St Francis Dam 

I had read "Man Made Disaster" in 1964 in junior high school and arranged to have my brother drive us up to the dam site. It has changed a good bit over the past 57 years. First, we drove up the old road, and it was clear where the dam was because the terrain to the north of the site was lush, green and wooded. The area below was still scoured and nearly barren. The wing wall was intact, and the steps of the "tombstone" were more visible. We brought back a chunk of concrete from one of the downstream sections. I went back in the late 1980s. I hooked up with a Boy Scout troop and their scoutmasters, one who had a copy of the book. It was interesting to be among young men who were my age when I first saw the dam. It was clear that the wing wall had been demolished with explosives, not natural weathering. We went together to San Francisquito Powerplant # 1 and had a fascinating tour. The Pelton Wheel generators still had their "50 Hz buckets", designed to generate 50-cycle power that ran Los Angeles until the early 1950s. We had also talked our way into Powerplant # 2 during our 1964 trip. We saw the transformer that was wrenched out of the basement and tossed down the canyon, fished out, welded back together and re-used. I have visited the ruins of the South Fork Dam above Johnstown, PA, and, at the end of the summer, I am going on a military history tour in Belgium and France, then flying to Italy to see the Vajont Dam, the site of the October, 1963 landslide that sent a 750' tsunami down a narrower canyon, killing over 3,000 people. I have long been haunted about the St. Francis Dam. I will return sometime, in the next few years,

Great content young man well done. A good source is a book entitled Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. When I lived in Palmdale I frequently traveled the San Francisquito Canyon Rd. down to Santa Clarita and on to the beaches at Ventura. Passed by that spot many times. Keep up the good work !!

Awesome! Thanks for the history lesson!

Mo was a bad guy!

Great channel so far!!! I hope you grow big!!!! -A lyft rider

well done!

Good video. I wonder how many people,if the dam broke in maybe the year 2000, would have died? The area was sparsely populated then.