Today we visited one site: the St. Francis Dam Disaster Site (CHL #919). The dam was designed by, and construction was supervised by, William Mulholland. Mulholland was the general manager and chief engineer of the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Water Works and Supply (later to become the Department of Water and Power--the DWP). He was also the genius behind the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The LA Aqueduct was a marvel of hydrological engineering. Mulholland completed the aqueduct in 1913, on time and under budget. You can read more about the history of the aqueduct from our visit to Sylmar and San Fernando. Concerned not only about Owens Valley residents sabotaging the aqueduct (many residents felt they had been swindled out of their water and were deliberately destroying sections of the aqueduct), and also concerned with the future water needs of the city, Mulholland decided it would be wise to secure a second source of water, this one in a canyon (San Francisquito Canyon) in the hills just north of the Santa Clarita Valley. Construction began on the St. Francis Dam in 1924, and the dam was completed in 1926. At 2-1/2 minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the dam experienced catastrophic failure.
Image courtesy LATimes.com
The 12.4 billion gallons of water from the reservoir created crests up to 40 feet high and drained from San Francisquito Canyon south into the Santa Clara River, where it then flowed from Saugus west through Fillmore, Santa Paula, and eventually into the Ventura/Oxnard delta where the water emptied out into the ocean. Along the way, it killed a confirmed 450 people, but the number of deaths was probably closer to 600 or more. There were many itinerant migrant farmers living in camps along the farmlands of Fillmore, Piru, and Santa Paula. Bodies that had been washed out to the Pacific were found a week later as far south as San Diego. This would be the worst US civil engineering disaster of the 20th century and the largest loss of life in California history next to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. It took just under 70 minutes for the reservoir to empty completely.
Image courtesy of Google Maps. Arrows created in Skitch. Click map to enlarge.
image courtesy of kcet.org. Click map to enlarge.
Remains of St. Francis Dam after its failure | Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library
Woman stands in midst of the St. Francis Dam devastation, 1928
Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library
News of the disaster spread across the country, and it made front page news in the New York Times, as well as scores of other newspapers.
image courtesy of scvhistory.com
screenshot from images.google.com. Click to enlarge.
We made a quick trip up to San Francisquito Canyon on this day to check out the site, but we definitely want to come back to explore more of the canyon floor (we stayed along the road at the top of the canyon. If you'd like to learn more, there is a great interview with local historian (and father of two of my former students at Canyon High School) Frank Rock. You can check it out here:
Afterward: I got so wrapped up in telling the story of the dam, I forgot to share the photos of our visit!
It was cold and windy that day. Here is Power Plant #2, about a mile and a half south of the disaster site. We're in drought right now in California, so there's no water from the San Francisquito Creek currently flowing into into the power plant.
This is as close as we got to the actual disaster site. In the photo below, you can see a little rubble in the middle of the frame. The actual dam location is in the space up ahead between the two hills. Like I mentioned earlier in the post, we will have to return to this site in the future to get a closer look.
click on the image to enlarge
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