Cottonwood Powerhouse — Los Angeles's First Power Plant

Tucked against the Sierra on Cottonwood Creek stands a modest powerhouse with an outsized place in history. Completed in 1908, the Cottonwood plant — together with a twin at nearby Division Creek — was the first power plant the City of Los Angeles ever owned.

It was built for a single, urgent purpose: to electrify the building of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Hauling cement, boring tunnels, and running the camps across this desert demanded power, and the falling water of the Sierra creeks supplied it. The current generated here helped build the very channel that would soon carry the Owens Valley's water — and its rivers' future — south to Los Angeles.

When the aqueduct was finished in 1913, the powerhouse kept running — the seed of what grew into the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, today one of the largest municipal utilities in the country. More than a century on, Sierra water still spins turbines along this route on its long fall toward the city.