The building of the El Capitan Dam had quite a dramatic affect on our family. My father was born and grew up on a 160 acre ranch adjacent to the Capitan Grande Indian Reservation, with the Chocolate Creek running on one side of the property and the San Diego River along another side. When the decision was made to build the dam, all the land in that valley was condemned, meaning that the people on the reservation and the settlers in the area had to vacate their homes and move elsewhere. My father's mother moved from her homestead to a ranch in Jamacha, and the Indians were removed to either the Baron Long Reservation near Alpine or to the newly established Barona Reservation north of Lakeside. By the time actual construction began, in 1932 I believe, Dad had built a house on five acres of land situated along the south side of the San Diego River, east of El Monte Park, and about three miles from the dam site.
  The road to the dam ran alongside our south fence, so when there was nothing else to do, my sister and I would watch the traffic. And there was a lot of traffic. It raised clouds of dust on the unpaved track, and after a time the surface was so wash boarded that the trucks rattled and banged fiercely. There were heavy loads of rock and dirt, and oil tankers and water wagons, and cranes and other construction equipment that passed by. There were not many passenger cars except on Sundays when curious people would drive up to observe the progress.
  Our family was affected economically, as well, by this project. My two oldest brothers, Norman and Bud, had jobs at the dam for a time, and another brother, Ernie, had what you might call a short-time career there. In his memoirs, he explains why he didn't participate in after-school sports at Grossmont High School.
  He writes: "I was quite capable physically but I had a deal going at El Capitan Dam. It was under construction at that time and the workers stayed in the construction camp except for weekends when they went home to their families. I started selling the San Diego Sun at the door steps of the mess hall where the workers would stream out after their evening meal. Some of them would ask me to bring things like soap and cigarettes and gloves, etc. from Lakeside for them. I finally made a box that would hold four cartons of smokes and this was displayed on the front fender of Norman's old nineteen-twenty-five Dodge coupe which he let me use. The requests for more and more things continued and I finally bought a Model T roadster for fifteen dollars and Dad helped me cut the trunk structure away and then we built a large box with several pull-out drawers which were contained behind two swinging doors.
  "Norman would go by Glazer Brothers wholesale store in San Diego each Monday morning and pick up my shopping list of all kinds of cigarettes and cigars and snuff and matches and several kinds of candy and gum. At the most prosperous time those Monday orders would amount to as much as five hundred dollars. He would also get the

several kinds of magazines that sold in addition to the Sun newspaper. Other things were added over time as requests came in for different articles including bath soaps and shaving creams. The one thing I never made a profit on was the money. Yes, some of the workers who seldom left the site would ask me to cash their paychecks. I didn't carry enough money in my travelling store to do this so they would give me their endorsed checks and I would put their names and check amount on a paper pinned to the inside of the box door and take the checks home. Norman would take the checks on the milk run to San Diego and would stop at the Lakeside Bank on his return and cash them. I would take that money on my afternoon run to the dam and hand it on to the rightful owners. Sometimes it would amount to close to two thousand dollars but I was never molested while driving up and down the valley with all that dough. This was in my freshman, sophomore and junior years. Cigarettes sold for two packs for a quarter and along with other sales kept me in sufficient funds."
  "In addition to the above, there was a resident city engineer camp by the dam where the engineers and their wives and children lived. I delivered their papers to them and they asked me to arrange to bring milk to them. Mom considered this and thought she could spare a quart or two a day. Demand increased and Dad got another cow and the daily delivery grew to around ten or twelve quarts a day. Mom charged ten cents per quart and I kept bringing the receipts to her and she squirreled them away. One day while Bud and I were in the house sitting at the dining room table she asked us if we thought we could build a bathroom onto the house. Bud, the practical one, said "What re we going to use for money?" Whereupon Mom got up and disappeared into her oom and came back with a three pound Hills Brothers Coffee can and poured more than two hundred dollars in one dollar bills onto the table. I can still see Bud's mouth hanging open. We all pitched in and built that bathroom for her."
  So in depression times, which the early thirties were, the El Capitan Dam project was a boon to many people. Some of the men who worked on the dam had moved here from other parts of California and from out of state. Some brought families and managed to find housing in the area. One family built a little cabin on Walt Hartung's property on the east side of our place and stayed there until the construction was over, and then they moved out, leaving their little un-plumbed house to the elements. Some lived in tents in El Monte Park. One of those families came from Pennsylvania, and I corresponded with the younger daughter for many years after they returned to the East. And as explained in Ernie's story above, members of our family found employment and profited from the employment of others. We even had a border during this construction project. A Mr. Johnson, who was an engineer and built the tower that sits a couple of hundred yards east of the dam, stayed with us for a time, bunking in with one

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