KNAVE KNAVE Water Supply Of the East Bay TATER is a most imW the portant munity. growth Follow of ingredient any the com- old for Spanish missions in California and this common knowledge becomes even more evident. The pioneer fathers who founded Oakland must have had great admiration for the numerous small streams draining the coastal hills behind the townsite. When Oakland was created in 1852 and Horace W. Carpentier took over the reins of government as the city's first mayor two years later, one of his first utterances concerned water. "It is to be regretted," said Mayor Carpentier, "that the city charter confers no powers upon the common council to authorize construction of a water-works by which some of the mountain streams might be brought into the city at comparatively small expense, thereby affording an abundant supply of water for . . .. common use John Wesley Noble tells the story well in It's Name Was M.U.D. a history of the Oakland area's struggle for water "in a state noted for its controversies and clashes over water for farms, industries and homes." Noble's story has been bound into a handsome book by the East Bay Municipal Utility District and is being distributed solely by them for the nominal price of $5. There's a special order form that was sent out with last month's water bills. No library of Oaklandia will ever be complete without this particular work. Orders should not accompany water bill payments, but should include a separate check to EBMUD for the amount of the book only. Only a limited number of copies of the book have been printed. We can't help but feel that it will be many a long month before Its Name Was M.U.D. shows up at the antiquarian book dealers. OHN Wesley Noble was just J plain Johnny Noble when he was a Tribune staffer for 13 years, 1935 to 1948. He arrived in Oakland in 1928, his early home and schooling having been in Oregon at a small town called Gladstone. In Oakland he became a member of the first class to go all the way through the new Oakland High School on Park Boulevard; freshman year through senior class and graduation. He was an outstanding news reporter and feature writer during his Tribune career. This brief information about the writer identifies him as a grammar school pupil in Oregon at the time the East Bay Municipal Utility District was being organized here back in 1923 and 1924, From John Wesley Noble's "It'S Name was M.U.D." Thirty-six inch water pipes pass the old Manzanita School at 24th Avenue and East 27th Street enroute to the Peoples Water Company job site in Oakland and hints of the thorough research completed by the trained reporter in order for him to do such an outstanding book as Its Name. Was M.U.D. Of course, EBMUD was already a dozen years old when Johnny came to work as a news reporter. Prior to tackling the M.U.D. history, John Wesley Noble had done several other outstanding books as well as a score of more magazine articles after departing The Tribune in 1948. Among the books were I Want to Quit Winners, written for Harold Smith of Harolds fame in Reno, and Never Plead Guilty, a biographical work about trial attorney Jake Erlich of San Francisco, which he co-authored with Bernard Auerbuch. Its Name Was M.U.D. is a large 8½ by 11-inch volume with a handsome four-color hardback cloth cover. Illustrations include two maps and more than 60 historical photographs. The book is nearly 200. pages in length. EVELOPMENT and transiD tion stages of all the utilitiesthat have supplied water to the East Bay communities and ultimately merged into the East Bay Municipal Utility District is one of the highlights of the Noble book, along with a chronology, records of service by EBMUD directors, general managers, chief engineers, and attorneys. Other pertinent graphs and charts are also made available which definitely marks the book as the only document in existence covering this ground. It will even surprise the many East Bay residents who are apt to casually remark that "I remember." New comers here are more apt to grin and say "So, that's how it happened." Anthony Chabot, properly tagged as the father of water supply both in San Francisco and the East Bay at a time when Oakland covered only spots on the wide plain spread along the coastal hills. Here's the way the author if Its Name Was M.U.D. tells it: "Actually, the first water piped into Oakland did not, as planned, come from Temescal Creek. The story has it that Chabot was eager for revenue and the Temescal facility being not quite ready he arranged for a supply from a private well to be pumped by steam into an elevated tank from which it flowed downhill to fill the mains along Broadway. This was sometime in late March or April of 1867, and among those supplied was the gas company and a nursery at Ninth and Broadway, with a special tap at Sixth Street for the sprinkling carts to dampen down the dust "By June Temescal Creek water replaced the private supply.' -ITH the coming and going W of often the seasons and street the mains exposed by graders, the water itself wasn't always pure or fresh. "And it wasn't uncommon for editors of the day to speak their minds, as did the the Daily Morning Journal in December of 1867," Noble, the historian, tells us. 'The water obtained from the mains of the Contra Costa Water Company (Chabot's organization) last evening was quite muddy and almost unfit for household purposes. Water from almost any well was superior," the newspaper pro* tested. "This was mild," says Noble, "to complaints that followed." At this point in his story he tells of a reservoir that has long perturbed all East Bay historians: There was at one time a reservoir on the hill we know today as Pill Hill, but in earlier times called College Hill and Hospital Hill. Is it possible that someone somewhere - might have a picture of that reservoir? Noble makes only a mention of the Pill Hill water storage basin: "With a new reservoir set for gravity flow on College Hill, he (Chabot) began work on a permanent dam in Temescal Canyon." Temescal Dam was completed in 1869. The Pill Hill reservoir was certainly anything but a myth in those late years of the 1860s. "His creek system probably was as good as could be expected though dependable only for eight to nine months of the year. The new earthen dam farther up the creek valley would provide a reserve for the three to four dry months. Here Chabot showed the skill developed in bringing water to the Mothér Lode diggings. "First, all earth was removed from the lake bottom and the rock on both sides scraped clean. Then tons of tenacious clay were mixed with earth and 'puddled' actually trampled underfoot by horses and spread in layers, then tamped on the lake floor and walls. The dam itself was of earth, much of it sluiced down the hillsides, raising a levee 86 feet from bedrock to crest and faced on its inner side with broken rock to prevent erosion. "Some of the techniques emContinued on Page 24 24
