Floodpath

by Jon Wilkman

  Jones, Guy Lincoln. “San Francisquito Canyon Dam Disaster (California), Report to His Excellency Gov. George W.P. Hunt.” Phoenix: Hubbard Printing Co., 1928.

  Los Angeles County Coroner. “Transcript of Testimony and Verdict of the Coroner’s Jury in the Inquest over Victims of the St. Francis Dam Disaster.” April 1928.

  Mayberry, Edward L., Walter C. Clark, Charles T. Leods, Allen E. Sedgwick, and Louis Z. Johnson. “Report to Mr. Asa Keyes, District Attorney, Los Angeles County, California, On the Failure of the St. Francis Dam.” April 4, 1928.

  Mead, Elwood C., et al. “Report of Committee Appointed by the City Council of Los Angeles to Investigate and Report the Cause of the Failure of the St. Francis Dam.” March 31, 1928.

  Newhall, A.M., and George A. Newhall, Jr. “Report on St. Francis Dam Flood for the Newhall Land and Farming Company.” March 24, 1928.

  Wiley, A.J., et al. “Report of the Commission to Investigate the Causes Leading to the Failure of the St. Francis Dam Near Saugus, California,” commissioned by Gov. C.C. Young. State Printing Office, 1928.

  Books, Articles, and Theses

  Austin, Mary. Earth Horizon—Autobiography. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932.

  Bailey, F.S. “Discussion of Essential Facts Concerning the Failure of the St. Francis Dam.”

  Bennett, Ralph. “St. Francis Dam Failure—An Engineer’s Study of the Site.” Engineering News-Record (March 29, 1928): 517–18.

  Billington, David P., Donald C. Jackson, and Martin V. Melosi. The History of Large Federal Dams: Planning, Design, and Construction in the Era of Big Dams. Denver: U.S. Department of Interior, 2005.

  Blanchard, Dean Hobbs. Grant W. Heil, ed., and Danilo Matteini, ill. Of California’s First Citrus Empire: A Rainbow Arches from Maine to Ventura County County. Santa Paula: Castle Press, 1983.

  Blanchard, Sarah Eliot. Memories of a Child’s Early California Days. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1961.

  Bowers, Nathan A. “St. Francis Dam Catastrophe: A Review Six Weeks Later.” Engineering News-Record (May 10, 1928): 727–36.

  Carle, David, Water and the California Dream: Choices for a New Millennium, San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 2000.

  Chalfant, W.A. The Story of Inyo. Private printing, 1933.

  Clarke, Robert M. Narrative of a Native. Los Angeles: Clarke Publishing, Times-Mirror Co., 1936.

  Cooper, Erwin. Aqueduct Empire: A Guide to Water in California, Its Turbulent History, Its Management Today. Glendale, CA: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1968.

  Davis, Margaret L. Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the Inventing of Los Angeles. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993.

  ——, “The Tide of Doom.” USC Trojan Family 25, no. 4 (Autumn 1993).

  Davis, Mike, City of Quartz. New York: Verso, 1990.

  Deverell, William. Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

  Deverell, William, and Tom Sitton, eds. California Progressivism Revisited. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

  Elkind, Sarah S. How Local Politics Shape Federal Policy: Business, Power, & the Environment in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

  Emerson, Gladys Caroline. “Geographic Aspects in the Development of the Limoneira Company.” Master’s thesis, UCLA, 1968.

  Ehrenspect, Helmut E., and John R. Powell, eds., A Day in the Field with Thomas Dibblee and J. David Rogers, St. Francis Dam Area, May 17, 1997. Prepared by the Thomas Wilson Dibblee, Jr. Geological Foundation, 1997

  Erie, Steven P. Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).

  Farrell, Kathryn. “Dam Break: Tragedy in San Francisquito Canyon.” The Branding Iron, no. 160 (Fall 1985).

  Fellows, Lloyd. “Economic Aspects of the Mexican Rural Population in California, with Special Emphasis on the Need for Mexican Labor in Agriculture.” Thesis, University of Southern California, 1929. Reprint, Rand E. Research Associates, 1971.

  Fife, Donald L., et al. Failure of the St. Francis Dam, San Francisquito Canyon, near Saugus, California: Special Publication Commemorating the 50th Anniversary. Association of Engineering Geologists, S.C. Section, Glendale, 1978.

  Freeman, Vernon M. People-Land-Water: Santa Clara Valley and Oxnard Plain. Ventura: Lorrin L. Morrison, 1968.

  Gaylord, G.E. “History of the Collapse of the St. Francis Dam in San Francisquito Canyon, March 12, 1928. Report for the Southern Pacific Railroad.”

  Gillette, H.P. “The Cause of the St. Francis Dam Disaster.” Engineering and Contracting (April 1928).

  ——. “Some Lessons Taught by the St. Francis Dam Disaster.” Engineering and Contracting (April 1928): 170–71.

  Graf, William L. Dam Nation: A Geographic Census of American Dams and Their Large-Scale Hydrologic Impacts (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1999).

  Gumbrecht, Blake, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth (Creating the North American Landscape) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

  Henderson, Mary Alice Orcott. Santa Paula. (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2006).

  Henny, D.C. “Important Lessons of Construction Taught by Failure of the St. Francis Dam.” Hydraulic Engineering (July 1928): 731–33.

  Hiltzik, Michael, Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century (New York: Free Press, 2010).

  Hoffman, Abraham. Vision or Villainy: Origins of the Owens Valley-Los Angeles Water Controversy (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1981).

  ——. “Joseph Barlow Lippincott and the Owens Valley Controversy: Time for a Revision.” Southern California Quarterly 54 (Fall 1972).

  Hundley, Norris Jr. Water and the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).

  ——. The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 1770s–1990s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

  Jackson, Donald C. “It Is a Crime to Design a Dam Without Considering Upward Pressure: Engineers and Uplift, 1890–1930.” In Henry P.G. Darcy and Other Pioneers in Hydraulics, P.G. Darcy et al., eds. (June 23–26, 2003): 103.

  Jackson, Donald C. and Norris Hundley, Jr. “Privilege and Responsibility: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster.” California History 82, no. 3 (January 2004).

  Jansen, Robert B. Dams and Public Safety (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, 1980).

  ——, ed. Advanced Dam Engineering for Design, Construction, and Rehabilitation (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1988).

  Kahrl, William. Water and Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

  Lawrence, Charles H. “The Death of the Dam: A Chapter in Southern California History.” (Redondo Beach, 1971).

  Layne, J. Gregg. Water and Power for a Great City, A History of the Department of Water and Power of the City of Los Angeles (unpublished manuscript, 1952).

  Lee, Charles. “Theories of the Cause and Sequence of Failure of the St. Francis Dam.” Western Construction News (June 25, 1928): 405–08.

  Libecap, Gary D. Owens Valley Revisited: A Reassessment of the West’s First Great Water Transfer (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).

  Lippincott, Joseph Barlow. “Mulholland’s Memory.” Civil Engineering 9 (March 1939).

  ——. “William Mulholland—Engineer, Pioneer, Raconteur” (part one). Civil Engineering 11 (February 1941).

  ——. “William Mulholland—Engineer, Pioneer, Raconteur” (part two). Civil Engineering 11 (March 1941).

  Los Angeles Board of Public Service Commissioners. Complete Report on Construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct with Introductory Historical Sketch (Los Angeles: Department of Public Works of the City of Los Angeles, 1916).

  Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. William
Mulholland: Father of the Los Angeles Municipal Water System. 1939.

  MacKillop, Fionn. “The Influence of the Los Angeles ‘Oligarch’ on the Governance of the Municipal Water Department, 1902–1930: A Business Like Any Other or a Public Service?” Business History Conference, 2004.

  Matson, Robert W. William Mulholland, A Forgotten Forefather (Stockton, CA: Pacific Center for Western Studies, University of the Pacific, 1976).

  Mayo, Morrow. Los Angeles (New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 1933).

  McBane, Margo. “History of the Limoneira Ranch.” Ph.D. thesis, UCLA Department of History, 2002.

  McCully, Patrick, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams (New York: Zed Books, 2001).

  McMullen, Thomas M. “The St. Francis Dam Collapse and Its Impact on the Construction of the Hoover Dam.” Master’s thesis, University of Maryland, 2004.

  McWilliams, Carey. Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California (San Francisco: Greenwood Press, 1948).

  ——. North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1939).

  ——. Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946).

  Mead, Elwood, L.C. Hill, and Gen. Lansing H. Beach. “The St. Francis Dam Failure,” May 1928.

  Menchaca, Martha. Mexican Outsiders: A Community History of Marginalization and Discrimination in California (University of Texas Press, 1995).

  Merlo, Catherine. Beyond the Harvest: The History of the Fillmore-Piru Citrus Association, 1897–1997 (Fillmore-Piru Citrus Association, 1997).

  Meyers, William A. Iron Men and Copper Wires: A Centennial History of the Southern California Edison Company (Glendale, CA: Trans-Anglo Books, 1986).

  Moeller, Beverly Bowen. Phil Swing and Boulder Dam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).

  Mowrey, George E. The California Progressives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951).

  Mulholland, Catherine. William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

  Mulholland, William. “A Brief Historical Sketch of the Growth of the Los Angeles City Water Department.” Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, 1920.

  Nadeau, Remi A., The Water Seekers, 3rd rev. ed. (Crest Publishers, 1993).

  Newhall, Ruth Waldo. A California Legend: The Newhall Land and Farming Company (Valencia, CA: Newhall Land and Farming Co., 1992).

  Newmark, Harris, and Maurice H. Newmark and Marco R. Newmark, eds. Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853–1913, 4th ed. (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1984).

  Nichols, John. St. Francis Dam Disaster (Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2002).

  Nordhoff, Charles. California: for Health, Pleasure and Residence, A Book for Travellers and Settlers (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873).

  Nordskog, Andrae. “Communication to the California Legislature Relating to the Owens Valley Water Situation.” 1931.

  Nunis, Doyce B. Jr., ed. The St. Francis Dam Disaster Revisited (Spokane, WA: Historical Society of Southern California & Ventura County Museum of History and Art, 1995).

  ——, ed. The Founding Documents of Los Angeles, a Bilingual Edition (Los Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California and the Zamorano Club of Los Angeles, 2004).

  Orsi, Jared. Hazardous Metropolis: Flooding and Urban Ecology in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

  Ostrom, Vincent. Water and Politics: A Study of Water Policies and Administration in the Development of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Haynes Foundation, 1953).

  Outland, Charles F. Man-Made Disaster: The Story of the St. Francis Dam (Glendale, CA: Arthur Clark, 1963, rev. 1977).

  Pattison, Kermit. “Why Did the Dam Burst?” American Heritage of Invention & Technology 14, no. 1 (Summer 1998).

  Pearce, Robert A. The Owens Valley Controversy & A.A. Brierly, the Untold Story (San Bernardino, CA: Pearce Publishing, 2013).

  Petroski, Henry. To Engineer Is Human: the Role of Failure in Successful Design (New York: Vintage Books, 1992).

  Petroski, Henry. “St. Francis Dam.” American Scientist 91 (March–April 2003).

  Piper, Karen. Left in the Dust: How Race and Politics Created a Human and Environmental Tragedy in L.A. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

  Prosser, Richard. “William Mulholland: Chief Engineer and General Manager, Bureau of Water Works and Supply, Los Angeles California.” Western Construction News (April 25, 1926): 43–44.

  Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).

  Robinson, W.W. Bombs and Bribery, The Story of the McNamara and Darrow Trials Following the Dynamiting in 1910 of the Los Angeles Times Building (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1969).

  ——. The Story of Ventura County (Los Angeles: Title Insurance & Trust, 1955).

  Rogers, J. David. “A Man, a Dam and a Disaster.” In The St. Francis Dam Disaster Revisited, ed. Doyce B. Nunis (Spokane, WA: Historical Society of Southern California, Los Angeles and Ventura County Museum of History and Art, 1995).

  ——. “Dams and Disasters: A Brief Overview of Dam Building Triumphs and Tragedies in California’s Past.” California Colloquium on Water Lectures (November 3, 2002, updated 2012).

  ——. “Reassessment of the St. Francis Dam Failure.” In Engineering Geology Practice in Southern California, eds. R. Proctor and B. Pipkin, Association of Engineering Geologists, Special Science Publications no. 4: 639–66.

  ——. “The 1928 St. Francis Dam Failure and Its Impact on American Civil Engineering.” In Engineering Geology Practice in Southern California, eds. R. Proctor and B. Pipkin (Association of Engineering Geologists, Special Publication No. 4).

  Roma, Ricardo. East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983).

  “Seeking a Scapegoat for the Santa Clara Flood.” Literary Digest (April 14, 1928).

  Sitton, Tom, and William Deverell, eds. Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

  Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950).

  Smith, Norman. A History of Dams (Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press, 1972).

  Stansell, Ann. “Memorialization and Memory of Southern California’s St. Francis Dam Disaster of 1928.” Master’s thesis, University of California Northridge, August 2014.

  Starr, Kevin. Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

  ——. Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

  “St. Francis Dam Goes Out.” Electrical World (March 17, 1928): 571–72.

  Taylor, Raymond G. Men, Medicine & Water: The Building of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, 1908–1913 (Friends of the LACMA Library with the assistance of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, 1982).

  Teague, C.C. Fifty Years a Rancher: The Recollections of Half a Century Devoted to the Citrus and Walnut Industries of California and to Furthering the Cooperative Movement in Agriculture (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1944).

  Thille, Grace Sharp. “Santa Paula High School, the Early Years.” Ventura County Historical Quarterly III (February 1962).

  Travis, George. “St. Francis Dam Disaster and Subsequent Restoration Program.” Report to Ventura County Restoration Committee, August 22, 1929.

  Triem, Judth P. Ventura County: Land of Good Fortune (Northridge, CA: Windsor Publications, 1985).

  Van Norman, H. A. “William Mulholland, M. Am. Soc. C. E.: Died July 22, 1935,” Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 101 (1936).

  Van Dyke, T.S. Millionaires of a Day: An Inside History of the Great Southern California “Boom” (New York, Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1890).

  Van Sant, Clarence Rowley. Water Under the Dam (New York: Vantage P
ress, 1956).

  Wagner, Rob Leicester. Red Ink, White Lies: The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles Newspapers 1920–1962 (Upland, CA., Dragonflyer Press, 2000).

  Walton, John. “Picnic at Alabama Gates: The Owens Valley Rebellion, 1904–1927.” California History 65 (1986).

  ——. Western Times and Water Wars: State, Culture, and Rebellion in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

  Wegmann, Edward. The Design and Construction of Dams: Including Masonry, Earth, Rock-Fill, Timber, and Steel Structures, Also the Principal Types of Movable Dams (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1907).

  White, Leslie T. Me, Detective (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936).

  Willis, Bailey. “Report on the Geology of the St. Francis Damsite, Los Angeles County, California.” Western Construction News (June 25, 1928): 409–413.

  Worster, Donald, Rivers of Empire, Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985).

  NOTES

  Prologue

  1J. David Rogers, “A Man, a Dam and a Disaster.” In The St. Francis Dam Disaster Revisited, ed. Doyce B. Nunis (Spokane, WA: Historical Society of Southern California, Los Angeles and Ventura County Museum of History and Art, 1995).

  2Author interview with Catherine Mulholland, 2002.

  3Quoted in Abraham Hoffman, Vision or Villainy: Origins of the Owens Valley–Los Angeles Water Controversy (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1981), xiii.

  4American Society of Civil Engineers 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/.

  5William L. Graf, Dam Nation: A Geographic Census of American Dams and Their Large-Scale Hydrologic Impacts (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1999).

  6American Association of State Dam Safety Officials Report, 2012.

  7Los Angeles Almanac, http://www.laalmanac.com/weather/we13.htm.

  8Los Angeles Works: Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, http://ewddlacity.com/index.php/the-l-a-economy.

  9Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island of the Land (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946).

  10The Founding Documents of Los Angeles: A Bilingual Edition, ed. Doyce B. Nunis Jr. (Los Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California and the Zamorano Club of Los Angeles, 2004).