The Water Resources Collections and Archives
On March 12, 1928 the newly-completed St. Francis Dam, located just a few miles north of the city of Santa Clarita, failed. The collapse of the dam emptied the San Francisquito Reservoir, and released 12.4 billion gallons of water in a wave that traveled 54 miles to the Pacific Ocean in just a little more than 5 hours. (Imagine an unstoppable wave of destruction 2 miles wide coming at you at 18 miles an hour!) Over 600 people were killed, making the St. Francis Dam failure the worst man-made disaster in California History.
The WRCA contains first-hand accounts of the destruction caused by the failure of the St. Francis Dam, as well as information about thousands of other dams across California and around the world.
You can visit the Water Resources Collections and Archives (WRCA) at
Posted on 1/15/13 by D. Morita