Women cooking tortillas and other food at a relief camp after the flood resulting from the Saint Francis Dam failure, Santa Clara River Valley (Calif.), 1928
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 5 women of Mexican heritage cooking in a tent in a flood relief camp after the failure of the Saint Francis Dam. Two women stir pots on portable gas burners on a wooden table, another woman makes tortillas on a portable gas griddle on the table as 2 young women watch. On a table behind the women is a large metal container of lard and a box of Blue Cross Table Salt is on the table next to the griddle. Text from negative sleeve: Saint Francis Dam
Type
image
Format
b&w nitrate negative
Identifier
uclamss_1429_1962 ark:/21198/zz002dcvmc
Language
No linguistic content
Subject
Saint Francis Dam Failure, Calif., 1928 Disaster victims--California--Santa Clara River Valley Disaster relief--California--Santa Clara River Valley
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