Access to this collection is generously supported by Arcadia funds. Bodies of about ten flood victims enshrouded in sheets and resting on inclined wooden boards in an improvised morgue in Newhall. Four men and one woman stand at the end of the room. Another man is kneeling down at the foot of one of the dead. 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. Temporary morgues for flood victims were established and Piru, Santa Paula, Filmore, Oxnard, Newhall, Ventura and Bakersfield. Up to March 18, 273 bodies had been recovered. The location of the morgue is provided in a hand drawn map published in the Los Angeles Times, 14 Mar. 1928: 2. The 1880's building was located at the northwest corner of Railroad Ave. and Market St. in Newhall. It had been the J. O. Newhall general store, the Gulley-Swall general store, the El Dorado saloon and, at the time of the flood, the Hap-A-Lan dance club. After its use as a morgue it was torn down and in 1931 the county courthouse was built on the property. [ Text from negative sleeve: Saint Francis Dam
Type
image
Format
b&w nitrate negative
Identifier
uclamss_1429_1928 ark:/21198/zz002dctf9
Language
No linguistic content
Subject
Saint Francis Dam Failure, Calif., 1928 Dead persons--California--Los Angeles Morgues & mortuaries--California--Newhall
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