Santa Clarita Valley History In Pictures
> ST. FRANCIS DAM DISASTER
Highway Pile Driver in Use
Southeast of Castaic Junction | St. Francis Dam Disaster


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Destroyed highway and railroad bridges | Click to enlarge.

According to St. Francis Dam historian J. David Rogers, this is a steam-powered pile driver used southeast of Castaic Junction to install timber piles for a new bridge to replace one that washed away when the floodwaters hit during the early morning hours of March 13, 1928.


Construction on the 600-foot-long, 185-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 411 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.


RO2803a: 19200 dpi jpeg. Online image only.
LADWP Archive
CASTAIC JUNCTION
St. Francis Dam Disaster

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Flood Path Aerials x3

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High Water Mark

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SPRR Tracks Moved

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SPRR Track Erosion

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Highway Pile Driver

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Highway Pile Driver

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Highway Pile Driver

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