Presenters with a Passion for History Prepare for St. Francis Dam Site Tour in May

March is the month when the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society traditionally holds its annual tour at the site of the St. Francis Dam disaster in San Francisquito Canyon. The dam failed near midnight on March 12, 1928 and the flood waters that sluiced through the narrow canyon walls and flooded the valleys as it headed toward the ocean killed more than 400 people and destroyed millions of homes, farms and businesses. It is considered one of the worst engineering disasters in history and resulted in many changes in dam construction and safety.
Unfortunately, March is also a month of fickle weather and the tour has been rained out several times, forcing organizers to reschedule. This year, the Society has tentatively set the tour on Saturday, May 16, when skies are more likely to be clear and sunny. Details are still being finalized, so watch our website (scvhs.org) and social media for the announcement of tickets going on sale.
The four dam experts who provide background for tour participants – Dr. Alan Pollack, Frank Rock, Ann Stansell, and Dianne Hellrigel, are busy preparing for that May date. All four are passionate about telling the story of the building, failure, and victims of that fateful night.
“The tragedy of the St Francis Dam disaster is one of the seminal events in both Santa Clarita and Southern California history as well as representing one of the greatest losses of life in a single event in American history and yet, unlike other disasters, it has mostly been forgotten and it’s over 400 victims not properly memorialized,” said Pollack, who serves as President of both the SCV Historical Society and the St. Francis Dam National Memorial Foundation.
“It is important that we keep their memories alive and that we highlight this event as a lesson that helps us to keep our dam infrastructure safer into the future,” he continued. “In 2019, the St. Francis Dam site was named by Congress as both a National Memorial and National Monument. We also want to promote recognition of how privileged we are to have this important historical site in our backyard.”
Stansell, who is an archaeologist for California State Parks, wrote her master’s thesis on the disaster, but not on the engineering aspects. She focused on the humanity, on the people affected by the flood.
“The St. Francis Dam disaster is important to remember because it puts human lives at the center of the story, not just the collapse of a structure.  Memorializing the victims honors those who were lost and acknowledges the lasting impact on their families and communities. Learning this history helps ensure their stores are not forgotten and reinforces why past mistakes must be understood to protect lives in the future,” she explained.
“I was drawn to the St. Francis Dam as a thesis subject because of a long personal connection to the site. As a child, I visited the area often with my dad, panning for gold along the banks of San Francisquito Creek, so the landscape was already deeply familiar to me. When my graduate advisor, James Snead, asked whether I was familiar with the dam disaster, the question resonated – his prompt intersected unexpectedly with a place that had been part of my life for years, and that coincidence struck a lasting chord.”
To learn more about the story of the St. Francis Dam disaster, visit www.scvhs.org.

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