Eaton was the Los Angeles mayor from 1898 to 1900. For the office, he ran on the platform of establishing a new municipal water system for the city of Los Angeles. One year later in 1899, a 2.09 million US dollar bond measure was approved by city voters for the purchase of Los Angeles City Water Company's system. (the private water company that leased the city's waterworks and provided water to the city) A few years later, Los Angeles was faced with a problem: a burgeoning population that threatened the city's water supply. Desperate to find a new water source for the city, Eaton recalled a camping trip in the Sierras where he "gazed down upon the Owens Lake and thought about all the freshwater flowing into it and going to waste. Yes, Los Angeles was some 200 miles away, but it was all downhill. All one would have to do to move it to the city was dig some canals, lay some pipe and let gravity do the rest." In other words, Eaton realized an opportunity to sustain Los Angeles' growth and took matter into his own hands to save the city.