Santa Clarita Valley History In Pictures
> BOUQUET DAM & RESERVOIR   > ST. FRANCIS DAM
Bouquet Canyon Dam Replaces The St. Francis
Bouquet Canyon


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Press Photo, ST. FRANCIS DAM SECRETLY REPLACED (EXCLUSIVE). Stamped on reverse side "CENTRAL PRESS ASSOCIATION, AUGUST 24, 1933"

St. Francis Dam historian J. David Rogers writes (2017) that the Bouquet Dam and Reservoir is "a very historic structure in geotechnical engineering because Ralph Proctor of LADWP developed the Proctor Soil Compaction Test specifically for this project, and most of the world adopted this as their own compaction standard in the decades that followed."


WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
LOS ANGELES BUREAU

"LOS ANGELES - Built with considerable secrecy and without the usual Chamber of Commerce ballyhoo that revolves around great civic projects, the $5,000,000 Bouquet Canyon Dam is nearing completion near Saugus in the same canyon [Editor's note: was not the same canyon. The St. Francis was built in San Francisquito Canyon] in which the ill-fated St. Francis barrier was located. The St. Francis Dam burst in 1928, killing 450 persons and wiping out 7000 homes in the most tragic disaster of Southern California history. The new Bouquet Canyon Dam has been constructed about six miles closer to Los Angeles in the same treacherous canyon, and is designed as a stand-by water reservoir with tunnels constructed through the hills to power plants. When completed it will hold 30,000 acre feet of water, or 10,000,000,000 gallons of water. The dam is an earth-fill structure with concrete faces. The top is 3008 feet above sea level and 185 feet above the stream bed. At the crest it is 50 feet wide and 1200 feet long, and will function as a reserve supply of water for Los Angeles, sixty miles away. PHOTO SHOWS: Air shot from a Shell Oil Company plane of the nearly complete Bouquet Canyon Dam, which replaces the ill fated St. Francis Dam which burst with tragic results in 1928."


AL2063b: 9600 dpi jpeg from original press photograph, collection of Alan Pollack.
BOUQUET DAM & RESERVOIR

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Construction 1932 (Mult.)

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Construction 1933

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Construction 1933-1934 x4

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Opening 3-28-1934

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Reservoir ~1937

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Reservoir 1930s

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Reservoir 1940

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