Remains of the failed Saint Francis Dam, San Francisquito Canyon (Calif.), 1928

Item Overview

Title

Remains of the failed Saint Francis Dam, San Francisquito Canyon (Calif.), 1928

Date Created

1928

Publisher

Los Angeles Times

Language

No linguistic content

Collection

Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection

Notes

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.
Four men stand in a crevice in the remains of the inside of the failed Saint Francis Dam in San Francisquito Canyon. Water depth signs are visible on the concrete dam remains, reading: 1670, 1675, 1680, 1685. A metal door in the wall of the dam attached to a long pole is visible on the left.

Caption

Text from negative sleeve: Saint Francis Dam

Physical Description

Extent

1 photograph

Medium

b&w nitrate negative

Keywords

Genre

news photographs
cellulose nitrate film

Location

San Francisquito Canyon (Calif.)

Longitude

34.546944

Latitude

-118.5125

Resource type

still image

Subjects

Disaster
Dam failures--California--San Francisquito Canyon
Weather
Saint Francis Dam Failure, Calif., 1928