Access to this collection is generously supported by Arcadia funds. 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 a roadside area deeply eroded by the flood that followed the failure of the Saint Francis Dam in the foreground. Flood relief work is underway in the background with workmen, trucks and a portable crane, in the form of a lifting tripod, visible on the right between utility poles. Text from negative sleeve: Saint Francis Dam
Type
image
Format
b&w nitrate negative
Identifier
uclamss_1429_1878 ark:/21198/zz002dcrqg
Language
No linguistic content
Subject
Flood damage--California--Santa Clara River Valley Saint Francis Dam Failure, Calif., 1928 Disaster relief--California--Santa Clara River Valley
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