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NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018
(Rev. 8-86)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service

National Register of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet

Section number 8 Page 8

St. Francis Dam (Site of), Los Angeles County, California — Narrative Statement of Significance
[continued]
Word of the desperate situation finally reached the Ventura County Sheriff’s office in Ventura at 1:20 AM, instantly igniting a frantic
effort to warn communities in the Santa Clara Valley of the impending flood. Dauntless efforts by numerous individuals, both
official and private, to raise the alarm began, and continued well into the early morning hours of March 13. Impromptu evacuations
throughout the darkened valley saved thousands of lives, but hundreds of others would not be alerted in time. [Outland, 1963: 101]
The warnings came too late for the Southern California Edison employees stationed at the work camp at Kemp, a Southern Pacific
Railroad siding located on a low bench above the Santa Clara River, 17 miles downstream from the dam, near the Los
Angeles-Ventura county line. Most of the workers were asleep in their tents when the flood waters inundated the camp, at nearly the
same moment word of the dam break reached the Ventura County Sheriff. Of the approximately 150 Edison workers encamped at
Kemp, 84 were listed as casualties of the flood. [Outland, 1963: 107]

Roughly an hour after washing over the Edison camp at Kemp, the flood waters reached the town of Fillmore and the
sparsely-populated settlement of Bardsdale, 30 miles downstream from the dam. The bridge connecting the twinned communities
located on opposite banks of the Santa Clara River was instantly destroyed. Located well above the riverbed, Fillmore was spared the
direct impact of the flood waters, and with a half-hour’s prior notice, many area residents had already begun moving towards higher
ground. [Figures 8, 9]
At shortly after 3:00 AM, the rising waters of the Santa Clara River breached the Willard Bridge east of Santa Paula. Word of the
impending flood had reached Santa Paula around an hour beforehand, leading to a frantic effort to evacuate the city’s exposed lower
elevations. The audible destruction of the bridge provided one final, and highly compelling, alarm to an already alerted community.
The largest populated place to be attacked directly by the flood waters, the destruction at Santa Paula would be the most dramatic,
costly and well documented. [Outland, 1963: 122-7] [Figures 10-12]

The broadening and slowing flood waters reached Saticoy at the western end of the Santa Clara Valley at 4:05 AM. With nearly three
hours of warning, the evacuation of these low-lying areas, as well as the Oxnard plain, were essentially complete. At 5:25 AM,
nearly five and half hours after the collapse of the St. Francis Dam, and 54 miles downstream, the flood’s tide, now composed of
roughly equal parts water, and mud and debris, exhausted itself at the Santa Clara River’s Pacific Ocean mouth. [Outland, 1963: 128]

When the sun rose a half hour later, the process of tabulating the toll in life and property along the flood’s path of destruction began
in earnest. So also begin efforts to explain the dam’s failure in engineering, geological and political terms. It was a debate which
attracted experts from around the nation, and would carry on for decades.

Disaster Response, Accounting for the Damage, and Recovery Efforts

The morning of March 13, 1928 saw the immediate mobilization of the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County
Sheriff and all available Department of Water and Power personnel, as well as charitable and service organizations, such as the
American Red Cross, American Legion and the Fillmore Service Club. The rescue and recovery efforts did not suffer from a lack of
manpower or a commitment of resources, but was hampered by the immense area of devastation, and particularly the erasure of most
of the valley’s transportation network from Castaic to the Pacific Ocean. For the better part of the first day, the residents of the Santa
Clara Valley fended for themselves.