Aerial view of the flooded valley after the collapse of the Saint Francis Dam, Santa Clara River Valley (Calif.), 1928

Title: Aerial view of the flooded valley after the collapse of the Saint Francis Dam, Santa Clara River Valley (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.
Caption: Text from negative sleeve: Dam, Saint Francis.

Genre: glass plate negatives
news photographs
Location: Santa Clara River Valley (Calif.)
Resource type: still image
Subjects: Dam failures--California--San Francisquito Canyon
Saint Francis Dam Failure, Calif., 1928

Repository: University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Department of Special Collections
Local Identifier: uclamss_1429_b3701_G1272
ARK: ark:/21198/z1616s6k
Manifest url

Rights statement: copyrighted
Rights contact: UCLA Library Special Collections, A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575. Email: spec-coll@library.ucla.edu. Phone: (310) 825-4988
Rights Holder: The Regents of the University of California
Rights Country: US