settlers, homesteaded of land north of Georges Creek in 1864. With the help of Owens Valley Paiute field workers and laborers, he expanded his ranch to . In 1905, George Chaffey, an agricultural developer from Southern California, purchased Shepherd's ranch and subdivided it, along with other adjacent ranches. He founded the town of Manzanar in 1910, along the main line of the Southern Pacific. By August 1911, the town's population was approaching 200. The company built an irrigation system over an area of and planted about 20,000 fruit trees. By 1920, the town had more than 25 homes, a two-room school, a town hall, and a general store. Also at that time, nearly of apple, pear, and peach trees were under cultivation; along with crops of grapes, prunes, potatoes, corn and alfalfa; and large vegetable and flower gardens. As early as March 1905, the City of Los Angeles began acquiring water rights in the Owens Valley. In 1913, it completed construction of its Los Angeles Aqueduct, In dry years, Los Angeles pumped ground water and drained all surface water, diverting all of it into its aqueduct and leaving Owens Valley ranchers without water. Without water for irrigation, the holdout ranchers were forced off their ranches and out of their communities; that included the town of Manzanar, which was abandoned by 1929. Manzanar remained uninhabited until the United States Army leased from the City of Los Angeles for the Manzanar War Relocation Center. Establishment After the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Government swiftly moved to begin solving the "Japanese Problem" on the West Coast of the United States. In the evening hours of that same day, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested selected "enemy aliens", including more than 5,500 Issei men. Many citizens in California were alarmed about potential activities by people of Japanese descent. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to designate military commanders to prescribe military areas and to exclude "any or all persons" from such areas. The order also authorized the construction of what were later called "relocation centers" by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), to house those who were to be excluded. This order resulted in the forced relocation of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were native-born American citizens; the rest had been prevented from becoming