Frank Rock
Lecture & Bus Tour to Dam Site
With “The Dam Man” – Local Dam Expert FRANK ROCK
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Lecture starts at 11 a.m., Admission Free
Dam Tour starts after lecture (Noon), Tickets $35/person
Lecture at Saugus Train Station Museum at Heritage Junction/Hart Park, Newhall
For more information and reservations call 661-254-1275
Tour includes approximately 1 mile walk and uphill hike at dam site
Bring comfortable walking shoes and clothing
Construction on the 600-foot-long, 185-foot-high St. Francis Dam started in August 1924 – 7 miles north of today’s Copper Hill Drive in Saugus. 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.
March 16: St. Francis Dam Disaster Talk & Tour
