Water Woes:

Valley Center needs return of “The Rainmaker”

By Robert Lerner


 



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“The Rainmaker” was a book, Broadway play, motion picture, and musical about the life of Charles Hatfield, a Valley Center man who claimed to have made it rain 500 times or more in parched towns around the world. While the theatrical efforts were filled with fictitious events, the rainmaker’s true life is documented in a permanent exhibit at the Valley Center History Museum.


One of Hatfield’s rain-making ventures resulted in a flood which nearly destroyed Valley Center and other parts of San Diego County in 1916 during a period of severe drought.


Some people wish that Hatfield and his magical rain formula were still around today. (More on the rainmaker later.)


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Recent rain storms notwithstanding, Valley Center -- with its major agricultural economy -- is on the brink of disaster for many farmers and growers who have received notice of mandatory water cuts of 30 percent.


To comply with the order to reduce water usage, some growers have already started the process of select tree removal, stumping, nursery stock reduction, and abandonment of entire groves and orchards. It could change the face of Valley Center.


For those who have lived in the community for decades, the story sounds familiar. In the early 1900’s, the town’s population grew and then fell according to the amount of rainfall. In years of severe drought, entire families would exit the community in massive numbers.


Until the creation of a local water district in 1954, growers and farmers depended on a few wells and Mother Nature to supply much-needed water. Even with a reliable source of water, however, the fact remained that most of the water was imported to this rain-starved region from the Colorado River.


Today, the Colorado is in its eighth year of drought, and scientists worry that the dry spell may last longer than anyone once thought. The National Academy of Science is also concerned that global warming could result in even longer and more severe droughts.


The Valley Center Municipal Water District recently warned agricultural water users that the 30 percent mandatory water cuts could increase. If its municipal and industrial customers are also required to reduce water usage, the district says that agricultural customers could be required to increase the amount of reduction by 40 percent or more.


And a wet winter will not change anything, water district officials declare. Irrespective of how wet the coming winter may be, the restrictions will still be in place, they warn.


Which brings us back to the longing many have for Charles Hatfield and his rainmaking abilities; From his 1916 frame home which still stands on Valley Center Road at Woods Valley Road, the rainmaker would concoct a brew of 23 chemicals which vaporized into the air after being released from a cauldron set atop a 20-foot tower. He employed a similar technique to other sites.


Hatfield grew up near Vista on his father’s farm where he first experimented with floriculture, the craft of rainmaking. His initial success at producing a drizzle prompted him to develop his skills at rainmaking at which he worked for three decades into the 1940’s. He died in 1958 at the age of 82. The famed rainmaker took his secret formula to the grave.


Robert Lerner is historian at the Valley Center Historical Society. He recently began the process of stumping and cutting back hundreds of orange trees in a grove surrounding his home. EM


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Charles Hatfield c1924

Photographs provided by the Valley Center Historical Society.