Los Angeles Aqueduct
canal in Los Angeles County, California, United States of America
The Los Angeles Aqueduct system, comprising the Los Angeles Aqueduct (Owens Valley aqueduct) and the Second Los Angeles Aqueduct, is a water conveyance system, built and operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power under the supervision of the department's Chief Engineer, William Mulholland. The system delivers water from the Owens River in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains to Los Angeles.
The aqueduct's construction was controversial from the start, as water diversions to Los Angeles eliminated the Owens Valley as a viable farming community. Clauses in the city's charter originally stated that the city could not sell or provide surplus water to any area outside the city, forcing adjacent communities to annex themselves into Los Angeles.
The aqueduct's infrastructure also included the completion of the St. Francis Dam in 1926 to provide storage in case of disruption to the system. The dam's collapse two years later killed at least 431 people, halted the rapid pace of annexation, and eventually led to the formation of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to build and operate the Colorado River Aqueduct to bring water from the Colorado River to Los Angeles County.
The continued operation of the Los Angeles Aqueduct has led to public debate, legislation, and court battles over its environmental impacts on Mono Lake and other ecosystems.
First Los Angeles Aqueduct
Construction
The aqueduct project began in 1905 when the voters of Los Angeles approved a US$1.5 million bond for the "purchase of lands and water and the inauguration of work on the aqueduct". On June 12, 1907, a second bond was passed with a budget of US$24.5 million to fund construction.
“Los Angeles Aqueduct” enters the record as canal in Los Angeles County, California, United States of America. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Angeles, Aqueduct and canal can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2859225. Authority coordinates are 36.976, -118.210. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 1905 and 1907.
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This entry incorporates text from “Los Angeles Aqueduct” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.