Located thousands of feet below the snowy summit of Mount San Jacinto, the horrifying feats of engineering and grit make life possible, as we know in Southern California.
The 13-mile San Jacinto Tunnel was bored by a crew of about 1,200 males who had worked day and night for six years in the 1930s, and blew rocks away and machined them out. Completed in 1939, the tunnel was the cornerstone for the construction of the 242-mile Colorado River Aqueduct. We were able to supply up to 1 billion gallons of water per day.
Tunnels are usually filled with large flows of Colorado River water and are off limits when you are on the course. However, although recently closed for annual maintenance, Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District opened the western edge of the aisle, giving the era and others an unusual look.
“It’s an engineering wonder,” said John Bednarkski, assistant general manager at MWD. “That’s quite adoring.”
He wore a hard hat when he led the group into the large horseshoe-shaped mouth of the tunnel. The concrete arches in the passage fade and black in the distance.
The tunnel was not completely empty. A sound echoing through the walls as the ankle depth flowed through the portal and into the stirring pool beneath the metal gate. Many of the tour groups were wearing rubber boots as they peered into the dark tunnel and stood on wet concrete in chambers thinly illuminated by filtered sunlight.
This constant flow comes as groundwater permeates and erupts from the springs passing through the centre of the mountain. Deep inside the tunnel, water was shot very strongly from the floors and walls, and workers lovingly named these immersion obstacles as “fire hoses” and “car washes.”
Standing by the flowing stream, Bednarkski called it “a leaking water from the mountain itself.”
Mount San Jacinto has risen 10,834 feet above sea level, making it the second highest peak in Southern California after Mount Corgorgonio at 11,503 feet.
As the tunnel passes under the sides of San Jacinto, 2,500 feet of solid rock are overhead, with holes only being made by two vertical ventilation shafts.
During maintenance, workers scrape down the walls of the tunnel, clean up algae, and roll over a tractor with a frame with metal hairs with invading mussels growing. Workers also go through open trailers to inspect the tunnels and scan for cracks that need repairs.
“It’s like riding in Disneyland,” said Brian Raymond, MWD’s hauling team manager. “You’re sitting in this trailer. There are a lot of others too. You’re just cruising at the wall.”
Aside from spray and trickle water, employee Michael Volpone said he heard a faint creak.
“Sit down and listen and you can hear the movement of the Earth,” he said. “It’s a little creepy.”
Standing at the mouth of the tunnel, the constant babbling of cascaded waters governs the senses. The air is moist but does not have a musty smell. Place your hands in clear flowing water and feel warm enough to swim.
The concrete walls have dye lines that extend into the darkness, marking where water often reaches when the aqueduct is full.
Many who have worked on the Aquid Bridge say they are impressed by the design of the system and how engineers and workers built such a monumental system with the basic tools and technology available during Great Depression.
Pipelines and tunnels
The search for a route to bring the Colorado River waters across the desert to Los Angeles began with the signing of a 1922 agreement to divide the water into seven states. After the $2 million bond measures by Los Angeles voters passed in 1925, hundreds of surveyors ran through the deserts of Mojave and Sonora, largely roadless, with no roads, and measured them and studied potential routes.
Surveyors traveled mainly on horseback on foot when mapping sturdy terrain. Desert camps endured the harsh days of desert camps, where fevers can reach 120 degrees.
Planners studied and discussed over 100 potential paths in 1931. The route began near Parker, Arizona, and passed through desert valleys, around obstacles and places where there was no better option.
In one official report, the manager wrote, “It’s very expensive to bore the mountains straight and bouncing them is equally expensive.” He said the planners have carefully considered these factors as they have decided on a solution to supply water at the lowest cost.
Founded in 1928 to lead the effort, the people responsible for the Metropolitan Water District focused on sending water to 13 participating cities, including Los Angeles, Burbank and Anaheim.
Los Angeles chief water engineer William Mulholland had to map to the city of Southern California in 1923, 10 years later with the words he won from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles.
The design of the aqueduct coincided with the boldness of the huge dams that the federal government was beginning to build along Colorado – Hoover Dam (originally called Boulder Dam) and Parker Dam formed a reservoir where the aqueduct began its journey.
Five pump plants will be built to lift more than 1,600 feet of water along the route across the desert. Between these points, the water runs in gravity through open canals, buried pipelines and 29 separate tunnels spanning 92 miles. The longest of these was a series of nine tunnels running 33.7 miles across the hills adjacent to Coachella Valley.
To make that possible, voters in 1931 in 13 cities in the district overwhelmingly amounted to today’s $4.5 billion investment, allowing for the employment of 35,000 workers. The crew set up camps, excavated canals, began blowing open shafts through the rocky spines of the desert, giving way to the water.
In 1933, workers were torn into Mount San Jacinto in several places from the east and west, and began excavating shafts from above.
The black and white photo shows miners in hard hats and dirty uniforms smoking cigarettes, climbing open rail cars, and running machines scooping and stuffing rocks.
Another huge equipment crew, known as jumbo, used compressed air drills to dig dozens of holes.
The work progressed slowly, complicated as miners raided underground streams and water erupted.
According to the 1991 history of MWD, titled “A Water Odyssey,” one flood in 1934 disabled two of the three pumps brought in to clear the tunnel. In another sudden flood, the engineer recalled, “The water came in with a huge, crazy rush, filling the shaft at the top. The miner scrambled an 800-foot ladder to the surface, and the last man swirled water around his waist.”
Death and delay
According to MWD, 13 workers were killed during the construction of the tunnel. This includes men who were hit by rocks, men who ran over to equipment and sent electricity through wires to one of the mining trolleys that rolled over railway tracks.
The Metropolitan Water District originally employed Wenzel & Henoch Construction Co. to build the tunnel. However, within less than two years, only about two miles of tunnels were excavated. MWD general manager Frank Elwin “Fe” Weymouth has assigned district engineers and workers to complete the project.
In 1937, workers were again postponed for six weeks. However, in 1939, the final wall of the rock fell over, uniting the Eastern and West tunnels, and the tunnel ended.
The total cost was $23.5 million. But there were other costs too. As construction works drained water, many nearby springs used by native Soboba people stopped flowing. The drying of the spring and stream left the tribe members, which led to the Soboba band of the Luinho Indians, and ultimately to A in 2008, when the tribe’s water rights claims were settled.
The “magic touch” of water
By the time the tunnel was completed, the Metropolitan Water District had released an A shown to cinemas and schools celebrating the conquest of the Colorado River and the desert. It called Mount San Jacinto “the tallest and most forbidden barrier.”
In a rich baritone, the narrator declared Southern California “a new empire made possible by a magical touch.”
“The water needed to support this growth and wealth could not be obtained from the local rainfall on this sunlight land,” the narrator said, showing the newly built houses and streets filled with cars and buses. “Therefore, people realized they had to provide a new and reliable supply of water, and this new water supply was discovered on the noble western slopes of rocky mountains in the wonderland of beauty, naturally covered in the white mantle of snow.”
The pump plants were tested, and in 1939 the water began to flow through the water supply. At the Julian Hins Pump Factory, near the midpoint of the aqueduct, the water was lifted 441 feet, breaking through three pipelines into the desert mountains.
From there, water flows by gravity and moves at 3-6 mph as it moves through pipelines, siphons and tunnels. Entering the San Jacinto Tunnel in Cabazon, passed under the mountains, it appeared near the city of San Jacinto, and continued by pipeline to Reservoir Lake in Riverside County.
In 1941, the waters of the Colorado River began to flow to Pasadena, Beverly Hills, Compton and other cities. Within six years, another pipeline was built south in San Diego.
Water influx promoted rapid growth in Southern California during and after World War II.
Over the decades, increasing dams and detours have also paid environmental sacrifices, drying many of Mexico’s former vast wetlands.
Impressive design
Today, 19 million people rely on water supplied by MWD, which imports supply from Northern California through the state water projects aqueducts and pipelines.
Over the past few decades, agents have continued to do boring tunnels where they need to run the water. The $1.2 billion long 44-mile hauling system called the Inland Feeder, completed in 2009, bored the San Bernardino Mountains and an additional 7.9 miles of tunnels beneath the Badlands in Riverside County.
The system allowed the district to increase capacity and store more water in wet years, Southern California’s largest reservoir, capable of holding around 260 billion gallons of water.
“Tunneling can actually be the most effective way to get from point A to point B,” said Deven Upadhyay, general manager of MWD.
Hypothetically, Upadhyay is difficult to say whether to choose the same route through Mount San Jacinto or a different route around it if the engineers currently have another shot in designing and building the aqueduct using the latest technology. But focusing on cost minimization could result in a similar route, he said.
“Even today, it’s a pretty impressive design,” Upadhyay said.
As people pass I-10 in Cabazon, few realize that the infrastructure is hidden in the place where the desert meets mountain bases. At the tunnel exit near San Jacinto, the only visible sign of the infrastructure is some concrete structures similar to bunkers.
When the Suidobashi runs, anyone entering the facility will hear it sprinting through the water.
The West End of the Tunnel was opened to a group of visitors in March. The manager named the tunnel, who served on the MWD board for 20 years and chaired from 2014 to 2018.
Talking to the audience, Upadhyai reflected on the struggles the region is currently facing as the Colorado River was taken away by drought and was portrayed in parallel with the challenges overcame by tunnel builders in the 1930s.
“They found their way,” Upadhyai said. “This incredible engineering feat. And it required strength, courage and a truly innovative spirit.”
“When we think about the challenges we face today, deal with the wild shaking of the climate and the reductions we may face, and the potential reductions that are reducing supply in a growing southwestern and river system, it will require the same thing, courage, courage and a spirit of innovation,” he said.
