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7. Sardines and Golf Courses: Yet Another Dam
- University of Nebraska Press
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75 Who, other than possibly Charles Crocker, back in 1880, ever dreamed that by the middle of the twentieth century the Monterey Peninsula would be so utterly and completely dependent on a singular source of water of such modest means as the Carmel River? The answer to that question is that Crocker’s successors knew what the future held as long as they controlled the river. S. F. B. Morse, often considered a visionary by his followers, knew because his Del Monte Properties Company owned vast water rights to the Carmel River and much of the land along its banks. Owners of private-interest water companies such as the Monterey County Water Works and its successor , California Water and Telephone Company, knew what the future held because of their unhampered capability to build dams on the river. Obviously, the two powers are often one and the same or share common interests. The water purveyors were confident that if a dam became obsolete, the easiest and most immediate solution to solving water shortage problems on the Monterey Peninsula was to build another dam on the river. This was especially true when the San Clemente Dam, thought to have a thirty-year longevity when built in 1921, started showing signs of being incapable of meeting growth demands in 1948— twenty-seven years after it began storing river water. All it took to meet the Monterey Peninsula’s growing needs for water, in addition to the San Clemente, was another dam—this time the Los Padres Dam, in 1949. Revealingly, engineers working on 7 sardines and golf courses Yet Another Dam 76 Seven the Los Padres project publicly predicted that it would only be sufficient for twenty years. If water-company engineers knew the life span of a particular dam, then it only follows that when needed, they could build another dam on the Carmel River to meet the water requirements of a growing population and such blossoming industries as sardine fishing, golf courses, tourism, and highly attractive spectator events. Comfortable with the knowledge or confidence that a dam was always in its future, the Monterey Peninsula took every opportunity to reinvent itself when a new public relations image was in its best interests. In one era it became the “Sardine Capital of the World,” in a later era the “Golf Capital of the World.” Regardless of the region’s economic base, the Monterey Peninsula remains dependent on water from the Carmel River and to get that additional water it is dependent on dams. Ultimately, the San Clemente Dam and its reservoir did not capture and contain enough water to meet the growing population of the Monterey Peninsula. The demand for water from the Carmel River not only came from the Hotel Del Monte, and its systematic development of towns like Monterey and Pacific Grove, but from a burgeoning sardine (pilchard) industry that would grow to sixteen water-consuming canneries and fourteen reduction plants on Cannery Row, and later from resort and public golf courses. What the diverse industries had in common was that all needed copious amounts of water from the Carmel River to maintain themselves. Monterey’s sardine industry was the first large-scale commercial user of Carmel River water as the canneries steadily increased production each year in the decade following World War I. Average production in tonnage of sardines for the ten years after World War I was forty-three tons per year. During the decade of the Great Depression, tonnage increased to 155 tons per year. In 1938 sardines became an eight-million-dollar industry. That year there were more than fifty purse-seine boats in the Monterey fleet, each with a twelve-man crew supplying sardines to twenty-five hundred [54.160.243.44] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:35 GMT) Sardines and Golf Courses 77 cannery workers. Together they were Monterey’s largest, single workforce. Roughly 30 percent of Monterey’s population was either directly employed by the fishing industry or in an indirect but related manner. The sardine industry hit its stride in World War II with the military’s need for canned foods that could be easily stored and supplied to the troops. The 1941– 42 season was the highest, most profitable year on record at the time. Even though many of the fishing boats were used for government defense work, such as coastal patrols, the fleet managed to haul in a tremendous 249,717 tons. The next two seasons were nearly as...