Santa Clarita Valley History In Pictures
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Lyman and Lillian Curtis
St. Francis Dam Victims

Lyman and Lillian Curtis (nee Dorsett). Engagement or wedding photo.

As indicated, Lyman Walter Curtis and Lillian Luzelta Dorsett were married Aug. 16, 1921, in Bakersfield. Lyman was a construction worker who helped build the roads at the St. Francis Dam site in the 1920s. In 1928, Lyman and Lillian lived with their three children — daughters Marjorie and Mazie and their 3-year-old younger brother, Danny — in the encampment immediately below the dam. When the dam ruptured just before midnight on March 12, 1928, Lyman and the girls were among the first casualties. Lillian and Danny survived.

Seven miles up San Francisquito Canyon Road from today's Copper Hill Drive, construction on the 700-foot-long, 205-foot-high St. Francis Dam started in August 1924. With a 12.5 billion-gallon capacity, the reservoir began to fill with water on March 1, 1926. It was completed two months later.

At 11:57:30 p.m. on March 12, 1928, the dam failed, sending a 180-foot-high wall of water crashing down San Francisquito Canyon. An estimated 431 people lay dead by the time the floodwaters reached the Pacific Ocean south of Ventura 5½ hours later.

It was the second-worst disaster in California history, after the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, in terms of lives lost — and America's worst civil engineering failure of the 20th Century.


ID2101: 9600 dpi jpeg from original print.
ST. FRANCIS DAM VICTIMS

ALSO SEE:
• Memorial (Proposed)
• Claims & Claimants


Background: Forgotten Casualties (CSUN 2013)

• ROSTER OF VICTIMS

• Memorialization and Memory
(Stansell 2014)

• Paper: Oral History (Licon 2014)

• News Story 8-6-2014


Story: Victims & Heroes

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FILM: Body Recovery, Newhall Morgue

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FILM: Nighttime Recovery of Bodies
3-17-1928

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Tony Harnischfeger

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Lyman & Lillian Curtis

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Marjorie & Mazie Curtis (Mult.)

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San Francisquito School

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Cecilia Small, Schoolteacher

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Ruiz Family x7

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Pete Rivera

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Erratchuo 1928

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1928 Mourners

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Newhall Cowboys 1928 Marker x2

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Newhall Morgue

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Gottardi Family

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Felda Pike Obituary

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Saugus Community Club Members

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Oral History: Thelma McCawley Shaw 2010

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Oral History: Biz Basolo 2009

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