So, when Kern County Museum Curator Lori Wear told me last year she was getting a cache of old documents from Castle & Cooke, I was all ears.

In case you don’t know, Castle & Cooke is the descendant company of Tenneco West, which was the descendant of the Kern County Land Co. And no two entities were more intertwined than the Kern River and the Kern County Land Co.

Yes! I told Wear, lemme know what you find.

She and her staff are still going through the massive document trove, but Wear alerted me to one shiny gem that caught her eye. It’s a series of letters from 1891 about the hunt for desperate criminals marauding the countryside burning hay stacks. Not just any hay stacks but those belonging to Kern County Land Co.

The letters are between the Land Company and a private detective firm in San Francisco.

First, the letters are a wonderful peek into Kern County life at the turn of the last century. Second, and more importantly, they clearly show a level of animosity and intrigue you just won’t find in textbooks.

In mid- and late-August 1891, 10 hay stacks were torched on two properties owned by the Land Company.

Why is that a big deal?

Hay stacks back then were enormous. And without a store of hay, the Land Company couldn’t feed its livestock. That’s money on the hoof.

Aside from that, the Land Company was ever vigilant against disgruntled settlers and others unhappy with how much land — and water rights — the company was gobbling up.

The Land Company’s response to these hay burners was quick and decisive. But, interestingly, not local.

If the Land Company did call local authorities, it didn’t give them much time to solve the case.

About a month after its stacks were torched on Aug. 16 and Aug. 20, 1891, the Harry N. Morse detective agency in San Francisco already had a man on the ground in Fresno preparing to infiltrate the hay arsonist’s ranks.

Morse was a legendary Bay Area lawman known as the “bloodhound of the far west.”

A Land Company boss, S.W. Ferguson, had discovered the names of about half a dozen locals who he believed might be the hay torching culprits. That included “Old man Emerson of the Paletta Ranch,” according to a letter he sent to Morse’s agent, known only as “Operative H.H.”

“Emerson was at one time arrested at the instigation of the Company for cutting water pipes and was in jail for a while on account of this,” Ferguson wrote.

See? It all comes back to the water.

Anyhow, the hay burning was taken extremely seriously by Ferguson who not only wanted to know who burned the hay, but also anyone who had been “… openly or secretly antagonistic to the Kern County Land Co.”

According to Operative H.H.’s reports, he too, was all in.

In his first report from Fresno, H.H. mentions how he and his wife, yes, his wife, had traveled by train from San Francisco and went about getting a wagon, team of horses and camping gear. Not too expensive, nor too cheap looking.

After haggling over the price of horses and covering the wagon himself rather than pay the “exorbitant” price of $15 for stable hands to do it, H.H. and his wife got underway to Bakersfield on Sept. 27, 1891.

Three days later, they arrived in Bakersfield.

“We put up at the Arlington Hotel. We did not care to go to a first class hotel, as we wished to avoid suspicion, and we had the appearance of first-class ‘hay-seeds,’ and not wishing to change our appearance, we concluded to stop at a second class hotel,” H.H. writes in a report dated Sept. 30, 1891. (His reports are all type written, by the way, so, he must have squirreled away a typewriter among his hay seed trappings.)

H.H.’s next report is dated Oct. 4, 1891.

He spends some time roaming around town asking about land for sale and gets some good intel via a time honored technique: “I have found that by the use of some stimulants in the shape of beer, they loosen up considerably.”

He also lets the locals know he’s not a fan of the Kern County Land Co. He meets a man named Charles Scribner, who has connections to a real estate agent named Mr. Maude (likely A.C. Maude, who also dabbled in insurance and owned the weekly Californian newspaper for a time).

Scribner joins in the Land Company bashing, H.H. reports.

“… he frequently alluded to the Land Company as monopolists, and some very endearing terms were used by him against the Land Company. He also said that the Company had ‘spotters’ around, and if there was anyone in town looking for land these ‘spotters’ would inform the person that he would get swindled if he purchased from him, or Maude, or anyone but the Land Company.

“Mr. Scribner said that the Land Company would do anything to dispose of its worthless land.”

H.H. does meet with Mr. Maude, who warns him against bad mouthing the Land Company, which controls the water and could make things “very bad for me.”

H.H.’s next report goes even deeper into dark history of land and water in Kern.

But I’ve run out of room so you’ll have to check back next week to hear how it ends.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry. Her column runs Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at http://www.bakersfield.com, call her at 395-7373 or email lhenry@bakersfield.com

Why?

The petroglyphs, considered the largest concentration of Native American rock art in the Western Hemisphere, were carved thousands of years ago.

Some may be 6,000 years old. Others are even older — dating back 10,000, perhaps even 15,000 years.

But certainly it was before electricity and takeout food.

My point is that life was tough back then. You had to expend a lot of energy just to survive.

So why would people take time away from finding food and shelter to make thousands upon thousands of cryptic images on rocks?

The fun and kind of frustrating part about the tour is no one gives you an answer.

Because not only do we not know when the petroglyphs were made, we don’t know exactly who made them.

“The ancient ones” is the only description given during an orientation film at the first stop tour guests make, in Ridgecrest at the Maturango Museum, which hosts the tours.

According to archeologists, the Paiute-Shoshone people settled in the Coso Mountain area about 800 years ago and likely contributed to the rock art.

But scholars argue over whether the majority of the images predate the Paiute-Shoshone.

Either way, current tribal members consider the art sacred and an important part of their heritage.

The bigger mystery, to me, is what the images meant to those who made them.

Even the seemingly self-explanatory carvings, such as bighorn sheep, probably meant more than what they seem on the surface, according to scholars.

The sheep, which used to be prolific in the area, are carved on nearly every surface in the canyon.

Some are clearly being speared, so perhaps those markings depict a recent hunt or wishes for a good hunt.

Others are just there, repeated over and over, leading some scholars to theorize they were spirit animals, possibly associated with water or rain.

Which is interesting because the climate changed in that area dramatically between 12,000 and 700 years ago, going from a lush region with huge lakes (China Lake) to the desert we know today.

So if the petroglyphs were made in the more distant past, those artists were reflecting a very different world, putting their meaning even further out of reach.

People who study these things believe the canyon was a religious site and that shaman or those on spirit quests made the images. Though, again, that’s up for debate.

Some images are easily recognizable: the sheep, antelope, weapons, stick-figure humans.

Others are really mysterious, especially the human-like images that scholars say are shaman figures.

Those have long, rectangular bodies filled with geometric designs and bird claw feet sticking out the bottom.

Their heads are sometimes just swirls or seem to be erupting in flames or aren’t heads at all but a pair of eyeballs on the shoulders.

Some appear to be holding daggers. One looks as if it’s stirring a large pot.

Were they depictions of dreams? Visions? Were they meant to convey a ritual or a final step in some kind of training?

At first, they seem fun, whimsical. But the more you look at them, the eerier they become. You get the feeling they were never meant for public consumption.

None of the petroglyphs appears haphazard, as if doodled out of boredom. (I’m not counting the more recent additions such as “J.P.” or “E=MC2”; those are just vandalism.)

The ancient petroglyphs are very detailed and clearly took time to make.

Regardless of their specific meanings, I suppose what the petroglyphs tell us in general is that artistic expression has always been a vital part of human existence no matter how hard that existence might have been.

At least that’s my very unscholarly take.

The federal Bureau of Reclamation ran out of water in the San Luis Reservoir and sent shutoff alerts (giving three days notice) to 26 districts it serves in the northern San Joaquin Valley and Bay Area.

One of those was the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which provides water to about two million customers including a few companies you may have heard of such as Apple and Hewlett Packard.

The shutoffs were narrowly avoided thanks, in part, to some quick water trades courtesy of the Kern County Water Agency and Arvin-Edison Water Storage District.

Still, San Luis Reservoir is at historic low levels. Dangerous lows, in fact.

And none of it should have happened at all, say water managers.

Because Lake Shasta is full to the brim.

Yes, you read that right, too.

The feds have heaps of water. Just not in the right place.

That, and other water maneuvers by the Bureau, have water managers up and down the state fuming that regulators’ overly strict operation of the federal Central Valley Project (CVP) has been so reckless it could cause problems years into the future.

HOW THE PLUMBING WORKS

To understand how this near-shutdown happened and why water managers are so worried for the future you have to understand the Central Valley Project (CVP).

Don’t be scared! We’ll take baby steps.

The CVP is the federal side of California’s two biggest water systems. The other is the State Water Project, which we will mostly ignore in this story.

To start, I want to make it clear this isn’t a “fish versus farms” rant. Though the Endangered Species Act is the underlying factor for how this all unfolded.

I’m just fascinated by how turning a valve — or not — 500 miles away can wreak havoc throughout the entire system.

So, here’s what happened.

PLAN, NO PLAN

After four years of unprecedented drought, we actually had a decent water year in 2015-2016 (in Northern California, anyway).

The two main reservoirs the CVP relies on, Shasta and Folsom, were full.

The Bureau of Reclamation was able to repay water it had borrowed the previous year and on April 1 told its contractors how much water it would be able to provide.

It promised 100 percent to all its contractors north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, 100 percent to so-called Exchange Contractors in the northern San Joaquin Valley and 100 percent to wildlife refuges south of the delta.

It also promised 55 percent of contracted allotments to its municipal users in the Bay Area and 5 percent to its west side agricultural contractors (Westlands Water District and a few other districts).

It made those promises based on approval of a so-called temperature plan for Shasta Lake by the National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS).

Because Shasta is a linchpin in the survival of the endangered winter-run Chinook salmon, regulators have to make sure it has enough cold water to run down the Sacramento River at the end of October.

The temperature plan outlines how much water can be released from Shasta each month to preserve that needed chunk of cold water. Typically, downstream users can expect up to 13,000 cubic feet per second (CFS) a day in the river.

But salmon took a beating these last few drought years so the Bureau and NMFS created a more cautious plan with limits of 9,000 CFS in June, 10,500 CFS in July and 10,000 CFS in August.

With approval by all the regulating agencies, cities made their water supply plans, farmers planted their crops and wildlife refuges let out a sigh of relief after several dry years.

Happy days, right?

Not so fast.

DOWN TO A DRIBBLE

In early May, NMFS became concerned that initial lake temperature readings came in higher than predicted.

It scrapped the original plan and announced what many saw as a draconian reduction in Shasta releases, no more than 8,000 CFS all summer. In fact, June’s releases were cut back to 7,400 CFS at one point.

The announced reduction caused pandemonium among water contractors south of the delta and the Bureau set about re-negotiating the plan.

Compounding reduced supplies from Shasta was salt.

The delta was hit with a “king tide” starting in June that brought more salt from the San Francisco Bay than had been anticipated.

That required the Bureau, along with the state Department of Water Resources (DWR), to push more fresh water out through the delta to maintain water quality for municipal users.

That wasn’t as great a burden on DWR because it’s responsible to provide only 25 percent of that water and its main reservoir, Oroville, isn’t under the same winter-run salmon release restrictions.

Since the Bureau couldn’t increase its supply of fresh water out of Shasta because of NMFS, it had to move as much water out of Folsom as possible while keeping pumping out of its Jones Pumping Plant near Tracy to only a single pump.

The Bureau planned to move nearly 3,000 CFS daily through Jones and into the San Luis Reservoir. That was down to about 800 CFS this summer.

MAJOR WATER DEBT

The dribble coming out of Jones was quickly overmatched by demand, hence, the feds ran out of water in San Luis in about mid-June.

That’s when the borrowing frenzy started.

San Luis is a holding tank for water from both the feds and state.

They park water in San Luis and, from there, it goes to Bay Area cities, San Joaquin Valley farmers, wildlife refuges or all the way to Los Angeles through a variety of canals.

Contractors also store water in San Luis. Some is left over from previous years and some they purchase from third parties and pay a fee to store in San Luis.

That’s where the Bureau started.

In June and early July it took 270,000 acre feet that federal contractors had stored in San Luis, which caused severe howling and a lot of legal saber rattling from districts that had bought water at steep prices last year and paid to have it waiting for them in San Luis.

The Bureau is still working out how to answer those issues, I was told.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

Finally, on June 28, NMFS approved a new plan for Shasta releases, which was basically the old plan.

But the increased releases for June were moot. June had passed.

The Bureau quickly burned through all its borrowed water and needed more.

It put out a call for help to all water contractors.

On July 15, Arvin-Edison, Kern County Water Agency and the state Department of Water Resources stepped up offering water through loans and exchanges.

The feds accepted but weren’t initially able to get the required permits to make the deals.

That’s why, on July 21, the Bureau sent three-day shutoff notices to all its contractors.

That includes the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which was already having to use its emergency water supplies out of Anderson Reservoir to blend with San Luis water because San Luis had dropped so low the water had become too fetid for Santa Clara to run directly through its treatment plants.

WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

The Bureau finally got its permits and no one was shut off but it still only had a trickle coming from Shasta, the king tide to deal with and obligations to meet south of the delta.

It had to borrow even more water, all the way from Fresno and at least one Friant Division district.

As the calendar ticks toward mid-August, the Bureau is holding its breath.

That’s because salinity requirements will drop off mid-August, demand from north-of-delta users is expected to relax and NMFS actually agreed to keep Shasta releases at 10,500 CFS per day rather than throttle back to 10,000 CFS as outlined in the temperature plan.

Yes, water managers say, the crisis appears to be coming to a close.

REPAYING THE DEBT

But what about next year?

“The Bureau should be moving as much water south as they can right now (to repay the approximately 380,000 acre feet it owes),” said Ara Azhderian, water policy administrator for the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority. “But there doesn’t seem to be much opportunity for that this fall.”

Indeed, Ryan Wulff, branch chief for Delta Policy and Restoration with NMFS, reminded me these next few weeks are typically very hot so releases from Shasta will continue cautiously.

And even with this abundance, some say over abundance of caution (water managers tell me Shasta has 325,000 acre feet more cold water than the NMFS plan called for), Wullf predicted this fall’s salmon run will be paltry at best because of previous drought years.

And that, Azhderian said, is one of the most frustrating aspects of all of this.

“We need effective regulation so all these sacrifices actually result in something,” he said. “Part of the problem is we’re a victim of our own success.”

California’s water districts are so adept at moving, trading and exchanging water, the public never really knows how close we come to the cliff edge.

“People don’t have the foggiest idea of how it all works.”

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry. Her column runs Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at http://www.bakersfield.com, call her at 395-7373 or email lhenry@bakersfield.com.

Then let’s tack on whether it’s cool that public resources are being used throughout this deal to basically benefit private businesses.

I swear when I started this I just wondered how the water would “move” up to Madera.

Why can’t anything ever be simple?

Let’s start in Madera County.

A 2,000-acre development called Gateway Village was proposed way back in the 1990s by Castle & Cooke as a “master planned” community of more than 6,500 homes with parks, commercial space, etc., in the southeast corner of the county just north of Children’s Hospital Central California along Highway 41.

The taps and toilets for all that urbanization will require more than 6,300 acre-feet of water a year, according to Gateway’s environmental documents. (Imagine 6,300 football fields each covered with a foot of water — it’s a lot).

Of course, the question is where will that water come from?

The development is in the Root Creek Water District, formed a little before Gateway Village was first proposed. It covers about 9,200 acres and is home to citrus and grape farming.

Root Creek’s groundwater is severely overdrafted and the district has no other surface supplies.

The district is not a contractor within the federal Central Valley Project (CVP), which moves water through the Friant-Kern Canal from Millerton Lake north of Fresno to the Arvin-Edison Water District in Kern County.

Gateway developers came up with a plan under which Root Creek would buy “excess” water from the neighboring Madera Irrigation District, which is a CVP contractor, and from the Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the CVP.

Both of those supplies are described as “when available” in Gateway’s documents.

Considering the vagaries of Mother Nature, the Madera County Board of Supervisors wasn’t comfortable with that and sent Root Creek/Gateway out to look for a backup supply of water.

They found it in Kern County.

First, a quick stop in Tulare County.

That’s where the Root Creek “backup” water originates.

It’s owned by Paramount Citrus Association, one of the many companies owned by billionaires Lynda and Stewart Resnick.

Paramount owns Rayo Ranch in Tulare County, which has rights to 9,000 acre-feet a year of Kaweah River water.

Paramount doesn’t use all its Rayo water, so, for years, has moved some of it through the CVP system to other Paramount lands.

Like Root Creek, Paramount is not a CVP contractor. It has to partner with Tulare Irrigation District, which is a CVP contractor, to move that Rayo water.

Paramount releases its Rayo water to Tulare Irrigation, which, in turn, sends a like amount of water down the Friant-Kern Canal to the North Kern Water Storage District here in Kern County. North Kern isn’t a CVP contractor but has access to the Friant-Kern Canal.

In order to use the CVP system, Paramount had to have an “environmental assessment” (EA) approved by the Bureau of Reclamation.

In that EA, it very clearly states that the Rayo water is only to be used for farming and groundwater recharge.

It also states the water cannot be used in such a way that would trigger any land use changes, such as from ag to urban.

OK, so now, much of that Rayo water is banked in North Kern, where Paramount is a huge landowner. Paramount also bought some water from the Nickel family and has it banked in North Kern.

Here’s where Root Creek comes in.

In 2009, another Resnick company, the Westside Mutual Water Company, made a deal with North Kern to pull some of that banked Paramount water out and give it to neighboring Shafter-Wasco Irrigation District for ultimate delivery to Root Creek in Madera.

The deal is phased, starting at 3,500 acre-feet of water per year up to a maximum of 7,000 acre-feet, if needed.

Shafter-Wasco is a CVP contractor so it can take that Paramount water and have the Bureau of Reclamation release a like amount of water from Millerton Lake to the Madera Irrigation District.

Madera Irrigation would then deliver it to Root Creek through two turns-outs soon to be constructed on the federally owned Madera Canal.

Again, all those swaps, including constructing the turnouts, had to pass muster with the Bureau of Reclamation in an EA.

And, again, the Bureau EA clearly states that the Paramount (Westside Mutual) water and any water Root Creek buys directly from Madera Irrigation or the Bureau is to be used only for ag or groundwater recharge.

It can’t be used in a manner that results in land use changes — ag to urban.

But that’s exactly what this water will do. That’s what it’s intended to do. That was the whole point of this long, elaborate deal.

I asked the Bureau about that.

First, I confirmed that, yes, the Bureau did put those ag-only limitations on all the water movements involved in this deal and that the water cannot be used for “M and I” (municipal and industrial).

The Bureau does follow up on these deals annually but mostly to make sure the right amount of water is being moved to the correct recipients.

It’s up to Root Creek to tell the Bureau how it used the water.

Um.

My guess, backed up by what Root Creek’s attorney told me, is Root Creek will simply say the water was used for groundwater recharge per the Bureau’s limitations.

End of story.

Of course that’s not the end of the story because the water will have been pumped right back out and put into the taps and toilets of Gateway Village, as was the intent all along.

I’m not arguing against Gateway Village. It may be the greatest piece of leap frog development ever to grace the fertile fields of Madera County.

That’s not the point.

The point is that taxpayers, who built and own the CVP system, seem to be giving quite an assist to the bottom lines of two private enterprises.

Oh, and Root Creek was also awarded a $4 million grant from the State Department of Water Resources to help pay for those turnouts on the Madera Canal in order to curb the district’s severe groundwater overdraft.

All of which makes me wonder, what’s in it for us?

The owners of Gateway Village (Castle & Cooke sold it in 2010 to unnamed investors) aren’t going to give the Bureau a cut of every lot they sell.

And Paramount/Westside Mutual certainly isn’t going to share any of the loot it makes off selling water to Root Creek.

The loot, by the way, could be pretty substantial.

Paramount/Westside Mutual has spent at least $2.6 million up front to sink four wells and build pipelines between North Kern and Shafter-Wasco and pay both districts “stand by” fees for the water.

But companies appear to have made about $3.5 million back from Root Creek, which has been paying $180 per acre-foot a year for the last five years for Paramount/Westside Mutual to hold its water in reserve.

If Root Creek ever needs the water, the price will go up by $420 per acre-foot for a total of $600 per acre-foot.

I gleaned most of those figures by scouring through agreements with the ag districts and talking to district managers and the attorney for Root Creek.

I would have liked to get a more accurate picture of the finances involved but Paramount/Westside Mutual wasn’t talking.

“We’re a private company,” I was told by Westside Mutual President Bill Phillimore. “I don’t think there’s any advantage to us participating in this story.”

Yeah, and that’s what concerns me.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at http://www.bakersfield.com, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com