Distant view of remaining center portion of the St. Francis Dam visible after its disastrous collapse, San Francisquito Canyon (Calif.), 1928

Item Overview

Title

Distant view of remaining center portion of the St. Francis Dam visible after its disastrous collapse, San Francisquito Canyon (Calif.), 1928

Date Created

March 13, 1928

Date

1928-03-13

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.
Downward view towards the stepped face of the largest remaining portion of the Saint Francis Dam after its collapse and the canyon beyond.

Caption

Text from negative sleeve: Saint Francis Dam
Text from newspaper caption: Graphic Views of Flood-swept Area Near Castaic After Dam Break: Picture at Right Shows the Dam as it is Today. (Times photo.) [Los Angeles Times, 4 Mar. 1928]

Physical Description

Extent

1 photograph

Medium

b&w nitrate negative

Keywords

Genre

cellulose nitrate film
news photographs

Location

San Francisquito Canyon (Calif.)

Longitude

34.546944

Latitude

-118.5125

Resource type

still image

Subjects

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