{"id":984355,"date":"2026-08-06T10:44:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T10:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/984355\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T10:44:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T10:44:26","slug":"william-mulholland-brought-water-to-l-a-he-failed-to-stop-a-flood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/984355\/","title":{"rendered":"William Mulholland brought water to L.A. He failed to stop a flood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Crimes_DropCap_T_black.png\" <\/p>\n

The call that might have averted disaster came into William Mulholland\u2019s office that morning. Stubborn, single-minded and tireless, lionized and controversial, the Los Angeles water boss was 72. Fifteen years earlier, he had opened the great aqueduct that carried Sierra snowmelt to the San Fernando Valley and made the metropolis possible.<\/p>\n

Now, on March 12, 1928, a supervisor at the St. Francis Dam was calling to say there might be a problem. Water was seeping from under the structure. It looked muddy, which might indicate real trouble \u2014 erosion in the foundation.<\/p>\n

Mulholland grabbed his assistant and told his chauffeur to head there. The curved concrete gravity dam towered 1,835 feet above sea level in the San Francisquito Canyon, about 30 miles northwest of L.A. The reservoir recently had filled to its 12.4-billion gallon capacity for the first time.<\/p>\n

\"Circa <\/p>\n

Dam builder William Mulholland, pointing, visits the site of the St. Francis Dam around 1926 with water officials, from left, Fred Fischer, R.F. Del Valle, Janus Baker and Dr. John Haynes. <\/p>\n

It was Mulholland\u2019s 19th and final dam. He had willed it into existence in his characteristic way, fast and without faultfinding inspectors to impede his vision. He gave the construction job to city workers, rather than invite bids (and complications) from contractors beyond his control.<\/p>\n

With little formal education, Mulholland had left his native Ireland in his teens, worked steamer ships on the Great Lakes, labored in lumber camps and prospected for gold. He stowed away on a ship to reach the Pacific Coast but was thrown off and forced to cross the Isthmus of Panama by foot. <\/p>\n

In 1877, he got to Los Angeles, then a 10,000-person backwater, and began working for the water company as a zanjero, or ditch-digger. He studied hydraulics, civil engineering and Shakespeare at the public library and impressed everyone with his pluck and problem-solving prowess.<\/p>\n

Now he was \u201cThe Chief,\u201d the unquestioned czar of the city\u2019s water department, with vast sway. As The Times put it, he regarded the voices of critics as \u201cthe barking of a dog in the night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo <\/p>\n

The St. Francis Dam reached its capacity before its collapse right before midnight on Mar. 12, 1928. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe could do what he wanted … After the aqueduct was built, he resisted anyone supervising him,\u201d said Donald C. Jackson, co-author (with Norris Hundley Jr.) of \u201cHeavy Ground: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mulholland wanted to guarantee L.A.\u2019s water supply against the threat of drought and saboteurs. The St. Francis Dam, part of the larger aqueduct system, was meant to store surplus water. No fanfare had attended its completion near what is now Santa Clarita in 1926, the better to avoid attention from Owens Valley vigilantes, who were known to dynamite aqueduct pipes as protest against the diversion of their river water. (The guile and skulduggery behind the aqueduct\u2019s birth is a famous story<\/a>, and famously mythologized<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\"Criminal <\/a> <\/p>\n

In this series, Christopher Goffard revisits old crimes in Los Angeles and beyond, from the famous to the forgotten, the consequential to the obscure, diving into archives and the memories of those who were there.<\/p>\n

On the east side, the dam was build atop an ancient landslide of mica schist, a type of rock vulnerable to fracturing that would allow moisture to seep inside. On schist foundations, cautious engineers knew to build in safety features like a series of cut-off trenches and drainage pipes \u2014 a step Mulholland had neglected.<\/p>\n

There was nothing to fear, Mulholland declared as he inspected the water leaking from the dam that morning. The muddiness? That was from the water spilling over a dirt road, not from internal erosion. The czar returned to L.A.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike all dams, there are little seeps here and there,\u201d Mulholland would later testify at a coroner\u2019s inquest. \u201cOf all the dams I have built and of all the dams I have ever seen, it was the driest dam of its size I ever saw in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid it occur to you that it was in danger?\u201d he was asked.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

William Mulholland came to California with little formal education and became a respected civil engineer.<\/p>\n

(Courtesy of University of Southern California Libraries\/California Historical Society)<\/p>\n

\u201cNo sir,\u201d Mulholland answered. \u201cIt never occurred to me that it was in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if he had known?<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have sent a Paul Revere alarm up and down the Valley,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At 11:57 that night, the eastern portion of the dam gave way. Water had saturated the mica schist and reactivated the old landslide.<\/p>\n

Soon, the entire 208-foot-tall structure collapsed, unleashing a 10-story wall of water and obliterating cabins in its path. Among the first to die was the man who had alerted Mulholland to the seepage \u2014 Tony Harnischfeger, who lived just below the dam with his 6-year-old son. Their bodies were never found.<\/p>\n

The water crashed into a hydroelectric plant about a mile and a half downstream, killing most of the crew and their families \u2014 more than 60 people. The flood was strong enough to sweep a 10,000-ton fragment of the dam, called Block 29, a full quarter-mile and to destroy a steel bridge on the Santa Clara River nine miles away.<\/p>\n

\"March <\/p>\n

March 14, 1928: Remains of homes in Santa Paula following the collapse of St. Francis Dam.<\/p>\n

It took about 45 minutes for the reservoir to empty, but the death continued for hours. On its 53-mile path to the Pacific Ocean, water ripped through orchards, uprooted orange groves and flipped cars. It tore nightclothes from people who had been sleeping moments before. Some bodies were carried for miles. Many were trapped beneath tangled tree limbs. <\/p>\n

Near L.A. County\u2019s border with Ventura, in a makeshift tent city for Southern California Edison employees who were building a transmission line, the water hit around 1:20 a.m. and killed 84 more. <\/p>\n

Warnings were slow to arrive. Many people didn\u2019t have phones. In some towns, they just didn\u2019t believe the urgent instructions to clear out \u2014 they had no idea they were in a flood path.<\/p>\n

Searchers picked through mud and debris, and bodies were carried to makeshift morgues. <\/p>\n

\u201cWith the dead stacked in piles, the French & Skillin Chapel in Fillmore today took on a grim aspect as the silent workers hurried back and forth bringing in their gruesome burdens,\u201d the Santa Paula Chronicle reported. <\/p>\n

\"Seven <\/p>\n

Seven coffins containing victims of the 1928 St. Francis Dam collapse are prepared for burial in the Santa Clara River Valley.<\/p>\n

People hurried to identify victims before they decomposed, in an era before refrigeration. Animal carcasses filled the Santa Clara River. To prevent disease, stray dogs that fed on them were shot.<\/p>\n

More than 400 people died. Many of the missing never were found, and a precise death toll never was agreed on. The Ventura County district attorney said his county \u201chas borne the brunt of the greatest disaster of its kind in the history of the State\u201d \u2014 and he was clear on who deserved the blame. The dam, he said, \u201cwas the creature of the city of Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was easy to identify the individual most responsible for bringing the creature into existence. Death threats poured into Mulholland\u2019s office. The Los Angeles Record demanded: \u201cResign Now!\u201d<\/p>\n

He offered to quit, but the city wouldn\u2019t let him. He slumped with his face in his arms and \u201csobbed like a brokenhearted child,\u201d according to a witness account in Gary Krist\u2019s \u201cThe Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination and the Invention of Los Angeles,\u201d which identifies Mulholland as one of three seminal figures in the city\u2019s creation.<\/p>\n

\"At <\/p>\n

At an emergency telephone station, people seek information after the dam\u2019s collapse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis inquiry is a very painful thing for me,\u201d Mulholland testified at an L.A. County coroner\u2019s inquest two weeks after the disaster. \u201cThe only ones I envy about this thing are the ones who are dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, Mulholland seemed to dodge blame. He suggested that perhaps dynamite might be the culprit. He said the site was \u201cvulnerable to human aggression.\u201d He even suggested it might be cursed \u2014 \u201cThere is a hoodoo on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The California governor, C.C. Young, launched a commission to look into the dam failure. The report, completed within weeks, laid the blame on \u201cdefective foundations,\u201d concluding that gravity dams were safe if built on bedrock. <\/p>\n

It was hard not to see politics at play. The concrete mega-structure that would become the Hoover Dam needed congressional approval, and Mulholland was a strong advocate. It was not prudent to destroy him.<\/p>\n

With the state report complete, and vigilante sabotage ruled out, Mulholland retook the inquest stand. He was given the chance to blame underlings. Wasn\u2019t it true, a juror asked, that he had taken to delegating tasks to subordinates in recent years?<\/p>\n

Mulholland replied that he had taken just one vacation in 50 years and that, at 72, he was working as hard as ever: \u201cThere are a very few beat me in the office in the morning.\u201d <\/p>\n

The man responsible for one of the greatest engineering marvels of his time, the 233-mile aqueduct that gave a semiarid region a world-class city, now admitted responsibility for one of the greatest engineering disasters in American history.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t blame anyone else, you just fasten it on me,\u201d he said. \u201cIf there is any error in human judgment, I was the human. I won\u2019t try to fasten it on anybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"March <\/p>\n

March 13, 1928: Flood-twisted railroad track in Castaic on the Santa Paula-Montalvo branch of Southern Pacific following the dam\u2019s collapse. <\/p>\n

It was never clear how closely he had supervised the dam\u2019s design, which he\u2019d given to draftsmen to execute. But he had ordered the structure built on an unstable foundation, without consulting independent geologists or engineers. He had raised the dam\u2019s height mid-construction, without widening the base to support the extra water pressure.<\/p>\n

Dam safety laws allowed municipalities with their own engineering departments to operate without state oversight, and Mulholland had taken advantage of this loophole.<\/p>\n

He certainly had been guilty of hubris, concluded Jackson, the historian. But had he committed a crime? The inquest, which lasted three weeks, was supposed to decide. The assistant district attorney assigned to the case spoke to jurors in terms that seemed to guarantee Mulholland\u2019s exoneration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be monstrous to place a man upon trial for the crime of manslaughter or murder, who just merely made an error of judgment,\u201d the prosecutor said.<\/p>\n

\"March <\/p>\n

March 1928: The remaining section of the St. Francis Dam with crumbled sections at its base. <\/p>\n

The jury blamed \u201cthe very poor quality of the underlying rock structure\u201d and decided Mulholland had broken no law.<\/p>\n

The Times, a longtime Mulholland booster, blamed \u201ca faulty system which loads upon any man\u2019s shoulders, no matter how broad, responsibilities that are too heavy for any man to bear.\u201d When he resigned seven months later, the newspaper added: \u201cThe tragedy, which was keenly felt by the \u2018Chief\u2019 as he is called at the water department, has aged him.\u201d<\/p>\n

He died in 1935, at age 79, at his home on St. Andrews Place. His Times obituary was headlined \u201cDeath Calls Aqueduct Builder.\u201d It did not mention the collapse of the St. Francis Dam. <\/p>\n

Nor did the city want to remember. A memorial plaque to Mulholland praised his \u201cprophetic vision\u201d as the builder of the great aqueduct, describing him as \u201ca penniless Irish immigrant boy, who rose by the force of his industry, intelligence, integrity and intrepidity, to be a sturdy American citizen, an engineering genius, a whole-hearted humanitarian \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLos Angeles never wanted to talk about it again,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cHe was given a lot of deference, so long as he quietly moved along.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city paid an average of about $5,000 per victim for 172 death settlements. Ray Rising, who had lived with his family at the compound for hydroelectric plant workers, lost his wife and three children when the flood hit their wooden bungalow.<\/p>\n

After Rising sued, the city\u2019s attorney argued that the dam collapse was \u201can act of God,\u201d even though Mulholland admitted responsibility. A jury gave Rising $30,000.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the disaster, dam construction laws were tightened. The great slope of Mulholland\u2019s concrete gravity dam in the Hollywood Hills \u2014 a model for the one that failed \u2014 was covered with dirt to disguise its terrifying height.<\/p>\n

For about a year, towering remnants of the St. Francis Dam stood eerily in the empty canyon, a reminder of the disaster, before the city had them dynamited.<\/p>\n

Sources for this report include \u201cHeavy Ground: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster\u201d by Norris Hundley Jr. and Donald C. Jackson; \u201cThe Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles\u201d by Gary Krist; and Times archives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The call that might have averted disaster came into William Mulholland\u2019s office that morning. Stubborn, single-minded and tireless,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":984356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[4637,1582,276,58770,24658,394984,37165,6276,2961,224,2444,5337,2089,28207,15978,156326,3546,394985,527,394983],"class_list":["post-984355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-body","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-city-worker","tag-dam","tag-great-aqueduct","tag-inquest","tag-l-a","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-losangeles","tag-man","tag-mile","tag-morning","tag-mulholland","tag-people","tag-st-francis-dam","tag-water","tag-william-mulholland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117048159470599092","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/984356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}