It's going to take 223 miles of steel pipe and concrete waterway,

120 miles of railroad track,218 miles of power lines,500 miles of road.

If Mulholland can pull it off,he'll completely transform not just LA,but the entire state.

The first giant step in creating the largest agricultural economy in the country.

But it will come at a cost.

The Los Angeles Aqueduct.5 years, 5,000 men.

223 miles of steel and concrete that change the face of the West.

At the time, the largest water project in the world.

It cost the lives of 43 men.

Finally, in 1913...it's finished.

This is yours!

It is your own fidelity and unfaltering courage that made the work possible.

The aqueduct is completed, and it is good.

The aqueduct saves Los Angeles.

The city grows from 250,000 in 1900 to 2 million in 1930.

The federal government's investment in projects that move water in the West is more deeply formative of the character of the Western region than all the cowboys and sodbusters and wagon trains and pioneers there ever were.

But for Owens Valley,the source of the water, it's a disaster.

The lake is sucked dry, creating a giant wasteland.

Local farmers attempt to blow the aqueduct up,over 10 times.

But it's an unwinnable contest.

This was controversial stuff.

There was a lot of backroom politicking,a lot of buying people off.

This made a lot people unhappy.

This devastated a region of California,the source of that water,

but it was enormously beneficial,

and in fact, one could argue Los Angeles could not have grown in the way it did,without Mulholland architecting that aqueduct of water being brought to that area.