Rain doesn’t stop Pomona College professor Char Miller’s walk to work. “I walk to work every day,” he said. “And even when it rains, I love slopping in the water.”
On the rainy morning of Friday, Oct. 30, Miller led a walking tour of the Pomona campus. Students and staff slopped in the water alongside the history and environmental analysis professor as he shared his expertise on the history of campus water systems.
The tour marked the start of this fall’s series of faculty-led tours, organized by TSL Photo Editor Sarah Ziff PO ’27, to explore the history and development of the Claremont Colleges. These tours invite 5C community members to take a journey through each campus’ past and unlock a deeper understanding of the spaces we rush through every day. Upcoming tours include those by art history professor George Gorse on Nov. 13, and politics professor David Menefee-Libey during reading days.
Miller hopes his tour inspires people to consider their surroundings as an archive and take a closer look at details that might otherwise go unnoticed.
“The land is an archive, and it actually speaks to us if we know some of its language,” he said. “If you look at trees differently, if you look at buildings differently, because of what we talked about [on the tour], I’m thrilled.”
At each stop, Miller paired an aspect of water management with a moment in Claremont’s history. For example, an inconspicuous slot in the side of Walker Wall provided a glimpse into the 1938 flood.
Miller, an environmental historian, began his story by explaining how the surrounding geology intensified the flood’s destruction. When a 32-inch rainstorm hit the San Gabriel Mountains, their steep, narrow canyons sped up the floodwater’s journey to Claremont, where it caused extensive damage to Scripps and Pomona Colleges. With no barriers in place, three feet of water covered Pomona’s Clark Hall patio.
The slot in Walker Hall marks where a gate would close off the wall completely, preventing water from flooding the buildings in future disasters, Miller said.
June O’Leary, the associate director of the public policy analysis program at Pomona, has lived in Claremont since 1998, but had never heard about the flood before the tour.
“I had no idea about the flood of 1938,” she said. “Really everything, though, was very eye-opening. That’s also what drew me to this talk in particular; I knew very little about the history of water in the area, having grown up in the Midwest.”
The interactions between the built and natural environments changed the way Dylan Zulueta PO ’27 thinks about campus architecture.
“I didn’t realize before how much water has impacted our architecture and how everything is set up,” she said. “Now I’m thinking a lot more about how the natural environment and the systems around us have affected the buildings and things that I kind of take for granted.”
“I didn’t realize before how much water has impacted our architecture and how everything is set up,” she said. “Now I’m thinking a lot more about how the natural environment and the systems around us have affected the buildings and things that I kind of take for granted.”
Miller’s tour also highlighted various examples of geomimicry, or design innovations that mimic the natural water cycle that paved streets disrupt — Permeable sidewalks that let water pass through, and storm drains around the Sontag and Dialynas residence halls that transport rainwater underneath Sixth Street to the Greek Theatre. These systems help return water to the earth rather than allowing it to run off paved surfaces.
An unlikely star of this stormwater management strategy is the First Street parking structure, whose bioswales earned it a spot on Miller’s tour. Bioswales are an alternative to concrete gutters that allow stormwater to percolate slowly into the soil, watering native plants that wrap around the parking structure.
Miller said that the construction of the parking structure in 2015 was part of then-president David Oxtoby’s goal to integrate sustainability into Pomona, aesthetically and functionally.
“But that’s why I love the First Street parking lot, “ Miller said. “It’s the coolest thing, and it’s so weird because it’s a parking lot.”
Both O’Leary and Zulueta identified the parking structure as their favorite stop because it showed that sustainability is possible in places they hadn’t ever considered and demonstrated the careful planning and intention behind every part of campus.
The tour left O’Leary with a newfound appreciation for sustainable infrastructure, especially having personally experienced floods.
“I have driven on the freeway when it has started to flood, and things like that over the years,” she said. “But quite a bit has been done and continues to be done. So I think that that’s very empowering.”
Friday’s stroll along permeable sidewalks inspired Zulueta to slow down her commute to class.
“I have a class in the Seaver Theatre area, and so I always walk down with the curving path that we took on the tour,” she said. “I’m always trying to streamline getting to the end of the path because I’m always late for class, but now I think I’m going to walk more slowly.”
For Miller, that shift in perspective is part of the point. His tour offered a reason to slow down and slop through the water — transforming a rushed passing period into an opportunity to read the campus as an archive. The next time students pass a storm drain or cut across a permeable sidewalk, they might see more than a route to their next class.
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