L.A. Aqueduct - Water rights in the desert west are contentious, and Owens Valley is no exception. The Alabama Gates spillway on the Los Angeles aqueduct, pictured here, is the site of the 1924 takeover by a group of valley ranchers who turned off the water to Los Angeles, temporarily releasing the flow back to the Owens River.

One of the greatest hydraulic engineering works of the 20th century, at the time it was being built, the L.A. Aqueduct was surpassed only by the Panama Canal and New York City's water system. During construction of this 250 mile long system, between 1908 and 1913, nearly 60 work camps were built and temporarily occupied. Archaeological study of one of these, the Alabama Gates Camp, focused on clarifying the nature of worker and industrial elite relations; understanding how different social classes, ethnic groups, and genders functioned in these camps; and documenting the material trappings of working class culture. At the turn of the century, the layout of work camps was, by-and-large, haphazard. Indicative of the extraordinary organization and planning required of a project of this scale, L.A. Aqueduct work camps were quite orderly, and built to a formal design, with buildings moved from one camp to the next. Traces of structures examined at the Alabama Gates Camp represented four communal or industrial buildings (a blacksmith's shop, mess hall, kitchen, and bathhouse), and 32 dwellings. Excavations and historic debris served to differentiate four distinct neighborhoods: a high-status neighborhood (wooden cabins), a bunkhouse neighborhood (canvas tents), the cook's tent house, and a few isolated tent dwellings. That the workers' living conditions were poor is signaled by how worn-out cloths, shoes, and the like were. Judging from the kinds of dietary refuse at the site, camp meals were unassuming at best.