Ghostly Bridge

by Jenny Revitz Soper

Title

Ghostly Bridge

Artist

Jenny Revitz Soper

Medium

Photograph - Digitally Post Processed

Description

This is an old iron trestle bridge that spans the Santa Clara River in Los Angeles County. Upstream from here, the St. Francis Dam was a curved concrete gravity dam that was designed and built by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power between 1924 and 1926. William Mulholland, who was the department's General Manager and Chief Engineer at that time, was responsible for the construction of the dam. (For a fictionalized account of Mulholland and the water wars in Los Angeles, you can watch the classic movie, Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson.)

On March 12, 1928, at 11:57 pm, the dam catastrophically failed, and the resulting flood claimed the lives of as many as 431 people. The water rushed down the Santa Clara River, washing away the original trestle bridge at this location. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam is regarded as one of the worst American civil engineering disasters of the 20th century. It remains the second-greatest loss of life in California's history, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. The disaster marked the end of Mulholland's career.

Who knows how many ghosts of those who lost their lives that day still haunt this area?

Uploaded

March 13th, 2016

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