Mission San Fernando Rey de España
Mission San Fernando Rey de España is a Spanish mission in the Mission Hills the district of Los Angeles, California. The mission was founded on September 8, 1797, was the seventeenth of the twenty-one Spanish missions established in Alta California. Named for Saint Ferdinand, the mission is the namesake of the nearby city of San Fernando and the San Fernando Valley; the mission was secularized in 1834 and returned to the Catholic Church in 1861. Today the mission grounds function as a museum. In 1769, the Spanish Portolá expedition – the first Europeans to see inland areas of California – traveled north through the San Fernando Valley. On August 7 they camped at a watering place near where the mission would be established. Fray Juan Crespi, a Franciscan missionary travelling with the expedition, noted in his diary that the camp was "at the foot of the mountains"; the Rancho of Francisco Reyes was approved by the padres as a suitable site for the Mission. After brief negotiations with the Alcalde, the land was acquired.
The mission was founded on September 8, 1797 by Father Fermín Lasuén who, with the assistance of Fray Francisco Dumetz and in the presence of troops and natives, performed the ceremonies and dedicated the mission to San Fernando Rey de España, making it the fourth mission site he had established. Fray Francisco Dumetz and his associate Fray Francisco Javier Uría labored in the mission until after 1800. Early in October, 1797, 13 adults were baptized and the first marriage took place on October 8. At the end of the year, there were 55 neophytes. By 1800, there were 310 neophytes, 352 baptisms, 70 deaths. An adobe church with a tile roof was blessed in December 1806. Fray Dumetz left the mission in April 1802 returned in 1804 and left the following year at the same time as Fray Francisco Javier Uría, who left the country. In 1805, Fray Nicolás Lázaro and Fray José María Zalvidea arrived at the mission, the latter was transferred to San Gabriel in 1806 and the former died at San Diego in August 1807.
Padres José Antonio Uría and Pedro Muños arrived in 1807, the former retired in November 1808 and was succeeded by Fray Martín de Landaeta while Fray José Antonio Urresti arrived in 1809 and became the associate of Fray Muñoz, Fray Landaeta died in 1816. During the first decade of the century, the neophyte population increased from 310 to 955, there had been 797 deaths, 1468 baptisms; the largest number of baptisms in any one year was 361 in 1803. In 1804 there was a land controversy where the padres protested against the granting of the Rancho Camulos to Francisco Avila. Fray Urresti died in 1812 and was succeeded by Fray Joaquin Pascual Nuez in 1812 to 1814, Fray Vincente Pascual Oliva was stationed in the mission from 1814 to 1815. Fray Pedro Muñoz left California in 1817, his place was taken by Fray Marcos Antonio de Vitoria from 1818 to 1820. Fray Ramon Ulibarri arrived in January and Fray Francisco Gonzalez de Ibarra in October 1820. On December 21, 1812, an earthquake hit the area which did enough damage to necessitate the introduction of 20 new beams to support the church wall.
Before 1818 a new chapel was completed. During the period of 1810 to 1820 the population gained reaching its highest figure, 1080, in 1819, after which its decline began. After Fray Ulibarri died in 1821, Fray Francisco Gonzalez de Ibarra was stationed alone in the mission. Mission San Fernando was the 17th mission to be found after all 21 After the Mexican Empire gained independence from Spain on September 27, 1821, the Province of Alta California became the Mexican Territory of Alta California; the missions continued under the rule of Mexico. Fray Ibarra began to complain that the soldiers of his guard were causing problems by selling liquor and lending horses to the natives and in 1825, he declared that "the presidio was a curse rather than a help to the mission, that the soldiers should go to work and raise grain, not live on the toil of the Indians, whom they robbed and deceived with talk of liberty while in reality they treated them as slaves." This led to a sharp reply from Captain Guerra.
The amount of supplies furnished by the mission to the presidio from 1822 to April 1827 amounted to $21,203. Fray Ibarra continued his labors alone until the middle of 1835, his successor was Fray Pedro Cabot from San Antonio, stationed here until his death in October 1836. After Fray Cabot's death, there is no mention of a missionary at San Fernando until August 1838 when Fray Blas Ordaz remained there during the rest of the decade. Down to 1834, the neophyte population decreased by less than 100 and the mission remained productive. In October 1834, Comisionado Antonio del Valle took charge of the mission estates by inventory from Fray Ibarra. From the mission was to be a parish of the second class with a $1000 salary. In 1842, six years before the California Gold Rush, a brother of the mission mayordomo made the first Alta California gold discovery in the foothills near the mission. In memory of that discovery, the place was given the name Placerita Canyon, but only small quantities of gold were found.
In 1845, Governor Pío Pico declared the Mission buildings for sale and, in 1846, made Mission San Fernando Rey de España de velicata his headquarters as Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando. The Mission was utilized in a number of ways during the late 19th century: north of the mission was the site of Lopez Station for the Butterfield Stage Lines.
Onion
The onion known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable, the most cultivated species of the genus Allium. Its close relatives include the garlic, leek and Chinese onion; this genus contains several other species variously referred to as onions and cultivated for food, such as the Japanese bunching onion, the tree onion, the Canada onion. The name "wild onion" is applied to a number of Allium species, but A. cepa is known from cultivation. Its ancestral wild original form is not known, although escapes from cultivation have become established in some regions; the onion is most a biennial or a perennial plant, but is treated as an annual and harvested in its first growing season. The onion plant has a fan of hollow, bluish-green leaves and its bulb at the base of the plant begins to swell when a certain day-length is reached; the bulbs are composed of shortened, underground stems surrounded by fleshy modified scale that envelop a central bud at the tip of the stem. In the autumn, the foliage dies down and the outer layers of the bulb become dry and brittle.
The crop is harvested and dried and the onions are ready for use or storage. The crop is prone to attack by a number of pests and diseases the onion fly, the onion eelworm, various fungi cause rotting; some varieties of A. cepa, such as shallots and potato onions, produce multiple bulbs. Onions are used around the world; as a food item, they are served cooked, as a vegetable or part of a prepared savoury dish, but can be eaten raw or used to make pickles or chutneys. They are pungent when contain certain chemical substances which irritate the eyes; the onion plant known as the bulb onion or common onion, is the most cultivated species of the genus Allium. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1753 work Species Plantarum. A number of synonyms have appeared in its taxonomic history: Allium cepa var. aggregatum – G. Don Allium cepa var. bulbiferum – Regel Allium cepa var. cepa – Linnaeus Allium cepa var. multiplicans – L. H. Bailey Allium cepa var. proliferum – Regel Allium cepa var. solaninum – Alef Allium cepa var. viviparum – Mansf.
A. Cepa is known from cultivation, but related wild species occur in Central Asia; the most related species include A. vavilovii and A. asarense from Iran. However and Hopf state that "there are doubts whether the A. vavilovii collections tested represent genuine wild material or only feral derivatives of the crop."The vast majority of cultivars of A. cepa belong to the "common onion group" and are referred to as "onions". The Aggregatum group of cultivars includes both shallots and potato onions; the genus Allium contains a number of other species variously referred to as onions and cultivated for food, such as the Japanese bunching onion, Egyptian onion, Canada onion. Cepa is accepted as Latin for "onion" and has an affinity with Ancient Greek: κάπια and Albanian: qepë and is ancestral to Aromanian: tseapã, Catalan: ceba, Occitan: ceba, Spanish: cebolla, Romanian: ceapă; the English word chive is derived from the Old French cive, which derived from cepa. The onion plant has been selectively bred in cultivation for at least 7,000 years.
It is a biennial plant, but is grown as an annual. Modern varieties grow to a height of 15 to 45 cm; the leaves are yellowish - to bluish green and grow alternately in a fan-shaped swathe. They are fleshy and cylindrical, with one flattened side, they are at their broadest about a quarter of the way up, beyond which they taper towards a blunt tip. The base of each leaf is a flattened white sheath that grows out of a basal disc. From the underside of the disc, a bundle of fibrous roots extends for a short way into the soil; as the onion matures, food reserves begin to accumulate in the leaf bases and the bulb of the onion swells. In the autumn, the leaves die back and the outer scales of the bulb become dry and brittle, so the crop is normally harvested. If left in the soil over winter, the growing point in the middle of the bulb begins to develop in the spring. New leaves appear and a long, hollow stem expands, topped by a bract protecting a developing inflorescence; the inflorescence takes the form of a globular umbel of white flowers with parts in sixes.
The seeds are glossy triangular in cross section. The average pH of an onion is around 5.5 Because the wild onion is extinct and ancient records of using onions span western and eastern Asia, the geographic origin of the onion is uncertain, with domestication worldwide. Food uses of onions date back thousands of years in China and Persia. Traces of onions recovered from Bronze Age settlements in China suggest that onions were used as far back as 5000 BCE, not only for their flavour, but the bulb's durability in storage and transport. Ancient Egyptians revered the onion bulb, viewing its spherical shape and concentric rings as symbols of eternal life. Onions were used in Egyptian burials, as evidenced by onion traces found in the eye sockets of Ramesses IV. Pliny the Elder of the first century CE wrote about the use of onions and cabbage in Pompeii, he documented Roman beliefs about the onion's ability to improve ocular ailments, aid in sleep, heal everything from oral sores and toothaches to dog bites and dysentery.
Archaeologists une
Santa Clara River (California)
The Santa Clara River is 83 miles long, is one of the most dynamic river systems in Southern California. The river drains parts of four ranges in the Transverse Ranges System north and northwest of Los Angeles flows west onto the Oxnard Plain and into the Santa Barbara Channel of the Pacific Ocean; the watershed has provided habitat for a wide array of native plants and animals and has supplied humans with water and fertile farmland. The northern portion of the watershed was home to the Tataviam people while the southern portion was occupied by the Chumash people. Much of the Santa Clara River Valley is used for agriculture which has limited the use of structural levees to separate the natural floodplain from the river. Although it is one of the least altered rivers in Southern California, some levees exist where the river flows through areas of significant urban development; the Santa Clara River was named the Rio de Santa Clara on August 9, 1769 by the Portolá expedition on the march north from San Diego to found a mission at Monterey, to honor Saint Clare of Assisi who died on August 11, 1253.
The Santa Clara River Valley was known as the Cañada de Santa Clara. The Santa Clara-Mojave River Ranger District of the Angeles National Forest is named after the Santa Clara River; the failure and near complete collapse of the St. Francis Dam took place in the middle of the night on March 12, 1928; the dam was holding a full reservoir of 12.4 billion gallons of water that surged down San Francisquito Canyon and emptied into the river. The Santa Clara River's headwaters take drainage from the northern slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains near the Angeles Forest Highway, inside the western part of the Angeles National Forest, its largest fork, Aliso Canyon, forms the primary headstream. These branches combine into the broad wash of the main stem near the town of Acton which flows west through Soledad Canyon, crossing under California State Route 14 near the town of Canyon Country; the Sierra Pelona Mountains on the north provide additional seasonal tributaries. The river receives Bouquet Creek, Placerita Creek, San Francisquito Creek within the City of Santa Clarita.
The riverbed surface remains dry most of the year here, except on extreme occasions of heavier than average rainfall. The river crosses west under Interstate 5 and receives Castaic Creek from the right. After the Castaic Creek confluence, the river starts to flow southwest through the Santa Clarita Valley. Near the county line between Los Angeles County and Ventura County, the river enters the Santa Clara River Valley flowing past Buckhorn and Fillmore, incorporating additional flow from Piru Creek and Sespe Creek, both from the right, Santa Paula Creek at the town of Santa Paula, where it passes the large South Mountain Oil Field on the south bank; the Santa Clara River bends southwest, passing the Saticoy Oil Field on the north bank where South Mountain marks its entrance onto the broad Oxnard Plain. The river ends at the Pacific Ocean after flowing across the north side of this plain made fertile with the silt deposited by the river. A sand bar stands across the mouth at the Santa Clara Estuary Natural Preserve that lies within McGrath State Beach in Oxnard and bounded on the north by the city of Ventura.
Although located just north of the populated Los Angeles Basin, the 1,600-square-mile Santa Clara River watershed remains one of the most natural on the South Coast. It is separated from the Los Angeles Basin by the low Santa Susana Mountains, along the north side of which the Santa Clara River runs. On the east are the San Gabriel Mountains, on the north are the Santa Ynez Mountains, Sespe Mountains, San Cayetano Mountains, Tehachapi Mountains. Piru and Sespe Creeks, each over 50 miles long, are the primary tributaries of the Santa Clara River. While Piru and Castaic Creeks form reservoirs for the California State Water Project, Sespe Creek is designated a National Wild and Scenic River, unique among Southern California streams. There are 12 historical landmarks in the watershed; the Santa Clara River watershed borders on the Ventura River/Matilija Creek watershed on the west. On the northwest, lies the Santa Ynez River watershed. On the north is the interior drainage basin of Tulare Lake in the Central Valley.
To the east is the Mojave River and to the south is the Los Angeles River. The Santa Clara River is the second largest river in Southern California; the estuary has been modified by human activities at least since 1855. By the late 1920s roads and agricultural fields had become established. In the late 1950s the former delta area was occupied by the Ventura Water Reclamation Facility and agricultural fields with levees constraining the river from these areas and directing the flow to the Harbor Boulevard bridge. McGrath State Beach was established in 1948; the estuary has been designated a Natural Preserve within McGrath State Beach on the south bank of the river mouth. From the north bank of the river, the city of Ventura releases some 9,000,000 US gallons of treated effluent daily that flows into the Santa Clara Estuary Natural Preserve from their water reclamation facility. A sand berm separates the river from the ocean most of the year. In years with adequate rainfall, the river breaks the berm, slowly rebuilt by ocean action through the rest of the year.
When the river watershed has an exceptionally dry year, the berm acts as a dam, allowing the water level to rise with the
Santa Clarita, California
Santa Clarita the City of Santa Clarita, is the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 24th largest in the state of California. The city has annexed a number of unincorporated areas, contributing to the large population increase, it is located about 35 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, occupies most of the Santa Clarita Valley. It is a notable example of a U. S. edge boomburb. Santa Clarita was ranked by Money magazine in 2006 as 18th of the top 100 places to live. Santa Clarita was incorporated in December 1987 as the union of four unincorporated communities, Canyon Country, Newhall and Valencia, most of which are situated on the land of the former Rancho San Francisco; the four communities retain separate identities, it is common for residents to refer to a specific neighborhood when asked where they are from. Santa Clarita is bounded on the west by the Golden State Freeway; the Antelope Valley Freeway runs northeast-southwest through an irregular east border, the Newhall Pass is the city's southernmost point.
Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park and Stevenson Ranch are both associated with Santa Clarita, though since both are located west of Interstate 5, neither is within the Santa Clarita city limits. The Santa Clara River was named by Spanish explorers for Clare of Assisi; the valley and the settlement became known as "little Santa Clara" in deference to the Northern California mission and city of Santa Clara, California. In time, "little Santa Clara" became "Santa Clarita." Santa Clarita was incorporated in December 1987. About AD 450, the Tataviam arrived. In 1842, Francisco Lopez made the first "documented" discovery of gold in California; the event is memorialized in an 1842 mining claim issued by Gov. Juan B. Alvarado; the discovery was made in Placerita Canyon, an area used as Hollywood's original back lot. The community of Newhall is named after Henry Newhall, a businessman who made his fortune during the California Gold Rush after opening up the H. M. Newhall & Company, a successful auction house in San Francisco.
Newhall's next business interest was railroads. He invested in rail companies that would connect San Francisco to other cities and became president of the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad. In 1870, he and his partners sold the company to Southern Pacific Railroad, on whose board of directors he sat. After railroads, Newhall turned to real ranching, he purchased a number of the old Spanish and Mexican land grants in the state for a total of 143,000 acres between Monterey and Los Angeles counties. The most significant portion was the 46,460 acres Rancho San Francisco in northern Los Angeles County, which he purchased for $2/acre, which became known as Newhall Ranch after Newhall's death. Within this territory, he granted a right-of-way to Southern Pacific through what is now Newhall Pass, he sold them part of the land, upon which the company built a town named after him: Newhall; the first station built on the line he named for his hometown, Massachusetts. After his death, Newhall's heirs incorporated the Newhall Land and Farming Company, which oversaw the development of the communities that now make up Santa Clarita.
On September 26, 1876, Charles Alexander Mentry brought in the state's first productive oil well at Mentryville, giving rise to the California oil industry. The oil was brought to a refinery at Newhall, now the oldest existing petroleum refinery in the world. A few days earlier, on September 5, 1876, Charles Crocker and Leland Stanford joined their railroads in Canyon Country, linking Los Angeles with the rest of the nation for the first time; the Saugus Cafe, on Railroad Avenue in Saugus, was established in 1887 and appears to be, by far, the oldest still-operating restaurant in Los Angeles County. Filming in Santa Clarita began shortly after the turn of the 20th century with a veritable Who's Who of actors, including William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Harry Carey and a young John Wayne. Hart and Carey made their homes in the Santa Clarita Valley; the Santa Clarita Valley was the scene of the second worst disaster in California's history in terms of lives lost, known as the "worst civil engineering failure of the 20th century".
Shortly before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam collapsed. By the time the floodwaters reached the Pacific Ocean near Ventura five hours nearly 600 people were dead. Within modern Santa Clarita city limits, the present day site of the Westfield Valencia Town Center mall would have been buried beneath muck and debris; some buildings in Newhall became makeshift morgues. After multiple failed attempts to form a city and at least two failed attempts to form a separate county, the people of the Santa Clarita Valley incorporated the City of Santa Clarita at 4:30 PM on December 15, 1987 after voting in favor of incorporation by a margin of two to one in that year's general election; the other proposed name for the new city, narrowly defeated, was "City of the Canyons." Santa Clarita, according to the United States Census Bureau, has an area of 62.16 square miles, of which 62.10 square miles is land and 0.06 square miles is water. Santa Clarita is near the San Fernando fault zone and was affected by the 1971 San Fernando earthquake known as the Sylmar quake.
The city was affected by the 1994 Northridge earthquake, many commercial and residential buildings were devastated by its aftermath, including the nearby Newhall Pass, the Valencia Town Center, Six Flags Magic Mountain. Magi
Ventura County, California
Ventura County is a county in the southern part of the U. S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 823,318; the largest city is Oxnard, the county seat is the city of Ventura. Ventura County comprises the Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, included in the Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA Combined Statistical Area, it is considered the southernmost county along the California Central Coast. It is a separate metropolitan area west of the more populous Los Angeles metropolitan area. Ventura County has been named the "most desirable" place to live in the U. S. by the Washington Post and the U. S. Department of Agriculture in 2015, it is home to several of the safest communities in the U. S. including Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Newbury Park, Moorpark. Overall, crime in the county is 33% lower than California and U. S. rates. Two of the California Channel Islands are part of the county: Anacapa Island, the most visited island in Channel Islands National Park, San Nicolas Island.
Ventura County was inhabited by the Chumash people, who settled much of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties, with their presence dating back 10,000-12,000 years. The Chumash were hunter-gatherers and traders with the Mojave and Tongva Indians; the Chumash are known for their rock paintings and for their great basketry. Chumash Indian Museum in Thousand Oaks has several reconstructed Chumash houses and there are several Chumash pictographs in the county, including the Burro Flats Painted Cave in Simi Valley; the plank canoe, called a tomol in Chumash, was important to their way of life. Canoe launching points on the mainland for trade with the Chumash of the Channel Islands were located at the mouth of the Ventura River, Mugu Lagoon and Point Hueneme; this has led to speculations among archeologists of whether the Chumash could have had a pre-historic contact with Polynesians. According to diachronic linguistics, certain words such as tomolo’o could be related to Polynesian languages; the dialect of the Chumash language, spoken in Ventura County was Ventureño.
Several place names in the county has originated from Chumash, including Ojai, which means moon, Simi Valley, which originates from the word Shimiyi and refers to the stringy, thread-like clouds that typify the region. Others include Point Mugu from the word Muwu, Saticoy from the word Sa’aqtiko’y, Sespe Creek from the word S’eqp’e. In October 1542, the expedition led by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo anchored in an inlet near Point Mugu. Active occupation of California by Spain began in 1769. Gaspar de Portolà led a military expedition by land from San Diego to Monterey, passing through Ventura County in August of that year. A priest with the expedition, Father Juan Crespí, kept a journal of the trip and noted that the area was ideal for a mission to be established and it was a "good site to which nothing is lacking". On this expedition was Father Junípero Serra, who founded a mission on this site. On March 31, 1782, the Mission San Buenaventura was founded by Father Serra, it is named after Saint one of the early intellectual founders of the Franciscan Order.
The town that grew up around the mission and remains named San Buenaventura, although has been known as Ventura since 1891. In the 1790s, the Spanish Governor of California began granting land concessions to Spanish Californians who were retiring soldiers; these concessions were known as ranchos and consisted of thousands of acres of land that were used as ranch land for livestock. In Ventura County, Rancho Simi was granted in 1795 and Rancho El Conejo in 1802. Fernando Tico was granted part of Ventura by Gov. Alvarado. In 1822, California was notified of Mexico's independence from Spain and the Governor of California, the Junta, the military in Monterey and the priests and neophytes at Mission San Buenaventura swore allegiance to Mexico on April 11, 1822. California land, vested in the King of Spain was now owned by the nation of Mexico. By the 1830s, Mission San Buenaventura was in a decline with fewer neophytes joining the mission; the number of cattle owned by the mission dropped from first to fifteenth ranking in the California Missions.
The missions were secularized by the Mexican government in 1834. The Mexican governors began granting land rights to Mexican Californians retiring soldiers. By 1846, there were 19 rancho grants in Ventura County. In 1836, Mission San Buenaventura was transferred from the Church to a secular administrator; the natives, working at the mission left to work on the ranchos. By 1839, only 300 Indians were left at the Mission and it slipped into neglect. Several outhouses were discovered in July 2007 dating back to the 1800s where a new site had been cleared to prepare for development; the area proved to be a treasure trove for archaeologists who braved the lingering smell in the dirt to uncover artifacts that showed heavy utilization by mission inhabitants, early settlers and Spanish and Mexican soldiers. The Mexican–American War began in 1846 but its effect was not felt in Ventura County until 1847. In January of that year, Captain John C. Frémont led the California Battalion into San Buenaventura finding that the Europeans had fled leaving only the Indians in the Mission.
Fremont and the Battalion continued south to sign the Treaty of Cahuenga with General Andrés Pico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formally transferred California to the United States in 1848. By 1849, a constitution had been adopted for the California territory; the n
Thomas A. Scott
Thomas Alexander Scott was an American businessman, railroad executive, industrialist. President Abraham Lincoln in 1861 appointed him the U. S. Assistant Secretary of War, during the American Civil War railroads under his leadership played a major role in the war effort, he became the fourth president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which became the largest publicly traded corporation in the world and received much criticism for his conduct in the Great Railway Strike of 1877 and as a "robber baron." Scott helped negotiate the Republican Party's Compromise of 1877 with the Democratic Party. In his final years, Scott made large donations to the University of Pennsylvania. Scott was born on December 23, 1823 in Peters Township near Fort Loudoun, in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, he was the 7th of eleven children. Scott joined the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1850 as a station agent, by 1858 was general superintendent. Scott had been recommended for promotion by Herman Haupt and took a special interest in mentoring aspiring railroad employees, such as Andrew Carnegie.
The 1846 state charter to the Pennsylvania Railroad diffused power within the company, by giving executive authority to a committee responsible to stockholders, not to individuals. By the 1870s, officers directed by J. Edgar Thomson and Scott had centralized power. Historians have explained the successful partnership of Thomas Scott and J. Edgar Thomson by the melding of their opposing personality traits: Thomson was the engineer, cool and introverted. In addition, they had common experiences and values, agreement on the importance of financial success, the financial stability of the Pennsylvania Railroad throughout their partnership, J. Edgar Thomson's paternalism. By 1860, when Scott became the first Vice President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, it had expanded from a company of railway lines within Pennsylvania through the 1840s and 1850s, to a transportation empire. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin called on Scott for his extensive knowledge of the rail and transportation systems of the state.
In May 1861, Scott received a commission as Colonel of Volunteers and placed in command of railroad and telegraph lines used by the Union armies. His friend, Secretary of War Simon Cameron in August 1861 appointed him Assistant Secretary of War, gave him responsibility for building railroad through Washington D. C. to connect the Alexandria Railroad with northern railroads. Scott advised creating transportation an telegraph bureaus and arranging draft exemptions for experienced civilian mechanics and locomotive engineers, for needed military railroad operations were compromised by the losss of experienced railroad men; the next year, despite Cameron's replacement by Edwin M. Stanton, Scott helped organize the Loyal War Governors' Conference in Altoona, Pennsylvania. On, Scott took on the task of equipping a substantial military force for the Union war effort, he assumed supervision of other transportation lines. He made the movement of supplies and troops more efficient and effective for the war effort on behalf of the Union.
In one instance, he engineered the movement of 25,000 troops in 24 hours from Nashville, Tennessee, to Chattanooga, turning the tide of battle to a Union victory. Scott advised President Lincoln to travel covertly by rail to avoid Confederate spies and assassins. During the American Reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Southern states needed their economy and infrastructure restored, more investment in railroads, they had lagged behind the North in railroad miles. The Northern-based railroads competed to construct rail lines in the South. Federal assistance was sought by both special interest groups, but the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal made this difficult in 1872. Congress became unwilling to grant railroad companies land grants in the Southwestern United States. Mindful of the corruption allegations which had dogged his friend Cameron, Scott was notoriously secretive about his business dealings, conducting most of his business in private letters, instructing his business partners to destroy them after they were read.
After the Civil War, Scott was involved in investments in the fast-growing trans-Mississippi River route into Texas, with long-term plans for a southern transcontinental railway line connecting the Southern states and California. From 1871 to 1872, Scott was the president of the Union Pacific Railroad the first transcontinental railroad owner, he was the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1874, upon the death of his partner Thomson, until 1880. The financial Panic of 1873 and subsequent economic depression made it impossible to finance Scott’s southern transcontinental railroad plans. In his "Scott Plan" of the 1870s, Scott proposed that the Democratic Southern politicians would give their votes in Congress and state legislatures for federal government subsidies to various infrastructure improvements, including in particular the Texas and Pacific Railway, which Scott headed. Scott employed the expertise of Grenville Dodge in buying the support of newspaper editors as well as various politicians i
Flood
A flood is an overflow of water that submerges land, dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrology and are of significant concern in agriculture, civil engineering and public health. Flooding may occur as an overflow of water from water bodies, such as a river, lake, or ocean, in which the water overtops or breaks levees, resulting in some of that water escaping its usual boundaries, or it may occur due to an accumulation of rainwater on saturated ground in an areal flood. While the size of a lake or other body of water will vary with seasonal changes in precipitation and snow melt, these changes in size are unlikely to be considered significant unless they flood property or drown domestic animals. Floods can occur in rivers when the flow rate exceeds the capacity of the river channel at bends or meanders in the waterway. Floods cause damage to homes and businesses if they are in the natural flood plains of rivers.
While riverine flood damage can be eliminated by moving away from rivers and other bodies of water, people have traditionally lived and worked by rivers because the land is flat and fertile and because rivers provide easy travel and access to commerce and industry. Some floods develop while others such as flash floods can develop in just a few minutes and without visible signs of rain. Additionally, floods can be local, impacting a neighborhood or community, or large, affecting entire river basins; the word "flood" comes from a word common to Germanic languages. Floods can happen on flat or low-lying areas when water is supplied by rainfall or snowmelt more than it can either infiltrate or run off; the excess accumulates in place, sometimes to hazardous depths. Surface soil can become saturated, which stops infiltration, where the water table is shallow, such as a floodplain, or from intense rain from one or a series of storms. Infiltration is slow to negligible through frozen ground, concrete, paving, or roofs.
Areal flooding begins in flat areas like floodplains and in local depressions not connected to a stream channel, because the velocity of overland flow depends on the surface slope. Endorheic basins may experience areal flooding during periods when precipitation exceeds evaporation. Floods occur in all types of river and stream channels, from the smallest ephemeral streams in humid zones to normally-dry channels in arid climates to the world's largest rivers; when overland flow occurs on tilled fields, it can result in a muddy flood where sediments are picked up by run off and carried as suspended matter or bed load. Localized flooding may be caused or exacerbated by drainage obstructions such as landslides, debris, or beaver dams. Slow-rising floods most occur in large rivers with large catchment areas; the increase in flow may be the result of sustained rainfall, rapid snow melt, monsoons, or tropical cyclones. However, large rivers may have rapid flooding events in areas with dry climate, since they may have large basins but small river channels and rainfall can be intense in smaller areas of those basins.
Rapid flooding events, including flash floods, more occur on smaller rivers, rivers with steep valleys, rivers that flow for much of their length over impermeable terrain, or normally-dry channels. The cause may be localized convective precipitation or sudden release from an upstream impoundment created behind a dam, landslide, or glacier. In one instance, a flash flood killed eight people enjoying the water on a Sunday afternoon at a popular waterfall in a narrow canyon. Without any observed rainfall, the flow rate increased from about 50 to 1,500 cubic feet per second in just one minute. Two larger floods occurred at the same site within a week, but no one was at the waterfall on those days; the deadly flood resulted from a thunderstorm over part of the drainage basin, where steep, bare rock slopes are common and the thin soil was saturated. Flash floods are the most common flood type in normally-dry channels in arid zones, known as arroyos in the southwest United States and many other names elsewhere.
In that setting, the first flood water to arrive is depleted. The leading edge of the flood thus advances more than and higher flows; as a result, the rising limb of the hydrograph becomes quicker as the flood moves downstream, until the flow rate is so great that the depletion by wetting soil becomes insignificant. Flooding in estuaries is caused by a combination of sea tidal surges caused by winds and low barometric pressure, they may be exacerbated by high upstream river flow. Coastal areas may be flooded by storm events at sea, resulting in waves over-topping defenses or in severe cases by tsunami or tropical cyclones. A storm surge, from either a tropical cyclone or an extratropical cyclone, falls within this category. Research from the NHC explains: "Storm surge is an abnormal rise of water generated by a storm and above the predicted astronomical tides. Storm surge should not be confused with storm tide, defined as the water level rise due to the combination of storm surge and the astronomical tide.
This rise in water level can cause extreme flooding in coastal areas when storm surge coincides with normal high tide, resulting in storm tides reaching up to 20 feet or more in some cases." Urban flooding is the inundation of land or property in a built environment in more densely populated areas, caused by rainfall overwhelmi
