California musings

En route from Yosemite to Manzanar, we camped in the Owens Valley for two nights and visited a little museum there. We were looking for information on Manzanar, which we found...but we also found that the aforementioned battle is still alive and well, at least to the local people. Their river [or lake] bed is a poisonous dust bed now, and a good wind can cause all sorts of problems to the people and few remaining livestock in this once active farming community. The curator referred us to an older man who told us about attempts to blow up the aqueducts and talked with bitterness about what sounded like a very recent theft of the Valley’s water. When did it happen? In the 50's or 60's? I looked it up later and found that it had all happened in 1920. This gentleman was old, but not nearly old enough to remember those events. Yet the bitterness is still very much there, and with reason. Very few people in the Owens Valley have any benefit from this enterprise.