A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PINYON PINES WATER SYSTEM
By
Harry M. Quinn
The first water source that I am aware of was a one-inch pipe set into a small water worn grove by a concrete dam set into it near the top of the lower falls in Omstott Creek. This water source had been replaced by a spring further up the canyon by the time I was old enough to hike up there. This original source was an open flume which was covered by a wire screen., so items like leaves and twigs still commonly plugged the pipe, which then required someone to go up and cleanout the entrance to the pipe. One of the things I used to do as a child was to go up to the falls with my family, clean out the entrance to the pipe and play in the water as it came out of the pipe. It was a cold shower but was fun back then. This pipe had to be cleaned out on just about every trip we made there in order to get water to flow through the pipe for our shower. The only thing that remains of this old water system is some concrete residue on the rock along the sides of the groove near the top of the falls.
The one-inch line had been extended up to a redwood spring box which had been dug into a spring at the base of the canyon wall. At that time, more water flowed from the spring than the one-inch line could carry, so when more water was needed the line was replaced by a one and seven eights inch diameter pipeline. When my grandparents bought the cabin back in December of 1941 the larger line was already in service, but the old one-inch line was still in place. Portions of this old line were pressed into service on several occasions when the new larger line was washed out by summer thunderstorms. Yes, we once had several thunderstorms a month back them. For some reason this smaller old line did not wash out as easily as the new larger one, so the smaller line would be pressed back into service until the larger one could be repaired. Portions of this old one-inch line can still be found up in the canyon.
The use of Omstott water and the permit to cross federal land with the pipe line (s) was contingent on supplying water to the Forest Service Public Campground. This had its drawbacks, some people would forget to turn of the faucet and being the lowest point on the main line could occasionally put the village out of water. This problem was basically solved by Mr. Nightingale installing a check valve in the line above the camp ground and the U.S. Forest Service installing valves that automatically shut off after use, spring loaded valves.
On a couple of occasions, Omstott Spring itself was damaged by flash floods and / or landslides. As the amount of water produced by the spring decreased, the spring had to dug out, the spring box lowered, and the pipeline lowered to meet the box. This meant a lot of digging and the moving of some very large rocks. The spring had to be dug out and lowered on several occasions in order to keep water flowing to the subdivision. Following World War II, a lot of surplus materials came on the market. This included some copper pipe, which Mr. Nightingale purchased war surplus from the U. S. Navy’s facility at Port Hueneme.
Mr. Nightingale had cut a road up Santa Rosa Mountains to his sawmill just above timberland and this allowed him to develop a new water source at the Pigeon Springs. Pigeon Springs soon became the main water source for the Pinyon Pines Development and little by little Omstott Spring was allowed to slide into disrepair. This first spring was developed with a redwood spring box dug into the lower portion of the creek bed. There was a loop road over to the spring from the main sawmill road. Later a series of horizontal wells were drilled above this original spring. The pipelines from the horizontal wells ran down the canyon wall to near where the old spring box was and there tied into the original water line down the mountain. It is interesting to note that over time the sand entering the copper pipeline actually eroded the pipe on its way down, cutting completely through the pipe in several areas.
This new copper water line was both a blessing and a curse in its early stages. The line crossed under Highway 74 through a culvert that was located near Nightingale’s old store and café. There was a low spot in the line where it passed through the culvert and at times the pipe would break there. When this happened, it would drain the water out of the community lines as the water ran through them as part of the distribution line up to the reservoir. This problem was partially solved by installing a check valve in the pipeline system over near Mr. Elmer E. Dunn’s place. This is where the Pigeon Creek line tied into the east end of the distribution lines. Later the line was run directly up to the reservoir rather than running through the distribution lines to get to the reservoir.
When this Pigeon Creek line was installed it ran right past the old Nightingale store and a distribution line was run to the store. This was the first-time piped water was actually present for the store. Prior to tying into the Pigeon Creek line, the stores water had come from the spring up east of the Fire Station. They had a flatbed truck over near where the fire station is today, and that truck had two or three 55-gallon drums on it. A hose was run down from the spring and used to fill the barrels. Then when water was needed at the store someone went over, drove the truck to the back of the store, and filled the 55-gallon drums at the store that were used as the stores water source. Then the truck was returned to the hill across the street and the hose reattached to the barrels.
Mr. Nightingale brought in a cable tool rig and drilled four or five wells in the area. He had planned to use these wells to supplement or replace the springs as a main water source. At least two of these wells were back near the present-day reservoir. None of the wells he drilled had enough water to be completed, if any of them had water in them at all. Being drilled with a cable tool rig, none of these wells were probably very deep.
According to Mr. Elmer E. Dunn, the first water tank was located on the hill at the northeast corner of Pinyon Drive and Indio Avenue. The site was not high enough to provide needed water pressure to the subdivision so the tank was moved atop the hill between Palm Springs Avenue and .. Avenue and just west of Thicket Drive.
When our family arrived in 1941, some of the water was still being stored in an old rusty open topped steel tank atop the hill behind or cabin. Next to the tank was a large pit dug into the top of the hill that was to become a future reservoir, but never did. The tank once had a lid, but it was lying on the ground next to the tank. Shortly after we arrived this tank was totally abandoned and replaced by the larger, enclosed steel tank which was set back on the acreage at a slightly higher elevation. As a child, my grandfather and I would spend time on hot summer days playing under the overflow pipe on the side of the tank. We had to do this in the morning as by afternoon there was often no water coming out of the overflow. On one of the days, we were visited by a large black diamond-back rattle snake, which apparently was living under the tank. I still have a photo of us cooling off under that overflow pipe. This old tank has now been converted into a circular house.
I later found out that the old steel that was on the hill behind our cabin had originally been located near the northeast corner of Indio Avenue and Pinyon Drive, about where Mr. Greener built his A-frame home (Taylor, personal communiqué; Contreras, personal communiqué). Mr. Taylor, who never told me his first name, remembered the tank being there in 1933 or 1934. He also told me that it was a member of his family from down on the desert that owned the cable tool rig that Mr. Nightingale had used to drill his wells. Mr. Taylor told me that he would come up and visit me again so that we could talk about old times but never did.
During a heavy windstorm, the old steel tank up on the hill behind our cabin blew over and rolled off the hill onto Thicket Way. Since it was not being used, Mr. Nightingale took his cat and moved it out of the road but left it sitting these. Mr. Nightingale decided to put in the reservoir up on the hill from which the tank had been. He took his cat and cleaned out the hole up there but never installed the reservoir. The old hole was later filled in so that he could sell the two lots it had been on.
When the newer steel tank began to leak from more holes than could be plugged by redwood plugs, the old steel tank was drug by Art’s old cat back to a higher spot in the acreage back next to Santa Rosa Drive and placed back in service. This tank remained in service until the present reservoir was constructed and became serviceable. Mr. Nightingale really got his money’s worth out of that old steel tank.
The old water lines in the subdivision were mainly one inch pipe placed in trenches made by dragging an old horse drawn plow behind Mr. Nightingale’s orange colored dozer. The plow was commonly handled by Mr. Val Bixby while Art drove the cat. This meant that the pipes were commonly over a food deep in areas of soft ground and at or near the service in rocky ground. The shallow lines in the road were often broken by vehicles running over them and winters saw many of them freeze and break. The standard practice for pipeline repairs was to drive a redwood plug into the break. In some places it was hard to tell if the waterline was an old redwood pipe with steel repairs or a steel pipe with redwood repairs. As a last resort, the leaking pipes would be dug up and replaced by new pipe.
Summer would find the lines from the springs, especially Omstott Spring, washed out on a fairly regular basis by thunderstorms. Summer thunderstorms were much more frequent then than they are now and much more intense. The Omstott Creek line has not washed out once since I moved back here in 1987 and it used to be washed out at least once a summer in late the 1940’s to early 1950’s. When the line went down, water supplies would dwindle rather rapidly, as the water storage capacity was not that large. Repairs to the Omstott and Pigeon Creek water lines were commonly made by Mr. Arthur Nightingale, Mr. Val Bixby, Mr. Guy Townsend, and my grandfather, Mr. Harry Caldwell. While many people depended on these springs for their water, they also depended heavily on the above-mentioned people for pipeline repairs and continued water service.
There were no meters back then and water fees were one dollar a month and you only had to pay if you were connected to the water line. Today water is supplied by the Pinyon Pines County Water District, mainly Mr. Tom Huss, which is basically still using the same water sources that were developed and in use right after WWII. The distribution system has been greatly improved, with larger diameter pipe, water meters, and fire hydrants, but the supply lines from the springs have had little change.
The lowest area on the Omstott Spring distribution system was in the Pinyon Flats Public Campground. This was both good and bad, as when water supply was low, one could still go down there and get water, but when the pipes were broken or faucets were left running, it could drain the entire distribution system. At times of low water, one could find many local residents down in the campground with pails, pans, buckets, jugs, jars, and old canvas water bags getting water to take home. When this water ran out, it meant a trip up to Mr. Wilson Howell’s for water. This trip usually meant getting out the five-gallon glass water bottles, as well as several one-gallon glass bottles stored in the shed. This allowed us to get a large amount of water in just one trip.
Water appears to have never been an overly abundant commodity in the Pinyon Flats Area but is much less plentiful than it was seventy years ago. Many of the springs we could depend on for a drink while out hiking in the area began to dry up by the middle 1950’s and most were gone by the middle 1960’s. Mr. Jim Wellman told me that many of the springs he had used to water his cattle had dried up before he sold the 101 Ranch at Pinyon Flats, which was around late 1945 or early 1946.
It has been interesting to note that some of the old springs have had water flowing for a short time following a prolonged wet winter. When my half-brother, Mr. Robert E. Lee, returned from WWII we would spend the Fourth of July over at Dos Palmas Spring. At that time, it could be counted on for water on a year-round basis. The old table above the spring was on a slope, so the top was not level. On one Fourth of July visit, my grandfather forgot about the table’s sloping surface and set the watermelon on one end. It rolled across the table and fell on the ground, so we had what was left of it before the sandwiches.
Asbestos Spring, although never large, was another spring that flowed year-round. Surface water could be found flowing in Omstott Creek down past Highway 74 until late June and rarely even into early August. The amount of water flowing in Omstott and Pigeon Creeks, as well as the duration of their flow, was dependent on the snowpack on Santa Rosa Mountain. Back then there were times when we could not get up to Mr. Steve Ragsdale’s old log cabin at “Eighth Heaven” until the Fourth of July because of the snow on the road.
With the population increasing and the water supplies decreasing, how long will the area last???
REFERENCES
Mr. Clarence Contreras, notes from conversations.
Mr. Harry M. Quinn, memories of growing up here on the mountain.
Mr. Taylor, notes from a single conversation.
Mr. Elmer E. Dunn. Notes from conversations.
PINYONPINESWATER
Revised 09/03/22