Displaced families in line for medical assistance after the failure of the Saint Francis Dam and resulting flood, Santa Clara River Valley (Calif.), 1928
Access to this collection is generously supported by Arcadia funds. Families displaced by the flood resulting from the failure of the Saint Francis Dam wait in line for medical assistance in an area cordoned off with a rope outside a tent. Two nurses and another woman are at a table at the head of the line. 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. Text from negative sleeve: Saint Francis Dam
Type
image
Format
b&w nitrate negative
Identifier
uclamss_1429_1857 ark:/21198/zz002dcr0m
Language
No linguistic content
Subject
Floods--California--Santa Clara River Valley Saint Francis Dam Failure, Calif., 1928 Disaster relief--California--Santa Clara River Valley
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