Floodpath

by Jon Wilkman

A perennial story that regularly turns up after tragedies appeared in the Ventura Star on March 22: “A small, lonely, nameless, without pedigree [dog], obviously a survivor of the recent flood, lay whimpering on the grave of an unidentified victim. It has lain there for two days … Nothing can drive or induce him to leave.” One canine hero, Don, was awarded a medal for saving an entire family. The honor was accepted by his grateful owners.70

  Despite the best efforts of the news reporters to weave isolated incidents and human emotions into a satisfying narrative, the sudden violence of the St. Francis Dam disaster resisted logic and reassuring words. The statistics were numbing. Twenty-five entire families were wiped out, including popular Powerhouse 2 woodworker Carl Mathews and his wife, children, and niece. Sole survivors of other families included Ray Rising, Juan Carrillo, and Thelma McCawley. Eight members of the Torres family were gone. So were seven Savalas, six Martinezes, and six Garcias. The losses for the extended Ruiz familia numbered twelve.

  When the counting stopped, there were at least sixty-five bodies that couldn’t be identified and more than one hundred known dead who were never found, including assistant watchman Jack Ely, whose wife was a Mulholland family friend. Only days before the collapse, it had been Ely, with a veteran water worker’s dry sense of humor, who assured a nervous visitor that “We expect this dam to break at any minute!”

  Probably the most intriguing missing victim was St. Francis dam keeper Tony Harnischfeger. Harnischfeger’s son, Coder, was also missing. The body of Tony’s girlfriend, Leona Johnson, was found fully clothed and wedged in the rubble upstream from the bungalow she shared with her “sweetheart.”71 People began to wonder: Why wasn’t she washed downstream like other victims? Had Harnischfeger, his son, and Leona been on top of the structure when it collapsed, or were they immediately below, looking for something, or trying to escape, only to be buried beneath enormous chunks of concrete and a collapsing hillside? Were they carrying the lights Powerhouse 1 engineer Dean Keagy noticed as he drove past the dam shortly before midnight on March 12? No one knew for sure, but that didn’t stop speculation.

  One “dead man” received a brief reprieve from the St. Francis flood. On March 13, kidnapper and murderer William Edward Hickman was scheduled to take the Southern Pacific to his execution in San Quentin. The trip had to be postponed. On March 17, he resumed his ride to death row. Among the first men Hickman encountered when he arrived was convicted Los Angeles Times bomber James McNamara.72 Two other San Quentin residents with Los Angeles connections also were there: Owens Valley activists Wilfred and Mark Watterson.

  In Los Angeles, it was yet to be determined if an investigation of the St. Francis Dam disaster would result in new additions to the San Quentin prison population. As the public tried to make sense of the facts and evaluate evidence, William Mulholland and the City of Los Angeles faced a tough jury even before an official inquiry was launched.

  Crime-scene photographer Leslie T. White had a closeup view of the human cost of the St. Francis Dam disaster. He summed up what it meant to booming 1920s Los Angeles, a city that abhorred bad press and was unfamiliar with failure: “The town reeked with self-satisfaction and it was high treason to doubt its eternal qualities. We were prosperous, content, and above everything else, secure … the tragedy accomplished the impossible—it temporarily shattered our smugness.”73

  The residents of the Santa Clara River Valley had little sympathy for a chastened City of the Angels. The words on a hand-painted sign posted in a muddy Santa Paula yard were blunt: HANG MULHOLLAND.74

  8.

  Sympathy, Anger, and Amends

  With a mix of shock, sadness, and outrage, news of the St. Francis Dam disaster inspired headlines in newspapers across the United States and spread overseas. President “Silent Cal” Coolidge issued a few words of condolence and offered government assistance. If the night of the collapse was a nightmare, the aftermath could seem surreal. In Italy, a weekly magazine, La Domenica del Corriere, famous for colorful covers, featured a dramatic illustration of men and women fleeing the flood, dressed like Tuscan peasants. In Los Angeles, a hastily printed commemorative pamphlet included a photograph of the Tombstone with water rushing past—in full daylight, flowing in the wrong direction.

  The cover of a pamphlet published after the disaster showing the flood flowing upstream in full daylight (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power)

  The April edition of the DWP newsletter, the Intake, featured the “Water Executives Basketball Team” on the cover, but inside was a heartfelt eulogy for Powerhouse 2 cabinetmaker Carl Mathews. Reflecting the Department’s dedication to “Esprit de Corps,” the issue featured a long poem entitled “Dead on the Field of Honor,” followed by a roll call of employee casualties.1

  The tragedy was a boon to poets and balladeers. An elegy by Santa Paula poetess Mrs. G.A. Hendricks appeared in the Santa Paula Chronicle. (“At daylight, what a picture, / Of Nature’s wonder land, / Death stalked the streets where bodies, / Had been washed on every hand.”)2

  At least two 78 rpm records were released with performances of St. Francis Dam ballads. By March 25, 1928, fans of music and disasters could buy “The Breaking of the St. Francis Dam,” an example of “Old Time Singin’” by John Hutchens, accompanied by guitar and harmonica. “Night had fallen o’er the valley / Of Santa Clara’s verdant green,” Hutchens intoned. “Suddenly a cry of anguish / Broke upon the peaceful scene.” 3

  Another balladeer, Vernon Dalhart, a better-known singer-songwriter, specialized in memorializing current events. His hits included the railroad saga “The Wreck of Old ’99,” considered the first country-music multimillion seller.4 Dalhart sang the story of the St. Francis Flood on one side of a 1928 disk, with “Little Marion Parker,” a keening tribute to William Edward Hickman’s victim, on the other.

  Perhaps the most heartfelt musical remembrance was a Mexican corrido, or ballad, written by Piru resident Juan Encinas. Encinas’s home was destroyed by the flood, and his sister’s godfather killed. To memorialize the old man and the tragedy that took his life, Encinas wrote “El Corrido de la Inundación de la Presa de San Francisquito” and sang it to his sister. Unlike commercial commemorations, the song wasn’t recorded until 1960, and never widely distributed.5

  Well before the first entrepreneurs eulogized and profited from the St. Francis tragedy, news of the flood produced an outpouring of sympathy and contributions to relief and welfare efforts. Newspaper columns listed names of caring organizations and individuals—including the employees of the Fred Harvey El Tovar Restaurant at the Grand Canyon, the J.C. Penney Company in New York, and $100 from Harpo Marx.6 By March 18, a fund established by the Los Angeles Times had raised $55,542.18, and pledges continued to come in.7

  Downtown Los Angeles theaters donated the proceeds from special performances of ongoing plays. Perhaps the most prominent fund-raiser was a midnight show at the Metropolitan Theater on Broadway, a venue large enough to accommodate a reported overwhelming demand for tickets. On March 21, a headline in the Los Angeles Examiner announced: BENEFIT SHOW TONIGHT—40 ACTS—150 STARS! Produced by showman and theater owner Sid Grauman, an impressive array of stage and movie stars agreed to appear, including Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Gloria Swanson, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, songwriter Irving Berlin, boxer Jack Dempsey, cowboy hero Tom Mix, and the 1928 “Wampas Baby Stars.” Six orchestras promised to be on hand to provide the music.

  A smaller gala was held in Long Beach, featuring Bee Jackson, “the girl who introduced the Charleston to America … direct from the Kit Kat Club in London.”8 One unexpected benefit took place in the Owens Valley town of Independence. In the midst of ongoing tensions with Los Angeles, on March 20 the American Legion staged a “St. Francis Dam victims’ fund raiser,” including performances by Paiute Indians whose ancestors had fought and lost their own water war with Owens Valley settlers more than sixty years before.9 Back in Los Angeles, an issue of the Communist newspaper the Daily W
orker reported that funds for Santa Paula survivors had been collected during a rally in the old Los Angeles plaza, adding that workers were ready to supply “mental dynamite” through El Machete, the organ of the Mexican Communist Party.10

  In addition to the generosity of show business, evidence of less glamorous charitable giving was found in the Spanish-language press. The Heraldo de Mexico printed lists of hundreds of contributors to Santa Clara River Valley relief, with donations ranging from five dollars to ten cents. Members of the newspaper’s staff offered to donate one day’s salary to “help our injured brethren.”11

  Following behind the sympathy and donations, the St. Francis Dam disaster provoked confusion and anger. An article on the March 14 front page of the Ventura Free Press didn’t mince words: “There is a group of city officials in Los Angeles guilty of criminal collective murder.” Referring to the continuing lawsuit concerning water from San Francisquito Creek, the article added: “The dam was built to divert Ventura County water to Los Angeles. Not content with this, Los Angeles by its inefficient and incompetent government bodies, has slain Ventura County men, women and children … The people of this county are going to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth insofar as it involves payment in full for all damage sustained.”

  Los Angeles not only faced bitter local criticism. The catastrophe had come at the worst time for the city’s interests in a major national debate that was crucial for L.A.’s continuing growth and success and the future of water and power in America as a whole. In 1921, a national board of engineers endorsed U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans for a large dam and reservoir on the Colorado River. It was an idea Mulholland had thought about for a long time.

  On April 25, 1922, Imperial Valley Progressive Republican Congressman Phil Swing and Progressive Senator and former California Governor Hiram Johnson submitted a bill to the U.S. Congress to construct a government-sponsored project that would become the Hoover Dam and the All-American Canal. A year before, the Chief and Ezra Scattergood quietly scouted sites for a dam and explored routes for an aqueduct and power-transmission right-of-way. As early as 1902, DWP’s private-enterprise rival, Southern California Edison, had also eyed the Colorado’s hydroelectric prospects.

  Even though the Swing-Johnson bill had tepid support from Republican president Calvin Coolidge, many saw it as a threat to free-enterprise America and government largesse to the East Coast, not to mention water resources in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona. When a water-development plan morphed into an electrical-power project, political warfare escalated. One congressman from New Jersey characterized plans for Boulder Canyon as a “socialist Russian Scheme of having the Federal Government go into the power business in competition with its own citizens.”12

  After six years and three attempts to defeat congressional filibusters, the fate of a fourth Swing-Johnson Boulder Canyon bill still hung in the balance when news of the St. Francis Dam disaster hit front pages with banner headlines and horrifying photographs. The barrier in San Francisquito Canyon had been less than half the height of the dam proposed by the Bureau of Reclamation.

  In a front-page article, “Water and Power Delusions,” the Wall Street Journal editorialized that the failure of the St. Francis Dam was a warning against a “power trust” of politicians “who wish to plunge this country into another venture in government ownership and management” of hydroelectric power systems. Favoring privately owned coal-powered energy, the article added that the Southern California disaster gave “grandiose Colorado River projects a black eye.”13 A more local advocate of private utilities, the publisher of the Oxnard Courier, couldn’t resist adding salt to L.A.’s wounded pride: “Los Angeles had better get [Southern California] Edison to build future dams,” he mocked.14

  On March 14, 1928, facing national criticism and fears for public safety, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior issued an order for all fifty government dams and reservoirs to be inspected immediately. Engineers and construction contractors, many of whom envisioned a new era of large dam development in the West, were anxious. In a letter to a colleague, Philip Schuyler, editor of Western Construction News, was willing to speculate about what might have caused the failure, but cautioned that his opinions should be passed only “to a few engineers for reply direct, or through this office, as we believe everyone should be careful not to publish anything at this time that might in any way tend to put a question, or retard dam construction.”15

  An article in Engineering News Record approached hysteria: “For the first time in history a high dam of massive masonry has failed, and every fear of the destruction pent up in such works is realized … Here is the highest embodiment of modern dam-building science crumbled to ruin … Often bitter protest has been made against the erection of a dam above populous communities. In every instance engineering science … gave assurance that the waters would be safely controlled. The destruction of the St. Francis Dam challenges that assurance.”

  Eager to get control of the crisis as soon as possible, on March 13 the Los Angeles Board of Water Commissioners convened an emergency meeting to authorize an expenditure of $25,000, including $150 per victim for funeral and burial expenses.16 Everyone knew much more would be needed. The questions were how much, and where would it come from?

  Responding to the tragedy, Los Angeles Progressive Republican Mayor George E. Cryer expressed official sympathy and offered a commitment to make repairs, but he was hesitant to reveal what additional responsibilities the city was prepared to accept. “I’ve made no statement concerning a matter of legal liability,” he told reporters. “I have said that the city should undertake the restoration of the stricken area. We cannot restore the lives that were snuffed out by the rushing waters. But we want to make good on losses as far as we can.”17

  Los Angeles City Attorney Jess E. Stephens was less oblique: “The facts so far are so obscure that it is impossible to determine what the city status is in this connection. We’ll find the facts and report to the proper city authorities. If this proves to be what is called ‘an Act of God,’ or if the mishap is beyond human responsibility, the city cannot be held liable.” Stephens hastened to add that Los Angeles had a “moral responsibility” to do as much as the law allowed.

  According to L.A. City Councilman Pierson Hall, Chairman of the Water and Power Committee, the Council was divided among “Water and Power Men” and a minority of Edison supporters. They were just as divided on how to proceed.18 The hesitance of city officials wasn’t entirely an attempt to duck the problem. In fact, knotty legal issues had to be untied to determine the city’s financial responsibility. The possibility that the burden might fall on the men who served on the Board of Water Commissioners, the agency that approved the dam, left that group of prominent business leaders anxiously eyeing their bank accounts.

  Business leaders in Ventura County were also uneasy when Mayor Cryer turned down an offer from the Red Cross to sponsor a national fund-raising appeal. “Los Angeles is perfectly capable of handling the situation,” Cryer declared. The city hoped to shoulder any financial responsibilities without complications that might arise from the involvement of third parties. Red Cross officials, who had already spent substantial amounts of money, responded with surprise and concern: “This is a disaster. We are organized for the purpose of meeting such situations as this. We … must be assured that the City not only wants to pay, but that it can.”19

  On Saturday, March 17, the Los Angeles City Council, still without acknowledging legal liability, approved a $1 million fund for rehabilitation efforts. Drawing on “surplus revenues,” the Board of Harbor Commissioners, leaders of another semi-independent city agency like the DWP, agreed to supply the cash.20 By Monday, the money was in the bank and $500,000 set aside to reimburse the Red Cross.

  Unlike the Watterson brothers in the Owens Valley, the citizens of Ventura County didn’t need dynamite attacks to get L.A.’s attention and put the city on the defensive. For their leader, they turn
ed to a man with local and statewide clout.

  Born in Caribou, Maine, fifty-five-year-old Charles Collins (C.C.) Teague came to Santa Paula in 1893. Later he married into a prominent local family and became a pioneer in the development of agricultural cooperatives. By 1928, Teague was president of the California Walnut Growers Association, the Limoneira Company, and the Santa Paula Water Works, among many other prominent business enterprises and agricultural organizations. Adding to his statewide political influence, he was chairman of the Southern California Hoover for President Campaign.21

  C.C. Teague (Santa Paula Historical Society)

  “The city of Los Angeles will try to minimize the damage and to prove that we are not entitled to anything,” Teague told a reporter. “We probably will have to appeal to the courts … The great city of Los Angeles which caused the damage should be approached first for all funds for rehabilitation.”22 To confront the challenges ahead, one of Teague’s first actions was to form a local Citizens Committee.

  In response, the President of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, George Eastman, stepped forward to lead a Los Angeles delegation to negotiate with Ventura County. A native of Potsdam, New York, Eastman arrived in Los Angeles in 1907. He began his local career working for two years in the office of the City Engineer. After starting a successful manufacturing business, like many entrepreneurial Angelenos, Eastman invested profitably in real estate. He was an active member of important fraternal, civic, and business associations as well as a trustee of Pomona College. In 1926, at age thirty-nine, he was elected the youngest president in the history of the influential Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.

  On March 21, the combined Joint Restoration Committee, consisting of seven members from each side, convened its first meeting in the conference room of a Santa Paula bank. City Attorney Jess Stephens, L.A.’s legal representative, remembered that the mood was “deadly serious.” The men from Ventura County “wanted to know what we were going to do about it,” Stephens wrote later, “and they wanted plain talk.”23