This is a fun piece of history:
When San Diego Hired a Rainmaker a Century Ago, It Poured
After Charles Hatfield began his work to wring water from the skies, San Diego experienced its wettest period in recorded history.
A century ago, in 1915, as today, San Diego thirsted for water. Dangerously low reservoir levels threatened the region’s potential to grow. Promoters of the city’s Panama-California Exposition, entering its second year, worried about the drought’s impact on fair attendance. A civic organization, the San Diego Wide Awake Improvement Club, demanded action.
Onto the arid stage—and into San Diego’s city council chamber on December 13, 1915—stepped a potential savior. A dapper, 40-year-old sewing machine salesman named Charles Mallory Hatfield vowed to make it rain. As Barbara Tuthill details in “Hatfield the Rainmaker,” the self-professed “moisture accelerator” told the councilors that he could have the Morena Reservoir—only one-third full at the time—overflowing within a year for a fee of $10,000, to be paid only if he succeeded.
Hatfield’s path to San Diego started more than a decade earlier in nearby Bonsall. There, on his father’s ranch, Hatfield conducted his first rainmaking experiments from the top of a windmill tower.
By 1904, he was able to convince some of California’s water-starved ranchers and farmers that he could milk the skies by releasing a secret 23-chemical cocktail into the air from tall wooden towers perched on stilts. “I do not make rain,” Hatfield said. “That would be an absurd claim. I simply attract clouds, and they do the rest.”
In December of 1904, he guaranteed Los Angeles business leaders that he could coax 18 inches of rain to fall over the ensuing five months in return for $1,000. When the target was eclipsed, the rainmaker became a star. “Hatfield immediately became the darling of excitement-hungry newspapers and popular magazines,” wrote scholar Clark C. Spence.
San Diego’s desperate city council was willing to give Hatfield the job, particularly because it would only have to pay out in the event that a deluge struck the city. “It’s heads, the city wins; tails, Hatfield loses,” said Councilman Walter Moore after his fellow members verbally agreed to hire the rainmaker. Only Councilman Herbert Fay objected to the deal, calling it “rank foolishness.”
Even though he still lacked a signed contract as San Diego rang in the new year of 1916, Hatfield set off deep into the woods 60 miles east of the city and began construction of a 20-foot tower near the banks of the Morena Reservoir. He poured his rainmaking brew into shallow iron pans resting on a platform at the top of the wooden structure. Curiosity-seekers reported that Hatfield set the fluids on fire and let the smoke drift skyward. One witness noted that the noxious chemicals smelled as if “a Limburger cheese factory has broken loose.”
When a light sprinkle christened the New Year, a newspaper headline cheered, “Rainmaker Hatfield Induces Clouds to Open.” The rain grew steadier over the next couple of weeks. And then on January 15, a biblical rain started to descend from the heavens. As much as 17 inches of rain fell in the mountains outside San Diego over the ensuing five days as rejoicing quickly morphed into horror. The San Diego River leaped over its banks and ran a mile wide. Landslides oozed down saturated mountains. Floodwaters washed away nearly everything in the vicinity, including homes, roads, railroad tracks, telephone lines, and the entire community of Little Landers.
Indeed, the drenching rains quickly returned after a brief respite—with deadly consequences. On January 27, the mighty stone dam at the Lower Otay Reservoir gave way, sending a 40-foot wall of water thundering to the coastline. More than a dozen people died in the torrent that swept away all trees, livestock, and houses in its path.
By the time the epic rain stopped in San Diego County, nearly 30 inches had fallen in a month, making January 1916 the wettest period in the region’s recorded history. The county coroner estimated that 50 people had died in what residents began to call “Hatfield’s Flood.” With communication and transportation lines severed, naval ships were required to ferry people and supplies in and out of San Diego. As promised by Hatfield, water lapped to the top of Morena Reservoir, yet no one was particularly happy about it.
Believing he had upheld his end of the bargain, the rainmaker walked the 60 flood-stricken miles back to San Diego to collect his money. With city officials flooded with not only rain but also lawsuits seeking compensation for the resulting damage, city attorney Terence Cosgrove refused to pay Hatfield—that would make San Diego liable for the deluge in the eyes of the courts. Cosgrove denied payment on the basis that a contract was never inked and that Hatfield could not furnish proof that the rain was of his own doing and not an act of God. The attorney did say he would be willing to pay the $10,000 if Hatfield took responsibility for the damages, but the rainmaker refused and sued the city. The litigation dragged on for two decades before it was finally dismissed in 1938. Hatfield never received a dime from the city.
San Diego didn’t want to pay Hatfield, but others surely did. Over the next decade, he received offers from as far away as Cuba and Honduras, where he was hired to put out jungle fires to protect the country’s banana crop. In 1921, he signed the biggest contract of his career—in excess of $25,000—to bring five inches of rain to Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. The Great Depression, however, decimated his business. Spending dried up, and newly constructed dams improved civil water supplies. Not even the Dust Bowl could revive his rainmaking career.
https://daily.jstor.org/charles-hatfield-rainmaker/
