Colorized photo of the St. Francis Dam, ca. 1926. Image colorized by Pony R. Horton.
The St. Francis Dam was a concrete gravity-arch dam, designed to create a reservoir as part of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The dam was located 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Los Angeles, California, near the present city of Santa Clarita. The dam was built between 1924 and 1926 under the supervision of William Mulholland, chief engineer and general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (then called the Bureau of Water Works and Supply). Three minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the dam catastrophically failed, and the resulting flood killed more than 600 people. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam is one of the worst American civil engineering failures of the 20th century and remains the second-greatest loss of life in California’s history, after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and fire, and it marked the end of Mulholland’s career.
Contents
- 1 Planning and design
- 2 Construction and modification
- 3 Prelude to disaster
- 4 Collapse and floodwave
- 5 Aftermath
- 6 Analysis
- 7 Mulholland Dam reinforced
- 8 Remains of the dam
- 9 Cultural references
- 10 Further reading
- 11 See also
- 12 External links
- 13 References
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Planning and design
Mulholland, a self-taught civil engineer and native of Ireland, had risen through the ranks of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (then called the Bureau of Water Works and Supply), and had quickly established himself as having a penchant for thriftiness, an enormous capacity for innovation, and the ability to complete difficult projects on-time and on-budget. These traits undoubtedly aided him in designing and building the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, which at the time was the longest aqueduct in the world, bringing water 233 miles (380 km) from the Owens Valley to the city of Los Angeles. The rapid growth of Los Angeles demanded a larger water supply, so a series of small reservoirs were built in the 1920s to provide the rapidly-expanding city with a water supply in the event of a drought or damage to the aqueduct, but the need for larger reservoirs was obvious.
In the process of designing and building the Los Angeles Aqueduct, Mulholland had considered San Francisquito Canyon—about 30 miles (50 km) north of Los Angeles—as a potential dam site in 1911. Conveniently, the Los Angeles Aqueduct ran along the canyon, and two generating stations in the same canyon used aqueduct water to provide power for Los Angeles. To Mulholland, the location appeared ideal–the reservoir would provide ample water for Los Angeles in the event of a drought or if the aqueduct was damaged by an earthquake or sabotage
Construction and modification
Construction of the St. Francis Dam, ca. 1925. Photo courtesy of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society
In 1924, construction was quietly begun on the dam so as not to attract the attention of the farmers dependent on the water of the San Francisquito Creek. Additionally, the Los Angeles Aqueduct was the target of frequent sabotage by angry farmers and landowners in the Owens Valley, and Mulholland was eager to avoid the kind of expensive and time-consuming repairs which plagued the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The dam was named the “St. Francis”, an anglicized version of the name of the canyon in which it was built.
Immediately after construction had begun in 1924, Mulholland decided to raise the height of the dam 10 feet (3 m), increasing the capacity of the reservoir from 30,000 to 32,000 acre-feet (39 million cubic meter) of water, and Mulholland made minor changes in the dam’s design to accommodate the additional height. In July 1925, when the dam was roughly half-completed, Mulholland added an additional 10 feet (3 m), bringing the dam’s new height to 195 feet (59 m) and increasing the reservoir’s capacity to more than 38,000 acre-feet (47 million cubic meter) The dam’s new height necessitated the construction of a “wing dike” along the top of the ridge of the western abutment to prevent water from spilling over the ridge.
Prelude to disaster
The St. Francis Dam (looking north) with water in its reservoir.
Throughout 1926 and 1927, several cracks appeared in the dam and its abutments, some of which leaked muddy water as the reservoir was filled. The cracks and leaks were inspected by Mulholland, who dismissed them as normal for a concrete dam the size of the St. Francis. On March 7, 1928, the reservoir was filled to capacity for the first time, whereupon damkeeper Tony Harnischfeger spotted new cracks and leaks and contacted Mulholland, who again dismissed them as normal.
The same week, motorists traveling on the road along the east shore of the reservoir reported cracks and a deepening sag in the roadbed near the dam’s east abutment. By the morning of March 12th, the roadbed had sagged almost five feet (1.5 m).
The same morning of March 12, Harnischfeger discovered a new leak and immediately alerted Mulholland. Mulholland and his assistant Harvey van Norman inspected the new cracks and leaks, and once again Mulholland, convinced the leaks were relatively minor and normal for a concrete dam, pronounced the dam safe.
Collapse and floodwave
The dam after the breach. Note the standing center section (the “Tombstone”), and the landslide and washed-out road at the extreme right of the photograph.
Three minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam catastrophically failed, less than 12 hours after Mulholland had inspected and declared it safe. There were no eyewitnesses to the dam’s collapse, but a motorcyclist named Ace Hopewell rode past the dam and reported feeling a rumbling and the sound of “crashing, falling blocks,” after riding about a half-mile (800 m) upstream. He assumed this was either an earthquake or another one of the landslides common to the area, not realizing he was the last person to have seen the St. Francis Dam intact, and survive.
Harnischfeger and his family were probably the first to die in the floodwave, which was at least 125 ft (38 m) high when it hit their cottage in the San Francisquito Canyon 1/4 mile (400 m) downstream from the dam. 45 minutes before the collapse, the motorcyclist also reported seeing a light in the canyon below the dam—the dam itself did not have lights—suggesting Harnischfeger may have been inspecting the dam immediately prior to its failure. The body of Harnischfeger’s wife was found fully clothed and wedged between two blocks of concrete near the broken base of the dam; their six-year-old son’s body was found farther downstream, but Tony Harnischfeger’s body was never found.
Twelve billion U.S. gallons (45 billion liters) of water surged down San Francisquito Canyon in a floodwave, demolishing the heavy concrete walls of Power Station Number Two (a hydroelectric power plant), and destroying everything else in its path. The flood travelled south down San Francisquito Canyon, flooding part of present-day Valencia and Newhall. The deluge then turned west into the Santa Clara River bed, flooding the towns of Castaic Junction, Fillmore, Bardsdale. The flood continued through Santa Paula in Ventura County, emptying its victims and debris into the Pacific Ocean at Montalvo, 54 miles (87 km) from the reservoir and dam site. When it reached the ocean at 5:30am, the flood was almost two miles (3 km) wide, traveling at a speed of 5 miles (8 km) per hour. Bodies of victims were recovered from the ocean, some as far south as the Mexican border.
Telephone operators in Fillmore (notably Louise Gipe) and two motorcycle policemen in Santa Paula notified people in their homes of the danger, until the rising floodwaters forced their retreat.
Aftermath
The dam broke into several large pieces, some of which were carried almost 1/2 mile (800 m) downstream, while the center section of the dam—nicknamed “The Tombstone”—remained standing. Two months after the collapse, 18-year-old Lercy Parker fell to his death while climbing the ruins, and in the following months, the upright section was toppled with dynamite and the remaining blocks demolished with bulldozers and jackhammers to discourage sightseers and souvenir hunters from exploring the ruins. Although the west wing dike remained intact, it was used by Los Angeles firemen to gain experience of using explosives on building structures. The St. Francis Dam was not rebuilt, although Bouquet Reservoir in nearby Bouquet Canyon and Castaic Dam in the town of Castaic were subsequently built as replacements for the St. Francis Dam (1934 and 1973, respectively).
To this day, the exact number of victims remains unknown. The official death toll in August 1928 was 385, but the bodies of victims continued to be discovered every few years until the mid-1950s. Many victims were swept out to sea when the flood reached the Pacific Ocean and were not discovered until they washed ashore, some as far south as the Mexican border. The remains of another victim were found deep underground near Newhall in 1992, and the current death toll is estimated to be more than 600 victims (excluding the itinerant farm workers camped in San Francisquito Canyon, the exact number of which will never be known.)
Immediately following the disaster, Mulholland said he, “envied those who were killed” and went on to say, “Don’t blame anyone else, you just fasten it on me. If there was an error in human judgment, I was the human, and I won’t try to fasten it on anyone else.” At the Coroner’s Inquest, the leaks Tony Harnischfeger had spotted and reported to Mulholland were cited as evidence of the dam leaking the day before the break, and that both the LADWP and Mulholland were aware of them. Mulholland admitted being at the dam the day before the break, but had noticed nothing out of the ordinary, testifying that leaks in dams—especially in dams the size of the St. Francis—were not unusual.
The Los Angeles Coroner’s Inquest concluded the disaster was primarily caused by the paleomegalandslide on which the eastern abutment of the dam was built, but would have been impossible for the geologists of the 1920s to detect. Indeed, two of the world’s leading geologists at the time, John C. Branner of Stanford University and Carl E. Grunsky, had found no fault with the San Francisquito rock. Therefore, the jury determined responsibility for the disaster lay with the governmental organizations which oversaw the dam’s construction and the dam’s designer and engineer, William Mulholland, but cleared Mulholland of any charges, since neither he nor anyone at the time could have known of the instability of the rock formations on which the dam was built. The hearings also recommended, “the construction and operation of a great dam should never be left to the sole judgment of one man, no matter how eminent.”
Soon after the inquest, Mulholland retired from the LADWP and retreated into a life of self-imposed isolation. He died in 1935, at the age of 79.
Analysis
Modern geologists know the type of rock found in the San Francisquito Canyon is unsuitable for supporting a dam and a reservoir, but in the 1920s, two of the world’s leading geologists at the time, John C. Branner of Stanford University and Carl E. Grunsky, found no fault with the San Francisquito rock. The dam was built squarely over the San Francisquito earthquake fault, although this fault has since been inactive.
J. David Rogers, a professor of geological engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, has published a comprehensive account of the dam’s failure. The dam’s failure can be attributed to three major factors: the instability of the paleomegalandslide on which the dam was built, the failure to compensate for the additional height added to the dam’s design, and the design and construction being overseen by only one person.
Recently, a critique of Rogers’ historical analysis of the dam’s collapse was published in the journal California History (Fall 2004) by historians Norris Hundley Jr. (Professor Emeritus, UCLA) and Donald C. Jackson (Professor, Lafayette College). While accepting the validity of Rogers’ geological analysis of the failure, this article makes clear how the structure built under Mulholland’s direction in San Francisquito Canyon fell well short of standards for large-scale concrete gravity dams as practiced by other prominent dam engineers in the 1920s.
Mulholland Dam reinforced
After the disaster, the City of Los Angeles immediately reinforced another dam identical in shape and design—Mulholland Dam (which created Hollywood Reservoir), also designed and built by Mulholland—by piling tons of earth and rock on the face of the dam.
Remains of the dam
Today, the only visible remains of the St. Francis Dam are weathered, broken chunks of gray concrete and the rusted remnants of the handrails that lined the top of the dam and the wing dike. The ruins and the scar from the paleomegalandslide can be seen from San Francisquito Canyon Road, about five miles (8 km) north of the city of Newhall, and can be found with Google Earth at 34°32?52?N 118°30?47?W? / ?34.547707, -118.512971. The road sustained heavy storm damage in 2005 and when rebuilt, it was rerouted away from the both the remains of the dam disaster and the damaged portion of the roadway.
Cultural references
Robert Towne made numerous references to Mulholland, the California Water Wars, the aqueduct, and the St. Francis Dam disaster in his screenplay for the 1974 neo-noir movie Chinatown. Mulholland is split between the characters of Noah Cross (John Huston) and the city’s chief engineer Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling)—the name Noah alluding to a flood, and Hollis Mulwray to “Mulholland”—possibly to suggest the conflict between good and evil in one man. In one scene, Hollis Mulwray makes a specific reference to the St. Francis Dam disaster:
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In case you’ve forgotten, gentlemen, over five hundred lives were lost when the Van der Lip Dam gave way. Core samples have shown that beneath this bedrock is shale similar to the permeable shale in the Van der Lip disaster. It couldn’t withstand that kind of pressure there. And now you propose yet another dirt-banked terminus dam with slopes of two and one half to one, one hundred twelve feet high and a twelve thousand acre water surface. Well, it won’t hold. I won’t build it. It’s that simple. I am not making that kind of mistake twice. Thank you, gentlemen. |
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Also in 1974, the movie Earthquake showed the Mulholland Dam meeting a nearly identical demise to that of the St. Francis.
Rock musician Frank Black has made several references to the St. Francis Dam disaster in his songs, including the tracks “St. Francis Dam Disaster” and “Ole Mulholland”.
Further reading
- Outland, Charles F. Man-Made Disaster: The Story of St Francis Dam. A.H. Clark Company: 1977. ISBN 0-914421-28-X
- Nunis Jr., Doyce B. (Ed.). St. Francis Dam Disaster Revisited. Historical Society of Southern California. 2002. ISBN 0-914421-27-1. +
- Jackson, Donald C. and Hundley, Norris. “Privilege and Responsibility: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster.” California History (Fall 2004): 8-47.
- Horton, Pony R. “A Test of Integrity: The Original Story Upon Which The Docu-Drama is Based”. A brief journalistic article detailing the St. Francis Dam disaster. Based on Horton’s 25 years of research into the story. Informational sources include Horton’s interviews with Catherine Mulholland, Dr. J. David Rogers, and Robert V. Phillips, former Chief Engineer & General Manager, LADWP.
See also
- Castaic Dam, Castaic Lake, Castaic
- Teton Dam
- Malpasset Dam
- Kelly Barnes Dam
- Buffalo Creek Flood
- Baldwin Hills Reservoir
- Vajont Dam
External links
- “SAN FRANCISQUITO CANYON and the ST. FRANCIS DAM”. Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society. Retrieved on 2003-03-29. dozens of excellent photographs of the dam under construction, completed, its ruins, and a list of the victims.
- St. Francis Dam Disaster 30-minute television program available online.
- Remembering the St. Francis Dam Disaster, by Michele E. Buttelman, The Signal March 11, 2001.
- Google Earth image of the St. Francis Dam ruins
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