Read the entire edition online at USC, scanned from a copy at the Huntington Library.
March 28, 1863: The city of Los Angeles is selling 2,000 acres “within the eastern boundary of the city” at a minimum price of 50 cents an acre ($9.19 USD 2012).
The Los Angeles Star visits the new waterworks and describes its construction.
The project consists of a dam 395 feet long “formed by a double row of 24-foot piles driven 18 feet into the ground.”
“From the reservoir formed by this dam the water will be lifted to a height of 40 feet by a wheel revolving by the action of a current formed by a flow of water from the dam.”
“The water thus elevated is delivered on the north bank of the river and will be received in a covered ditch, one foot by two in size, and conveyed to a point near the Catholic burying ground, a distance of about one-half of a mile, where it is proposed to build a reservoir and from whence citizens will be furnished with water through the medium of pipes.”
Mrs. Jane Swisshelm seems to want to exterminate all the Native Americans in Minnesota.
Building a reservoir near the “catholic burying ground” could have contaminated the water, and was a bad public heatlh move. The Bronte sisters probably died due to groundwater contamination by a nearby cemetery. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronte_family
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Uh, we don’t do Wikipedia here…
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