Charles Hatfield was a former sewing-machine salesman from Kansas who called himself a "moisture accelerator." He claimed that a secret mixture of 23 evaporated chemicals, cooked in tanks mounted on a wooden tower, could attract rain clouds. He had demonstrated this — or claimed to have demonstrated it — in various drought-stricken locations across the Southwest in the years before 1916. Whether his chemicals did anything, or whether he was a gifted opportunist who built towers during wet seasons, is a question the historical record does not resolve.
In late 1915, San Diego was in a serious drought. The Morena Reservoir, which supplied the city's water, was dangerously low. The city council, reviewing Hatfield's track record of apparent successes, offered him $10,000 if he could deliver 50 inches of rain and fill the reservoir. The contract was informal — Hatfield would be paid only upon delivery.
He built his 20-foot wooden tower at Morena Reservoir on January 1, 1916. Five days later, the rains began.
They did not stop. January 1916 produced one of the wettest months in San Diego County history — nearly 30 inches of rainfall in a single month. Roads washed out across the county. Bridges went down. The Lower Otay Dam failed catastrophically, releasing the entire reservoir in a wall of water. Approximately 20 people were killed. Thousands of acres of crops were destroyed. The rail line connecting San Diego to the rest of the country was severed for weeks.
Hatfield presented his bill. The city refused to pay on the grounds that the rains were an act of God, not the work of a moisture accelerator, and that if Hatfield insisted on claiming credit for the rainfall, he would also be liable for the damages — which ran into the millions of dollars. Hatfield withdrew his claim rather than litigate.
The 1916 flood reached San Diego Bay. The rain that fell on the surrounding watershed — the Sweetwater River basin, the Otay River, the Tijuana River — all of it drained toward the bay. The low-lying areas around the harbor margins flooded. The bay was brown with runoff for weeks.
Hatfield died in 1958 without ever having been paid. The city of San Diego never formally acknowledged whether the rains were his doing or not. The question remains, formally, open — which is about as honest an outcome as the situation deserved.
Sources: Wikipedia, "Charles Hatfield"; San Diego History Center archives; contemporary newspaper accounts compiled by San Diego State University Special Collections.
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