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Show ADMINISTRATION OF THE PUBLIC FOREST LANDS 589 Prietos-"precipitous, canyon-gashed, and all too susceptible to raging brush fires". It contained but a slight amount of land suitable for irrigation, very few trees but much desert brush and was capable of supporting only a few head of livestock.73 Santa Barbara, whose growth depended upon finding a larger source of water than was then available, proposed to build a tunnel through the ridge back of the city to tap the water of the Santa Inez River. To do so it was necessary to get control of Los Prietos through which the river flowed for 23 miles and which was needed both for the water and for the location of the tunnel. The Santa Barbara Water Company did acquire 16,960 acres of the grant, while 31,760 acres were in the hands of Jed L. Washburn. At this point it appears that Washburn and the Water Company bethought themselves of the possibility of having Los Prietos included within the surrounding national forests. This move would kill two birds with one stone: it would facilitate Federal aid and possibly construction of a water storage project for Santa Barbara and it would make possible exchanging the nearly worthless land for the highly valued forest lieu scrip. Local pressure, including solid support of the full California delegation in Congress, resolutions of the Santa Barbara Common Council, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County, and numerous signed petitions had surely influenced McKinley in creating the two forest reserves in 1898 and 1899. Now the same procedure was to 73 W. H. Hutchinson, Oil, Land and Politics. The California Career of Thomas Robert Bard (2 vols., Norman, Okla., 1965), 11:183. For the location of Los Prietos between the two forests see map in S. Doc, 61st Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 55, No. 612 (Serial No. 5654), opposite p. 101. be tried on a larger scale, with more at stake.74 Led by Jed L. Washburn and the Santa Barbara Water Company, who offered in 1902 to convey the full Los Prietos rancho to the United States in return for unrestricted forest scrip that at $5 an acre might have been sufficient to carry through the water project, they marshaled a remarkable array of support. Resolutions and petitions reached the Interior Department from the following: Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce, Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, 56 residents and landholders of Lompoc and Santa Rita Valleys, 33 residents and landholders of Santa Inez Valley, Senator Thomas B. Bard, 600 electors of Santa Barbara County, Private Secretary of Senator Bard, Commissioner of Waterworks Department, Santa Barbara, Jarrett T. Richards Mayor of Santa Barbara and Members of the Chamber of Commerce, Jed L. Washburn, Santa Barbara Water Company, Three representatives of committee of Ventura County, Gifford Pinchot, Acting Director, Geological Survey. It was a telling campaign but it met opposition in Interior from both Binger Hermann and Secretary Hitchcock who questioned the legality of including within a forest reserve by proclamation such a large area which had passed into private hands. The lands it was proposed to include in the reserves were of little value and to give the owners the right to exchange them for forest lieu scrip was unwise, and would not improve the management of the sur- 74 The documents are all included in "Contracts in Forest-Reserve Timber Lands," S. Doc, 61st Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 55.. No. 612 (Serial No. 5654), pp. 95-99. |