The Rainmaker

In 1915, San Diego was dying of thirst. Desperate city officials hired Charles Hatfield, a sewing machine salesman who claimed he could summon rain using a secret chemical brew aimed at the sky. They offered him $10,000 if he could fill the Morena Reservoir. Hatfield built his towers, burned his chemicals, and waited. And then, the rain started. And it didn't stop. In January 1916, the skies opened up in a deluge of biblical proportions. Dams burst, houses were swept away, and over 20 people died in the flooding. San Diego went from drought to disaster in weeks. When Hatfield came to collect his check, the city tried to sue him for the damages instead. "The Rainmaker" tells the bizarre true story of the boundary between science, fraud, and coincidence. Was Hatfield a meteorological genius, a lucky con artist, or simply a man in the wrong place at the right time? It is a tale of desperate municipal politics, the hubris of trying to control nature, and the wildest contract dispute in American history.