Los Angeles County, CA, Biographies

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FREDRICK EATON, 
 
City Engineer of Los Angeles, one of the most competent civil engineers on the 
Pacific Coast, is a worthy representative of California's native sons. He was 
born in 1856 in the city he is now officially serving, and with whose future 
sanitary history his name will be prominently interwoven. His parents, Benjamin 
S. and Helen (Hayes) Eaton, were pioneers of 1850 in Los Angeles County, of 
which his father�a lawyer by profession� was one of the first district 
attorneys. He was also one of the founders of the Pasadena Colony, and president 
of it for several years. Having a taste for horticulture, he, many years ago, 
planted a vineyard on what is now the J. F. Crank place, above Pasadena, and was 
the first to demonstrate the success of vine culture in Southern California 
without artificial irrigation; and his
experiment was of great value to this portion of the State. He is now retired 
and resides in Pasadena. Fredrick Eaton never attended school but little, 
preferring to shape his educational course himself and pursue in private such 
studies as were congenial to his taste, and would best fit him to achieve 
success in the vocation of his choice. At fifteen years of age he started to 
acquire a practical knowledge of engineering with the Los Angeles City Water 
Company, and so diligently did he apply himself to study and so rapidly did he 
advance, that at twenty he was superintending engineer for the company, and 
filled that position for about nine years. In 1886 he was elected city engineer 
and served two years. During this term of office he conceived and designed the 
great sewer system for the city of Los Angeles, which has since been adopted, 
after the most careful examination by and unqualified approval of the most 
distinguished sanitary engineers of America, among them Prof. Rudolph Herring, 
Consulting Sanitary Engineer of New York City, and who was appointed and sent by 
the United States Government to study and report upon the sewage system of the 
great cities of Europe. He came to Los Angeles County, by engagement of the city 
council, to examine Engineer Eaton's proposed sewage system for the city, and 
after doing so heartily endorsed it as one of the most perfect in this country. 
The system contemplates the construction of 200 miles of sewers, including an 
outlet to the ocean and a plan to use the sewage for irrigating purposes on a 
sewage farm, and involves in its completion about $2,500,000. It will be what is 
denominated a separate and combined system, designed to take care of the house 
waste only on the lower levels. The storm water will be combined with the house 
waste in the elevated portions of the city, and intercepted by large storm 
sewers leading to the Los Angeles River. At the city election held in January, 
1880, Mr. Eaton was again elected city engineer by a handsome majority, thus 
giving him another term of two years in which to inaugurate and get well under 
way the great work which is of such incalculable importance to the 80,000 
inhabitants of this growing city of Los Angeles, and the completion of which 
will be the most notable epoch in the history of California's southern 
metropolis. Mr. Eaton's parents are natives of the Atlantic States�his father of 
Connecticut and his mother of Maryland. The subject of this sketch was married 
before his twentieth birthday to Miss Burdick, of Los Angeles. She and her 
mother are the owners of the New Burdick Block, on the corner of Spring and 
Second streets, for which Mr. Eaton dictated the design, and which, when 
finished, will cost $140,000, and will be, from an architectural standpoint, the 
finest business block in the city.
 
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California �  Chicago, The Lewis 
Publishing Company, 1889   Page 462
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler