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St. Francis Dam
San Francisquito Canyon

Photo: St. Francis Dam and Reservoir before the break, circa March, 1928. Photo taken from area between wing dyke and reservoir near western abutment of dam. Caption reads "SAN FRANCISQUITO LAKE 12 BILLION GALLONS-8 MILES OF WATER BEFORE THE BREAK".

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 470 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.

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AL2024: 9600 dpi jpeg from 300 dpi jpg of original photograph

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