by Darell Farnbach
Think of the Temecula Valley as God created it. Visualize a flat pan with an outlet on one side. The flat pan runs up to Lake Elsinore, around to French Valley, up to Sunshine Summit in San Diego County, past Aguanga and around the north side of Mt. Palomar, and down to Pechanga.
The Outlet is the Santa Margarita Gorge. The drainage comes from Murrieta Creek, Santa Gertrudis Creek (sort of parallel to Winchester Road), Temecula Creek and Pechanga Creek.
This is what the Native Americans had. It provided them with year-round water, which gave the plants and animals what they needed for their subsistence. The land was very wet and swampy. Ducks, geese and all sorts of waterfowl stopped by on their migrations.
When our valley became settled by the Spanish in about 1800 and later by the Mexicans in the 1840s this natural flat pan still provided all the water for the people and their domesticated animals such as sheep, horses, and cattle.
Maybe a stream would be diverted to form a small lake or reservoir. Or a hand-dug well would be used for household use. A small orchard or field could be planted and would provide for family and livestock and maybe enough to sell to a neighbor.
When California became a state in 1850, Americans started moving into the valley, requiring more water. The newcomers hand-dug wells up to 40 feet deep using a windmill to bring the water up to ground level where it would be stored in a tank. The tank not only provided storage but also it provided water pressure. You could move the water uphill a little.
By the 1890s San Francisco Savings owned vast amounts of land in the valley and surrounding mountains - land that had been foreclosed on. You might wonder why ranch owners lost their ranches. It was from not having enough water to grow a profitable farm crop. There was a severe drought at that time.
San Francisco Savings formed the Cosmos Land and Water Company, mostly for the purpose of selling the land. The hired engineers to develop elaborate plans for water dams and they formed a water company on paper.
At about the same time, the Temecula Land and Water Company were formed for the same reason. They had a large 4th of July party to bring people into the area to buy property but to no avail.
When Mr. Culver and Mr. Cobb leased part of the Pauba Ranch, Mr. Cobb sank a well over 500 feet down and it was an artesian well. He had tapped into the aquifer. So, that meant that the flat pan not only held water on the top, but there was also water under the pan, a lot of water, one of the largest aquifers in California, I was told.
The Vails bought most of the valley and water rights in 1905 and had more wells drilled. The water table dropped. Vail was using as much water as he could until the owners of the Rancho Santa Margarita downstream noticed they weren’t getting all the water they wanted. So around 1917 they filed a lawsuit against the Vail Company. That lawsuit was not settled until 1945. By then the US government had appropriated the Santa Margarita Rancho for the US Marine base – Camp Pendleton – in 1940. So the settlement agreement was made with the Marines.
In the settlement, the Vail Company was required to let a certain amount of water to go freely through the Santa Margarita River.
Mahlon Vail then knew how much water he could keep, so he built the Vail Dam which was the most expensive private dam built in the US at that time. It cost one million dollars to construct the Vail Dam. A pipe runs from the dam to the head of the Margarita Gorge to give Camp Pendleton the amount of water to fulfill the terms of the lawsuit.
When the Vail Company sold their holdings in the Temecula Valley in 1964 the Vail Dam and all the water infrastructure became the basis for the Rancho California Water Company. The first thing they did was to drill two 1,000-foot wells.
At some point, Rancho Water joined with the Metropolitan Water District. I understand now the aquifer is constantly refilled with Colorado River water.
You can’t talk about water without talking about the weather. The Indonesian volcano Krakatoa erupted in the winter of 1883 – 84 triggering record rainstorms in the Temecula area that dropped 21 inches of rain in one day, causing major floods including the one in the Santa Margarita Canyon. It washed out the train tracks and ultimately the train route was abandoned.
Beginning in 1916 the Wolf Valley was flooded for a couple of years. In 1980 we had a 100-year-rain. In 1981 we had a second 100-year-rain.
The first time I went up Rancho California Road where Target is in 1981 it was a two-lane road. In a ditch on one side was a car buried up to its top. The Wine Country had to have helicopters drop hay for animals cut off by floods. In 1937 and 1993 Old Town was flooded up to 2 feet.
With the re-dredging and widening of the Murrieta Creek through Old Town it is likely it will not flood again. And with the careful refilling of the aquifer from the Colorado River, it is not likely that we will run out of water in the Temecula Valley any time soon.
