Charles Lux (1823 - 1887) Plot 28, Lot 9

This native of Alsace came to the United States where he became a partner of German immigrant Heinrich Alfred Kreiser, later known as Henry Miller. Together they formed the huge land company of Miller and Lux, ultimately controlling more than a million acres in California, Oregon, and Washington. Lux was the more polished of the two, and handled the business details while Miller oversaw the ranches. Miller was fond of saying that he could ride a horse from Mexico to the Oregon border and spend each night on his own property.

   Miller and Lux figured prominently in the early days of California’s continuing “water  wars.” They were among the state’s most hated water monopolists because of their success in making strategic acquisitions of riverbank lands with an eye to controlling riparian rights.  In spite of their assertions that they were cattlemen and not land speculators, they used their riparian rights in a variety of antisocial ways.  They forced landowners to sell out to them; they accumulated enormous underdeveloped and unused holdings; and they delayed the process of subdivision and resale to insure huge speculative profits for themselves.  To the land holdings that gave them control of much of the San Joaquin River area, they added a 50-mile stretch along the Kern River.  James Ben Ali Haggin and his partner Lloyd Tevis acquired rights of appropriation farther up the Kern with the intention of diverting  water through irrigation canals to lands at some distance from the river.  The state supreme court ruled in Lux v. Haggin in 1886 that the riparian rights of Miller and Lux made such an appropriation illegal.

   The court’s decision created an uproar in California and was denounced as a victory for monopoly and speculation over farmers and agricultural progress.  It led to a stormy special session of the legislature and to the passage of the Wright Irrigation Act of 1887, which authorized the establishment of irrigation districts with the power  of eminent domain,  the ability to overcome riparian rights by condemnation suits, the right to sell bonds to finance the purchase of water rights and the construction of dams, canals and other irrigation works.