This flood causes $10 million in damage and triggers a public outcry for government action to address the recurrent flooding problems.

In November 1913, the aqueduct begins diverting water from the Owens Valley in eastern California to Los Angeles. The aqueduct solidifies LA’s ascension as a growing metropolis and the central city of Southern California. That said, the result is achieved through corrupt means, and at the expense of Owens Valley farmers and ranchers. A group…

Southern Pacific acquires the former site of the Taylor Milling Company, just adjacent to the LA River, and builds a massive shipping yard.

The area is known simply as Atwater, in reference to its river proximity (“at water”); “village” is added in 1986. The City’s annexation includes other portions of the San Fernando Valley as well.

Los Angeles’s original water system, the Zanja Madre, is finally abolished. It cannot supply enough water to keep pace with the population growth and irrigation demand of early 20th-century Los Angeles.

Rancho Santa Eulalia, originally part of Rancho San Rafael, includes the 700-plus acres along the LA River that will become Atwater Village.

Elwood Mead of the US Department of Agriculture concludes a lengthy investigation into America’s waterways and water usage. The report details the complicated situation in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Times publishes two articles (and a third three years later) detailing the entanglements of Los Angeles’s real estate, financial development, and irrigation rights. An academic study of the LA River’s history and ownership is published as well.

Another flood damages bridges and railroads, and washes out vineyards and orchards. The river changes its course to where it remains in 1915. Resident Asa Hunter remembers the river as four or five feet higher than it ever was before. E. H. Dalton says this flood did irreparable damage to the zanja ditch system, tearing…

A land boom follows the construction of a second cross-country railroad line to Los Angeles. The land boom drives up real estate prices by 500 percent.