William Chaffey

Who was William Chaffey?

William Benjamin Chaffey, CMG was a Canadian engineer and irrigation planner who with his older brother George Chaffey developed what became the cities of Etiwanda, California, Ontario, California, and Upland, California in the United States of America, as well as the cities of Mildura, Victoria and the town of Renmark, South Australia, in Australia.

Chaffey was born in Brockville, Ontario, Canada, the third son of George and his wife Anne née Legoe. The Chaffey brothers developed irrigation colonies, named by them Etiwanda and Ontario, on the Cucamonga Plain in the early 1880s. The brothers had bought land and water-rights at a low price and resold 10 acre blocks to settlers; a non-profit mutual irrigation company distributed water.

Alfred Deakin, then a minister in the Victorian government and chairman of a royal commission on water supply, visited the irrigation areas of California in 1885 where he met George and William Chaffey. George Chaffey visited Victoria in February 1886 and excited by the prospects for irrigation in the Murray Valley, cabled William to sell their interests in California. The quick asset sale resulted in the brothers realising less than true value, but George soon arrived Victoria.²