CALIFORNIA Great Expectation Creating the Infrastructure of a Mega-State

Assignment 4 Arash Saysan

Great Expectation 1

•  California organize its political and socioeconomic structures and built environment at the !rst 40 years

•  At the second step which is in the 20th century (second 40 years) California built the dams, aqueducts, reservoirs, power plants, industrial sites, bridges, roadways, public building, and stadiums to serve the growing population of the state.

•  California foretold and empowered the mega-state to come. •  It began with water, water was one of the big problem that with out

the water California couldn’t developed in the short amount of the time as it did.

•  Most of the California is desert. •  For California to become livable and dynamic, California needed the

water system statewide. •  California acknowledged the water need very soon. •  In 1878 the legislature passed the Drainage Act, creating the position

of state engineer and appropriating $100,000 for irrigation, drainage, and navigation studies.

•  Engineer William Hammond Hall researched and published series of studies that end up to a big plan for the development of California through water project.

Great Expectation 2

•  William Hammond Hall, the founder of the State, because of his big e"ort on the water project.

•  Empowered the local communities to form irrigation districts that could tax, issue revenue bonds, acquire land be eminent domain, and divert river water to dry lands for irrigation and/or #ood control.

•  Established the legal and political framework for hundreds of irrigation districts that would in the decades to come bring water to previously arid land and, in short order, transform the Central Valley and portions of southern California into an agricultural empire.

•  Bringing the water from Colorado River to California. •  It took ten years and three trips to Europe for Rockwood and Cha"ey

to organize and capitalize the California Development Company, but a mere !ve months to dig the canal once construction had started.

•  Lots of investment, High technology, Big e"orts and hard works took to bring the water to the California from far lands.

Great Expectation Essay

California water project is one of the amazing project in the United States history that made lots of big

changes in the state. California water project almost made the California alive and give the state the potential for

growing faster and easier . Water issue in any country is a big problem that have huge in#uence on the country

development and with out water the a nation losing all the opportunities for the grow. $is fact that a nation is dead

without water recognized soon and in the late 18th century by the Americans in the California which more important

that everyone is the Engineer William Hammond Hall that called the modern California Founder.

Imagining the daily life without water or take a shower just once in a week hard to believe now, but that is true

fact that the people in California faced by before the the state water project. California water project is one of the best

engineering achievements of the 20th Century that survived the nation in many di"erent aspects .