The location is appropriate, since the Engineers began construction of the San Pedro breakwater in 1898, with only 18 men. Since then the district’s strength has risen and fallen. Prior to World War II the number of people working various civil works projects numbered more than 18,000. By shortly after Dec. 7, 1941, it had shrunk to less than 2,000 but by then the mission had shifted from civil works to building army camps and airfields.
With a present strength of 900, the Los Angeles District now covers 226,000 square miles, including Southern California, Southern Nevada, Arizona, and the Southwestern corner of Utah. They currently work on four "mega" projects, one of which is the Los Angeles River Drainage Area (LACDA) flood control project (to strengthen and raise the banks of the Los Angeles River and its tributaries against the possibility of a "100 year flood" which might devastate an 82 square mile area from Pico Rivera to Long Beach including Downey).
Other major projects currently under way include the Santa Ana River Mainstem flood control project (San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange Counties); the Tropicana/Flamingo Washes flood control project (Las Vegas); and the expansion of the Port of Los Angeles. The district still supports the Army and Air Force at nine bases in its area of responsibility.
The celebration of the Corps' 100th birthday here will begin at 10:30 a.m., with the honor guard from the Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin presenting the colors. Tall sailing ships from the Maritime Museum, Ports of Call, and a fireboat, "The Scott," will salute the district from the Los Angeles Harbor. An honor flight of Marine aircraft will fly over during the ceremony. The event is open to the public.
The Corps and its efforts are intertwined with the history of this country. Mark Twain, who made a name for himself as a Mississippi steamboat pilot long before he became a literary light, said "Everyone complains about the Mississippi River, but no one does anything about it..." (He said the same thing about the weather!) The Army Corps of Engineers did something. In 1824 they were the first to survey the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, to deepen the channels and remove sand bars. Before they were done, all the great rivers of America were made navigable by the Corps.
In 1902 the Corps started dredging and building Pearl Harbor, which had become a U.S. Territory in 1898.
By Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had built and had operating a radar station in the Pacific on Kahaku Point, northwest of Pearl Harbor. Early that Sunday morning two operators detected a strange flight of planes from the west. They frantically reported their find, but no one would listen.
Gen. George Patton, who spent his boyhood summers in Downey, subsequently graduated from West Point and before World War II, was ordered to find a site for a desert training center. He established Fort Irwin, which was built by the L.A. District of the Army Corps of Engineers to train Patton’s troops and tank corps for World War II, and was used more recently for training troops for Desert Storm.
Among the Corps' recent accomplishments is the Indian Bend Wash (IBW) project located in Scottsdale and Tempe, Arizona, involving a greenbelt plan to absorb flood waters. Completed in 1984, it has been used as an example of successfully wedding recreational features into a flood control design, and shows the Corps’ sensitivity to environmental concerns.