St. Francis Dam

Over spring break, Curt and I have had a little extra time to do some exploring around our neck of the woods, (or Joshua trees I should say). We've discovered this spring, that if we drive just 35-40 min. away, we can be in semi-green rolling hills, splashed with gorgeous red rocks. (Better late than never I guess!) So Curt heard from a good friend of his that there was a cool hike up to some old ruins of a dam that gave way in the 1920s. Turns out, the breaking of St. Francis Dam is the second biggest disaster and resulting loss of life in California State history! And who knew we lived just 45 min away? Anyway, we ventured out and hiked (actually walked up on an old highway that was washed out about 5 years ago) to what was left...

On our way up the road to the dam

Walking along the washed-out old highway

Water break. Even Ella enjoys a cool sip from a Nalgene bottle.

Ella may have been carried a tad bit... (the leash thing is still a work in progress). The reservoir that built up in back of the dam would have been behind me.

Part of the dam - you can still see all the re-bar sticking out of it. We saw huge pieces of concrete all the way along our  trek up to the site. One of the biggest pieces was carried more than a mile down stream when the dam broke. I guess a 130 ft. wall of water will do that. Yikes!

More pieces/remains of the old dam. There was a small stream running beneath these slabs you can't see in the picture.

The color of this small pond right below the site of the dam was beautiful. Don't think I'd swim in it, but it was pretty to look at none-the-less. 

Pretty much the largest chunk of the dam left - worn down and crumbled after almost 90 years to be sure, but still impressive.

This little memorial was down at the ranger's station where we started our hike up. The dam was 185 feet high - and collapsed just before midnight in March of 1928, sending a wall of water 130 feet high down river running at about 18 miles an hour. You know, just slightly terrifying.

The dam before it collapsed...

The dam and area after...

The dam had been leaking earlier that day, but experts that checked it out said the leaking was normal (which it can be). Unfortunately, not so in this instance. The guy who helped engineer it took full responsibility, but as you can imagine, it ruined his career. In the 1990s, experts revisited the site and determined that there would have been no way of knowing in the 1920s that the site chosen for the dam had also been the site of an ancient landslide - so the ground was unstable.
So glad we checked it and became aware of some more California history - especially being so close to us!