Page 16 - sg_vigilanceforever1994

16 1919-1994

St. Francis for home, and Bill said Abigail would
have to dig out the emergency candles
Continued from page 14 when they got home, because the flood
waters would douse every light for miles.
provide a large water storage area. The "He kept telling me the dam was going
water it would hold was insurance out, but I just thought he was crazy," said
against losing the water wars. Abigail.
Saugus and Newhall prospered during In a lagoon just below the dam, a pool
its construction, because of the hundreds of water had been collecting steadily
it employed and because of the money since morning, says Robert- Hanson of
being spent in town by water department Canyon Country, who has studied St.
employees. But a cloud of gloom shad- Francis Dam myth and memory.
owed the project, as rumors of poor con- The leak buried the lagoon under near-
crete, bedposts used as reinforcement ly 20 feet of water, Hanson sayss.
bars and bad geology circulated. Something else seemed off that night.
On March 12, 1928, dam keeper Tony San Francisquito Canyon was typically
Harnischfeger called Mulholland to fertile with the sounds of crickets, birds,
report he had noticed muddy water leak- raccoons and a stream. Hanson says the
ing from the west abutment, indicating water that had risen in the lagoon
the dam was eroding the canyon. silenced the wildlife.
The Rileys sped past old Powerhouse
Mulholland and his assistant, Harvey Sr.
Van Norman, took a limousine to the site #2 a mile and a half downstream from
that day, but returned to Los Angeles the dam, where 28 workers and their
convinced everything was in order. families lived. They raced past the
Abigail Riley recalled the way the sprawling rancheros of the Ruiz family,
dam looked that Sunday afternoon. the San Francisquito Canyon school and
She and her husband, Bill, had taken "Bill looked down and he said to me, Abigail was skeptical when her hus- the nearby cottage where its teacher,
their two young daughters for a drive 'Look, dear, do you see what I see?"' said band began shouting that the dam was Cecelia Small, lived along with a little
from their home in Pim to Palmdale. On the 94-year-old Riley in a 1993 interview. about to break. If that were the case, boy she cared for.
their return, they stopped their old Ford Her husband was pointing to a steady "Why would they leave all the houses After tucking into bed their two
truck at the dam site and walked out over rush of water that spilled over the 200- and people here?" she argued, as Bill daughters, Phyllis, 9, and Rose, 1, the
the structure, teeming with cool Owens foot-high structure, and to the leak sped all the way back to Piru. Rileys retired themselves.
Valley water topped off by recent rains. Harnischfeger had shown to Mulholland. It was dark in the canyon as they raced Please see ST. FRANCIS, page 18

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