San Diego County was on the brink of a major water shortage in 1947, when reservoirs that stored local water were running dry and the region had less than three weeks of water supplies left. But on Nov. 26, 1947, the first Colorado River water flowed south from the Colorado River aqueduct’s western end in Riverside County for 71 miles into the City of San Diego’s San Vicente Reservoir near Lakeside via the San Vicente Aqueduct. The aqueduct, which was later renamed Pipeline 1 of the First San Diego Aqueduct, ran over some of the most rugged country ever crossed by a water line with a capacity of about 65,000 acre-feet per year.