The Columns at Crowley Lake

[Grumpy Old Guy]

12. About the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the St. Francis Dam.

It is dumbfounding to me that, to this day, so few people know about the Owens Valley Ripoff, the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the St. Francis Dam Disaster. I won't go into the details here, but if anyone is interested, all you need to do is google "St. Francis Dam Disaster." I first learned this story as a young TV news intern forty five years ago.

In a nutshell, nearly five hundred people died in one night in 1928 when the southern most reservoir of the L.A. Aqueduct suffered a catastrophic failure. The dam workers and nearby residents had been warning about the obvious leaks, but William Mulholland, the head of the L.A. Water Department, drove out there and proclaimed it the safest dam in the world. Four hours after he got home the Dam completely collapsed and washed away in mere seconds. A wall of water three hundred feet high started moving towards the ocean at thirty miles per hour. You can't imagine the devastation. They found the last confirmed casualties in the 1990s, and still find remains to this day that may be from the flood. The farthest body was found in San Diego.

I've read different reasons why news of the disaster was hidden from the public at the time. One theory is that the tragedy reflected badly on the most powerful civic leaders in Los Angeles, including Mulholland, Harrison Otis, Harry Chandler, Fred Eaton and Henry Huntington. A more plausible reason is that the powers that be wanted to get Congressional approval to build Hoover Dam, then known as Boulder Dam. They were afraid that if people knew what happened in California, Boulder Dam would never get built.

Here are a few photos from my visits to the Dam site.

The rubble in the foreground was the base of the dam. The gash in the far cliff was the east abutment.



If you look at the large concrete blocks behind these crosses, you'll notice a "stair step" pattern. This was a piece of concrete from the face of the dam. It still lies where it came to rest, along with dozens of other concrete chunks.



I took an official tour of the site a few years ago. The docents said that a bill had passed Congress to make it a national monument, but the bill sat unsigned on Trump's desk. I don't know what ever happened to it.

Also, the water wars in the Eastern Sierra continue to this day. There were public hearings earlier this year concerning changes in the water allotments to the farmers and ranchers in Mono County.

I hope you folks find this interesting. Don't even get me started about the dust contamination from the dry Owens Lake bed.