My interview with the Restaurant Nineteen’s proprietor took place in June 2003. Beatriz Limón and Yolanda Ogás were present; José López from Jalisco interpreted.

The tunnel described in “The Red Handprints” was explored in June 2003. Terrie Petree and the two Mexican girls from the Boutique Duarte above were present.

1920s vistas of Reforma and the Chinesca—AHMM, photo album 3, cat. #29.AHM/166.3/17, #29.AHM/166.3/24; photo album 2, cat. #29.AHM/166.2/6.

Date of establishment of Chinese consulate in Mexicali—Auyón Gerardo, p. 25 (Terrie Petree’s working translation).

Information from the Chinese couple at Condominios Montealbán—Rosalyn Ng report, 2003. In the report, the location is given as Gnu River Apartments, which is a newer name for part of Condominios Montealbán.

Footnote: Information from Clare Ng in direct speech—Interview by WTV.

My interviews with the butcher Daniel Ávila took place in October and November 2003. Terrie Petree and José López from Jalisco interpreted. About the paintings of naked women on velvet, Terrie noted on the margin: “Did I translate that? I don’t remember him mentioning anything but paintings on the wall like murals.” José López responded: “It’s a cantina, right? They’re velvet paintings, right? What else can they be but naked women?”

Description of Reforma and Altamirano during the construction of the “Teatro China” in 1920—AHMM, photo album 1, cat. #29.AHM/166.1/45.

My two interviews with the Mexican who took care of his dead Chinese boss’s supermarket occurred in October and November 2003. Terrie Petree and José López from Jalisco interpreted.

Footnote: “I recently heard that Huan-Jiang-Xia General Association was burned to ashes . . .”—Chinese tunnel letters, Batch 2, V (no heading, 1923).

Same footnote: “Huan-Jiang-Xia General Association is holding its grand opening in the Third City . . .”—Chinese tunnel letters, Batch 2, VII (invitation card, no date).

Communication about the rebuilt family temple—Chinese tunnel letters, Batch 2, X (no header, no date). English slightly corrected by WTV. “Clan” was actually translated “family/tribe.”

74. Indio (1925)

The new hotel in Indio and its cost—
California Cultivator
, Vol. LXIV, No. 14, April 4, 1925, p. 416 (“Agricultural News Notes of the Pacific Coast”: “Southern California”).

75. The Inland Empire (1925)

Epigraph: “The citrus industry remained unchallenged . . .”—Patterson, p. 376.

Advertisement for Tetley’s Nurseries—
California Cultivator
, vol. LXIV, no. 14, April 4, 1925, p. 438 (“Classified Liners”).

View of Upland (1918)—Wagner and Blackstock, pp. 28-29.

View of Pomona (1920)—Ibid., pp. 38-39.

Performances of “Ramona”—Paul, p. 185. The first of the 3 performances was in 1923.

“The World Famous Magnolia Avenue”—
California Cultivator
, vol. XXIV, no. 15 (April 14, 1905), cover.

Electric cars on Magnolia—Patterson, p. 385.

Irrigated area of Riverside, 1906—
California Cultivator
, vol. XXVI, no. 18 (May 4, 1906), p. 419 (“News of Country Life in the Golden West”). Her poor sister, the Coachella Valley, finally achieves 14,500 in 1925; she possesses 6,500 inhabitants. Her major agricultural productions are, in order from greatest to least: dates, grapes, grapefruit, Bermuda onions, cotton. She may give Imperial County a run for her money.—Senate Committee on the Colorado River Basin (1925), p. 53 (statement of Dr. Jennings, physician, rancher and landowner in the Coachella Valley, and member of the Board of Directors of the Coachella Valley Water District).

“A city of American homes . . .”—Riverside City Directory (1921), p. 3.

Inhabitants of Riverside and I.V. Investment Co.—Riverside City Directory (1921), pp. 29, 30, 153, 155.

Opening of first motel—Patterson, p. 385.

Information on Chinese, Chinatown and the Ku Klux Klan—The Great Basin Foundation Center for Anthropological Research, vol. 2, p. 399. The date of appearance of Chinese in Occidental clothing was 1924.

Orange acres in Riverside, 1929—Wagner. p. 51.

Agua Caliente Indians in Palm Springs—
California Cultivator
, vol. LXIV, no. 14, April 4, 1925, p. 438 (“Classified Liners”).

Description of Palm Canyon, 1924—Kurutz, p. 54 (photo by Frederick Martin).

76. Los Angeles (1925)

Epigraph—“It is a clean city . . .”—McGroarty, vol. 1, p. 366.

Figure on Los Angeles’ population in 1900-20—
The California Water Atlas
, p. 33.

Detail on the Crystal Springs wells—California State Archives. Margaret C. Felts papers. Box 1. Loose typescript,
ca.
20 pp. A. H. Koebig, Consulting Engineer and Special Representative. “Answer to the report of Mr. Hay Goudy, Asst. Engineer, to the State Board of Health of the State of California, No. 269, dated June 14th, 1921. By and for the City of Burbank, California.” June 25, 1921. Stamped: “Property of Water Resources Center Archives, University of California, Berkeley, California.” Handwritten: MS 80/3 119.24, p. 4.

“The Los Angeles aqueduct will carry ten times as much water as all the famous aqueducts of Rome combined.”
—American Biography and Genealogy
, p. 36.

Acknowledgment to William Mulholland in
The Winning of Barbara Worth
—Wright, p. 16.

William Mulholland: “Only water was needed to make this region a rich and productive empire . . .”—William Leslie Davis, p. 93.

Harry Chandler’s automotive grid plan, 1924—Sitton and Deverell, pp. 52, 55 (Matthew W. Roth, “Mulholland Highway and the Engineering Culture of Los Angeles in the 1920s”).

Subdivision of Los Angeles’ acreage in 1923-25—
California Cultivator
, vol. LXV, no. 20, November 14, 1925, p. 504 (C. A. Nidever, “Where Are We Going?”).

Upton Sinclair: “subdivisions with no ‘restrictions’ . . .”—Op. cit., pp. 80-81 (
Oil!
, 1927).

Description of an oilscape—After Bristol, p. 23 (“Signal Hills Field, 1933”).

Los Angeles as leading oil exporter—Sitton and Deverell, p. 129 (Nancy Quam-Wickham, “ ‘Another World’: Work, Home and Autonomy in Blue-Collar Suburbs”).

The real estate atlas of 1910—Baist, Plate 5, subsection 6.

Chicken-hutches and derricks in suburbs—Sitton and Deverell, p. 85 (Becky M. Nicolaides, “The Quest for Independence: Workers in the Suburbs”).

A professional man could still be both an osteopath and a citrus grower.—See, e.g., McGroarty, vol. 2, p. 309 (biography of Charles Milliken).

“Is sometimes referred to as ‘earth’s biggest city . . .’ ”—Hunt, p. 496.

Saturday Evening Post:
“Countless numbers of American citizens . . .”—Quoted in Watkins, p. 297 (Kenneth Roberts, “And West Is West”).

Perception of Mexican women as unreliable, slow, unintelligent employees—UC Berkeley. Bancroft Library. Paul S. Taylor papers. Carton 5. Folder 5:7: “Mexican Women in Los Angeles Industry in 1928, 1980.” Offprint: Paul S. Taylor, “Research Note: Mexican Women in Los Angeles Industry in 1928,” copyright 1980, in
Azatlan
, vol. 11, no. 1; pp. 128-30.

Mexican employees’ relatively lower earnings than those of other women—Paul S. Taylor, op. cit., p. 124. Taylor came to this conclusion from inspecting payroll records in his 12 target industries.

Footnote: Wages of unskilled American and Mexican workers, 1930—Sitton and Deverell, p. 21 (Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce).

Disposition of jobs available to those Mexican women—Sitton and Deverell, p. 112. Paul S. Taylor remarks (loc. cit.) that “two-fifths of them were employed in general labor, one-fifth in skilled machine operation, one-fifth in work such as packing or cutting, one-tenth in work requiring some education and English knowledge.”

Description of these working women’s homes—Paul S. Taylor, op. cit., pp. 118-19.

“Refrigeration without ice”—
California Cultivator
, vol. LXV, no. 24, December 5, 1925, p. 584.

“Distinguishable on the streets . . .”—Paul S. Taylor, op. cit., p. 116. “The 12.5 percent who lived away from their families was made up of mestizos who . . . stoutly maintained that they were Spanish and not Mexican, which appeared to be an indication of their desire not to be linked with the lower class . . .” (ibid., p. 108).

“These industries, fostered by genial climate and contented population . . .”—McGroarty, vol. 1, pp. 363-64.

Doings of the Lockheed and Vega aircraft companies—California State Archives. Margaret C. Felts papers. Box 1 (B4380), labeled “Environmental Files. Groundwater Contamination. L.A. River Pollution 1919-1938.” Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall (Los Angeles, California),
Master Plan for USAF Plant 14, Burbank, California, Prepared for Lockheed-California Co., Division of Lockheed Aircraft Co., Burbank, California
(n.d., probably 1966), p. 12.

Los Angeles is still horses in the streets . . .—After McGroarty, vol. 1, p. 356, illus. “Main and Temple Streets, Opposite Present Postoffice [
sic
] Site,” n.d. but must be before or
ca.
1923.

Advertisement of the Tanaka Citrus Nursery—
California Cultivator
, vol. LXIV, no. 14, April 4, 1925, p. 438 (“Classified Liners”).

Henry Kruse’s biography—McGroarty, vol. 3, p. 213.

“It is difficult to speak of what the Los Angeles of today is . . .”—Ibid., vol. 1, p. 359.

Description of the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company Building—Ibid., vol. 1, p. 362.

The Los Angeles Boosters in El Centro—
Imperial Valley Press
, vol. XIV, no. 18, Monday evening, May 31, 1914, p. 1 (“Los Angeles Boosters Delighted with City”).

Descriptions of male and female date flowers—After Dunham, p. 90.

Destination of Olympic Boulevard—Sitton and Deverell, p. 52 (Matthew W. Roth, “Mulholland Highway and the Engineering Culture of Los Angeles in the 1920s”).

All remarks by Marjorie Sa’adah in this chapter—From an interview and tour she kindly gave me in September 2004.

Opening date of the Mayan Theater—Miron, p. 88.

News of Lupe Velez and Dolores Del Rio—Sitton and Deverell, pp. 163, 174 (Douglas Monroy, “Making Mexico in Los Angeles”).

“Looking north from downtown . . .”—Miron, p. 38.

California Eve Brand orange label—McClelland and Last, p. 43.

77. Tamerlane’s Warriors Gallop into the Square (1924 -2003)

Epigraph: “The city of Los Angeles is asking for a very modest supply . . .”—Senate Committee on the Colorado River Basin (1925), pp. 108-9 (statement of Mulholland).

“His sole interest was in advancing the public good . . .”—William Leslie Davis, p. 90.

First pumping of Owens Valley groundwater, 1919—Ibid., p. 138.

Description of Owens Lake past and present; interviews with the part-time cowgirl in Independence and the museum lady in Lone Pine—July 2005. Micheline Marcom was present.

Arrest of Upton Sinclair—Sinclair, p. 38 (text of commemorative plaque), p. 39 (“Singing Jailbirds”).

Recollections of an Owens Valley resident—Parcher and Parcher, unnumbered p. iii (introduction by R. Coke Wood, 1970).

Bullocks Wilshire: “At a scale that makes window-shopping possible for drivers”—Moore et al., p. 147. Description of the suction dredge—ICHSPM photograph, cat. #P92.33.8 (Hetzel photo).

Eisenstein script excerpt—Eisenstein, p. 265 (Appendix 7, unpublished script for “Ferghana Canal,” 1939).

78 . Subdelineations: Water scapes (1901 -1925)

Epigraph: “. . . why, Granddaddy, there couldn’t
be
any town without all that water . . .”—Richards, p. 26.

Excerpts from the California Experiment Station’s record for 1920—USDA
Experiment Station Record
series (1920), pp. 640-41 (“The effects of alkali on citrus trees,” W. P. Kelley and E. E. Thomas,
California Station Bulletin 318 (1920)
, pp. 305-37).

G. Harold Powell on what happened to “the first settled part of Riverside”—Op. cit., p. 38 (letters of “Monday night” and “Wednesday night,” February 1904, to Gertrude Powell).

“It is in this regard—the pure democratization of the great irrigation systems . . .”—James,
Reclaiming the Arid West
, p. xii.

Mileage of main and lateral canals, 1909—Hunt, p. 461.

Imperial County Assessor’s Map 17-15—The ancient bound volume in El Centro.

Complaints of CRLC and
Times
about IID—
Los Angeles Times
, December 15, 1920, p. II8 (“WATER USERS MAKE PROTEST”).

IID as largest irrigation district in the Western Hemisphere—Colorado River Association (1952), p. 18.

. . . by 1922, IID’s hegemony will be perfect . . .—In 1920 the Imperial Irrigation District is still only one of 15 water companies in the valley, the others being the almost-bankrupt Imperial Water Companies numbers 1 through 12, the South Alamo Water Company, and the Imperial South Side Water Company (Imperial Valley Directory [1920], p. XVIII). In 1922, IID completes its takeover of the remaining entities. As we will see in another chapter, the Bard Subdistrict remains its own creature.

“By 1919 about a quarter of the irrigated land in Imperial Valley . . .”—Lilliard, p. 153.

“Drainage is the most satisfactory way . . .”—Packard, p. 5.

“The flood had subsided . . .”—James, op. cit., p. 65.

Break of the Volcano Lake levee—Senate Committee on the Colorado River Basin (1925), p. 25 (statement of Earl C. Pound, President, Imperial Irrigation District).

“The area of the present Salton Sea is about 400 square miles . . .”
—National Geographic
magazine, 1906 (?), vol. XVIII, no. 1, Arthur P. Davis, Assistant Chief Engineer, “The New Inland Sea (An Account of the Colorado River Break),” p. 44.

Platting of Salton Sea Beach—Wray, p. 86.

Description of the Salton Sea in 1922—After Brown and Boyd, p. 407.