560 HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



CHAPTER XXX. 



Hydrology : Our Geological Basin. — Judge Eaton's Views. — Change of Climate. — 

 Wells of Pasadena. — Artesian Borings. — Mr. Shorb's Geological Section. — Dry 

 Tunnels. — The Glacial Terrace. 



HYDROLOGY. 



This comprises all that has been learned from geological investigations, 

 and from actual work done by hydraulic engineers, water tunnelers, well 

 diggers, and artesian drills, in regard to Pasadena's natural sources of water 

 supply ; and this includes the mountain absorption of winter rains and 

 snows, besides the great geological terrace basins — the filled-up ancient 

 lakes over which the cit}' of Pasadena is built. These lakes were filled at 

 bottom with boulders, cobblestones, sand, gravel, and all sorts of debris 

 from the mountains, and then a topping of tillable soil varying in thickness 

 from one foot to over one hundred feet. The ancient gulf or lake basin 

 under the city is over 1000 feet deep in some places, and the lower 900 feet 

 of this is simply a vast water bed, up to the level of its natural outlets by 

 the springs in the Arroyo banks on the west, and those of the glacial terrace 

 on the south extending from Columbia Hill eastward to San Marino (J. De- 

 Barth Shorb's place) and Winston Heights. In 1884 I had commenced my 

 researches in regard to the geology and hydrology of Pasadenaland ; but in 

 1893 I spent several months at Echo Mountain and Mount Lowe, by gener- 

 ous courtes}^ of Prof T. S. C. Lowe, making a more close and careful 

 investigation of our mountain formations and their water storage than I had 

 been able to do before. Then in January, 1894, I submitted a report before 

 the Science Association of Southern California on the results and conclu- 

 sions I had reached ; and in this I spoke of Pasadena's great underlying 

 water basin, with its lower lip at Raj^mond Hill and the canyon outlets in 

 that east-and-west range of bluffs, giving numerous incidents of my own 

 collecting to illustrate the case, and imagined that I " had a patent " on that 

 geological basin or old filled-up lake theory. But when I set out to pre- 

 pare a complete history of Pasadena I solicited some contributions for it from 

 our veteran old settler, Judge B. S. Eaton, and he responded to my call with 

 such a generous hand that in nearl}^ half of my chapters T have something 

 from him worth preserving. The water question had been one of his hob- 

 bies since his first settlement here about twenty-five years ago ; and among 

 the matters which he wrote out for this volume is a very clear and distinct 

 grasp of the doctrine of our underlying \vater ba-sins, which so far as I have 

 learned, he was the first man to trace and define in their relations to Pasa- 

 dena's fluvial interests. Thus my own "patent" on it is knocked out by 

 the Judge's right of prior discovery, and here I present his narrative: 



