Flooded area with houses in the distance following the failure of the Saint Francis Dam, Santa Clara River Valley (Calif.), 1928

Item Overview

Title

Flooded area with houses in the distance following the failure of the Saint Francis Dam, Santa Clara River Valley (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.
View of an extensive flooded area with a stand of trees and a few houses in the distance.

Caption

Text from newspaper caption: Graphic Views of Flood-swept Area Near Castaic After Dam Break: Homes and Business Buildings in Flooded Area. Photo Shows Extent of the Stretch of Water After It Had Raced Into the Ventura District. (Times photo) [Los Angeles Times, 14 Mar. 1928: 4]
Text from negative sleeve: Saint Francis Dam

Physical Description

Extent

1 photograph

Medium

b&w nitrate negative

Keywords

Genre

cellulose nitrate film
news photographs

Location

Santa Clara River Valley (Calif.)

Resource type

still image

Subjects

Dam failures--California--San Francisquito Canyon
Disaster
Weather
Saint Francis Dam Failure, Calif., 1928
Floods--California--Santa Clara River Valley