The Cascades

Water came down this chute on November 5, 1913, and something like forty thousand people rode out on trains and buggies to watch it arrive. Mulholland gave them five words: "There it is. Take it." The arrival end was always the point. A syndicate that included Harrison Gray Otis, Henry Huntington and Moses Sherman, who sat on the city water board, had quietly assembled 108,000 acres of this valley before the route was public. The San Fernando Valley voted itself into Los Angeles in 1915 to get the water.

What the plaque says

This is the terminus of the Los Angeles-Owens River Aqueduct, which brings water 338 miles from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada to the City of Los Angeles. Begun in 1905, the great aqueduct was completed November 5, 1913. The Mono Craters Tunnel project, completed in 1940, extended the system 27 miles to its present northernmost intake near Tioga Pass. California Registered Historical Landmark No.653.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Cascades — steps away
  The concrete chute where the Los Angeles Aqueduct arrives, and where forty thousand people watched the Owens Valley come south in 1913.
• Pioneer Oil Refinery — 3.5 mi
  The first commercially successful refinery in the West, built in 1876 to take the crude coming down the pipeline from Pico Canyon.
• Mission San Fernando Rey de España — 3.9 mi
  The seventeenth Alta California mission, founded at the Tataviam village of Achoicominga, with the largest adobe building in the state standing beside it.
• Oak of the Golden Dream — 4.0 mi
  Gold was found in California here in 1842, six years before Sutter's Mill, and the oak it was found under is still standing.

More markers nearby

• Beale's Cut Stagecoach Pass — 1.5 mi
• Lyons Station Stagecoach Stop — 2.8 mi
• San Fernando Cemetery — 2.8 mi
• Pioneer Oil Refinery — 3.5 mi