Three geologists and/or civil engineers examine an engineering drawing shortly after the failure of the Saint Francis Dam, [San Francisquito Canyon (Calif.) ?], 1928

Title: Three geologists and/or civil engineers examine an engineering drawing shortly after the failure of the Saint Francis Dam, [San Francisquito Canyon (Calif.) ?], 1928
Date Created: March 1928
Date: 1928-03
Publisher: Los Angeles Times
Language: No linguistic content
Collection: Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection

Description: The St. Francis Dam was a 200-foot high concrete gravity-arch dam built between 1924 and 1926 in St. Francisquito Canyon (near present-day Castaic and Santa Clarita). The dam collapsed on March 12, 1928 at two and a half minutes before midnight. The resulting flood killed more than 600 residents plus an unknown number of itinerant farm workers camped in San Francisquito Canyon, making it the 2nd greatest loss of life in California after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. It is considered the worst American civil engineering failure in the 20th century.
Three civil engineers and/or geologists, examine an engineering drawing, bounding a large volume of drawings, shortly after the failure of the Saint Francis Dam. The man on the left may be H.A. Van Norman, assistant chief engineer of the water bureau. On the front page of the volume, some of the text reads "Corporation...Maps...Valley...Tandberg [?]...Engineer"
The collapse of the Saint Francis Dam prompted the creation of over a dozen separate investigations into the cause of failure. Almost all of these comprised investigative panels of prominent engineers and geologists.
Caption: Text from negative sleeve: Saint Francis Dam

Genre: cellulose nitrate film
news photographs
Names: Van Norman, H. A. (Harvey Arthur), 1878-1954
Location: San Francisquito Canyon (Calif.)
Resource type: still image
Subjects: Geologists--California--San Francisquito Canyon
Engineering drawings
Saint Francis Dam Failure, Calif., 1928
Civil engineers--California--San Francisquito Canyon
Governmental investigations--California

Repository: University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Department of Special Collections
Local Identifier: uclamss_1429_1924
ARK: ark:/21198/zz002dct97
Manifest url

Rights statement: copyrighted
Rights Holder: UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, A1713 Young Research Library, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575. E-mail: spec-coll@library.ucla.edu. Phone: (310)825-4988
Rights Country: US
Funding Note: Access to this collection is generously supported by Arcadia funds.
License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .