William Mulholland (September 11, 1855 – July 22, 1935) was an Irish American self-taught civil engineer who was responsible for building the infrastructure to provide a water supply that allowed Los Angeles to grow into the largest city in California. As the head of a predecessor to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Mulholland designed and supervised the building of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a 233-mile-long (375 km) system to move water from Owens Valley to the San Fernando Valley. The creation and operation of the aqueduct led to the disputes known as the California Water Wars. In March 1928, Mulholland's career came to an end when the St. Francis Dam failed just over 12 hours after he and his assistant gave it a safety inspection. William Mulholland was born in Belfast, Ireland, part of the United Kingdom. His parents Hugh and Ellen Mulholland were Dubliners and they returned to the city a few years after William's birth. His younger brother, Hugh Jr., was born in 1856. At the time of Mulholland's birth, his father was working as a guard for the Royal Mail. In 1862, when William was seven years old, his mother died. Three years later his father remarried. William was educated at O'Connell School by the Christian Brothers in Dublin. After having been beaten by his father for receiving bad marks in school, Mulholland ran off to sea Mulholland envisioned Los Angeles growing much larger. The limiting factor to the growth of Los Angeles was its water supply, because it has a semi-arid climate with unreliable rainfall. "If you don't get the water, you won't need it, " Mulholland famously remarked. Mulholland shared the vision of a much larger Los Angeles with Frederick Eaton, the mayor of Los Angeles from 1898 through 1900. They both worked together in the private Los Angeles Water Company in the 1880s. Eaton and Mulholland realized that the large amount of runoff from the Sierra Nevada in Owens Valley could be delivered to Los Angeles through gravity
