Don’t blame ‘runaway mules’ for Bishop’s street mess

Fred Eaton and William Mulholland set out in 1904 on a trip to the Owens Valley to scout out the potential for the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The pair were traveling light, armed only with “a mule team, a buckboard and a demijohn of whiskey,” according to Mulholland.

I’m betting they had quite a revelation when they pulled their rig up to the intersection of Main and Line streets in Bishop. Big brick buildings defined the street corners. Eaton was a formally educated surveyor and engineer, the former mayor of Los Angeles, and the former head of the Los Angeles City Water Company. Mulholland took over from Eaton as the city water honcho and, as a self-trained engineer, had laid out the city’s water system.

At that intersection four exacting eyes saw two streets that did not intersect at a right angle.

At that point, my guess is that both thought, “this is going to be easier than we imagined, these Owens Valley rubes can’t even lay out straight streets on a grid.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

The LA Aqueduct became and remains a defining engineering feat in the Owens Valley.

Mismatched and poorly aligned streets became and remain a defining engineering feat in the town.

Look at the two “main streets.” They are off square by at least 30 feet, if you are on Line Street heading east and 20 feet if you are on Line Street heading west. That is a complete miss in the world of surveyors. Really. Not even close.

Moving into the street grid a bit deeper in the residential section, we have the famous jog where North 3rd Street crosses East Pine Street and misses a square intersection by a solid 10 feet, or one lane of traffic. The legendary excuse is that, for unknown reasons, horse or mule-drawn wagons or stagecoaches roared up and down 3rd Street, so the bright bulbs in the city lamp decided to not align the street so the “turn” would stop “runaway wagons.”

That is one of the most creative excuses for being drunk or completely incompetent when surveying a street I have ever heard.

Let’s ponder the “runaway team” excuse. In Bishop, teams and wagons had been bustling though town since about 1850. Driving a wagon or buckboard was a common skill. So common the former mayor of LA and the head of the city water company could do it. Teams were trained, teamsters were skilled and runaway wagons were rare.

Moving on there is no colorful, historic excuse for West Elm Street to hit Main Street (US 395) and then start up as East Elm a half a block from the first intersection. That means there are two Elm and Main intersections.

Later additions to town suffered from the same off-kilter street work.

Let’s talk about a problem child, Hobson Street, a little spur that starts at Grove. Hobson doesn’t line up with the alley south of the street. And where Hobson starts, the section of Grove west of that intersection gets out of whack. It’s a couple feet off on either side. This was a simple street extension, group. Start here, make a straight line. Nope. Can’t do it.

Finally, Hobson hits West Elm. Once again, a total miss. The streets are off by half a lane. Again, just extending a street seemed to have baffled everyone involved.

Surveyor/General/President/Mule Promoter/Father of Our Nation George Washington would be appalled at all the botched street alignments.

But we don’t care. It’s cute. Unique. Interesting. Odd. A bit off. Quirky. Sort of like Bishop itself.

(Jon Klusmire of Bishop assumes Bishop lost out as the county seat because Independence’s streets are straight as a string.)