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Castaic Junction | St. Francis Dam Disaster
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According to St. Francis Dam historian J. David Rogers, the original LADWP caption to this photo is: "SP track moved 200 feet south by flood."
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.
RO2803d: 19200 dpi jpeg. Online image only. |
Flood Path Aerials x3
High Water Mark
SPRR Tracks Moved
SPRR Track Erosion
Highway Pile Driver
Highway Pile Driver
Highway Pile Driver
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