by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The extremes of greater Los Angeles’ pendulum swings between dire drought and fearsome floods led, in the first decades of the 20th century to some remarkable engineering marvels to both bring water from the far-flung Owens Valley in eastern California through the Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in 1913, and impound water through regional reservoirs and dams that conserved the precious fluid as well as mitigate flooding.
The movement to seek out distant sources of water built momentum as the area’s population skyrocketed from the Boom of the 1880s and through the turn of the century, while flooding in the early 1910s led Los Angeles County officials to act by appointing James W. Reagan as chief engineer for a widespread flood control plan. These efforts yielded some major projects through the Roaring Twenties, though some were so major and expensive that it took federal intervention through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete them.
Reagan’s work lasted about a dozen years before he resigned in late March 1927, with his tenure marked by conflicts with subordinates, members of the county’s Board of Supervisors and others, as well as the failure of a $27 million bond issue when voters rejected the proposal in the prior fall’s election and a scathing report by outside engineers about the poor advice the county received from Reagan, who displayed tendency to recommend large, expensive dams and reservoirs when others questioned the need for these.
Among Reagan’s completed projects were the Devil’s Gate on the Arroyo Seco above Pasadena; Pacoima Dam; Sawpit Canyon Dam north of Monrovia; the Big Santa Anita Dam above Sierra Madre; Live Oak Dam north of La Verne; and the subject of the highlighted object from the Museum’s collection for this post: a real photo postcard by Pomona photographer Burton Frasher, with an inscribed date of 5 March 1929, of San Dimas Canyon Dam.
San Dimas Canyon Dam was built in a watershed from the San Gabriel Mountain range that feeds the San Dimas Wash, which runs southwest through Glendora, Covina and Baldwin Park before emptying into the San Gabriel River. In heavy rain years, the wash would often flood and affect thousands of acres of farm and orchard lands along its path, so it was clear that the canyon would be an obvious place for a reservoir and dam to, again, limit flooding as well as conserve what otherwise would have been considered “waste water.”
Notably, there were proposals as far back as 1886, when the aforementioned boom was in its formative stages, as recorded by the Los Angeles Times of 21 August, which reprinted an article from the Pomona Progress stating,
It is a well-known fact that there is [are] countless trillions of gallons of water during the winter season that flows down the San Dimas Canyon and through the center of thirteen or fourteen thousand acres of beautiful land, well situated for making happy homes, orchards and vineyards. These facts, together with the great natural advantages of storing water by means of reservoirs, have directed the association of men and money for the purposes of building several immense reservoirs, and to conduct the water to a large section of dry land . . .
This project did not happen and it was another thirty-five years before something in the canyon was consummated, though the motivation was prioritized by the need for flood control. Following terrible floods of 1913-1914 (in a 1980s oral history, Walter P. Temple, Jr., who turned five during that winter, well-remembered the Río Hondo, the Old San Gabriel River, flooding and causing havoc near the family’s home situated just a few hundred feet from its west bank in the Whittier Narrows,) the county created a board of engineers to study flood control options and a report was issued in summer 1915.
Reagan was one of the body’s five members for that report and was soon hired to be the engineer responsible for a flood control program. There were, however, studies being conducted at higher governmental levels, including a United States Geological Survey “Water-Supply Paper,” published in 1918 and which looked at another regional flood-heavy period in the first month of 1916.
Reagan issued a 2 January 1917 report dealing with “the control of flood waters . . . by correction of rivers, diversion and care of washes, building of dikes and dams, [and] protecting public highways, private property, and Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors.” Thirty projects were proposed at an estimated cost of not far below $4.5 million, including at those ports, as well as along the Los Angeles River, the San Gabriel River, the Arroyo Seco at Devil’s Gate, Pacoima Wash, and with flood control reservoirs in Pomona and San Dimas.
A national publication, Engineering News, provided some detail about Reagan’s plans and the Venice Vanguard of 12 February 1917 in advance of a bond issue vote eight days later for the amount specified in the engineer’s report. It was noted, though, that this total was about a quarter of the total estimate for all suggested work within the county and, with respect to San Dimas Canyon, it was recorded that there was to be “a dam 145 feet high to impound 2250 acre-feet of water.
More detail about the project was published by the Pomona Bulletin of 13 January 1918, with it reported that the state supreme court upheld the county’s flood control district law and that the approved bonds meant that $278,000 was to be approved for San Dimas Canyon. Detail on the dam, which would hold back some 800 million gallons of water in the reservoir, collected from a drainage area of not quite 16 square miles, was provided, including fifty acres comprising the body of water, a surface area of just under a third of that, and a length of a mile with a width of about a tenth of a mile. The piece continued that,
It is proposed to use a Cyclopean concrete gravity arch type dam which necessitates a top length of 27 feet and arched in plan to a radius of 400 feet, the top width to be 13 feet, base width 106 feet and a height above stream bed of 125 feet. It is probable that a part of the native granite can be used to its construction. The foundation will be carried down to the solid granite to insure a complete cut-off of the undertow.
Also mentioned was that five-inch pipes with outlet gates were considered for one side 65 feet below the top and could discharge, when the reservoir was at capacity, 2500 cubic feet of water each second, though the expectation was that this amount would not exceed 1500. At the end of August 1919, Cogswell and two supervisor colleagues visited the canyon with Reagan and, while the Bulletin reported that there were “numerous little difficulties [that] have to be overcome,” the money was allocated and work expected to start soon once bedrock was located.
The Los Angeles Express of 4 December 1920 briefly noted that work on the San Dimas Canyon Dam was initiated, but the Covina Argus of 1 July 1921 referred to “a serious setback by the heavy rains which fell in May,” rather late in the season, so work crews were out to remove “a ten-foot deposit of silt, sand and rock” that accumulated from storm water. Once this material was taken out, work on the foundation could begin and Reagan stated that workers had actually reached bedrock using a steam shovel and were ready to dig trenches for the “toe and heel of the dam,” when the four-day storm hit.
After it was commented upon that “Mr. Reagan had hoped to finish the dam in time to handle the storm waters next winter,” the Argus concluded that “it now seems probable that completion will be slightly delayed on account of the extra work caused by the rains.” It was stated that the dam was to be 140 feet high and cost a half million dollars and was expected “to handle a large percentage of the flood waters which ordinarily pass out of the canyon during a rainy season.”
The Progress of the 19th cited a member of a travel party led by Supervisor Cogswell as stating that two-thirds of the dam was to be completed before winter rains arrived. This, it was asserted, would be enough to hold back whatever storm water would accumulate, and it was concluded that San Dimas would hold 2500 acre feet compared to the nearby Live Oak Dam, situated above La Verne and which was to hold 800.
The 5 October edition of the paper reported that a third of the cubic yardage of the dam was in place and that a spring 1922 completion date was the target. Even that amount, unlike the two-thirds cited in July, was considered sufficient to control whatever water was generated by winter ranis, especially with the idea of adding temporary gates. With 50 feet of height finished to date, it was said the 40-member crew was setting records in mainly using just a single mixer for 11,500 cubic yards of cement. The pace was such that it was anticipated that the project would be finished sometime in March.
There was a notable comment from an official with the San Dimas Water Company, who informed the Progress that
We are getting near the limit of our supply of water which can be derived from wells and we must turn toward these mountain canyons where an abundance of water can be stored by the construction of dams. We have ben slow to realize this fact, but now I hope to see dams built in every canyon, thus conserving the water which otherwise would go to waste.
The Pomona Bulletin of 22 October was told by the same official that the dam would be ready for permanent gates by the first of next April and the contractor, Bent Brothers, was praised for “carrying on the building of the giant dam with remarkable dispatch and thoroughness.” There were then 70 workers employed in pouring cement and the height of 70 feet was reached, about half way to completion. The piece concluded that the lake “will add much to the scenic attractiveness of the site” where a Pomona Moose lodge had a camp.
The 21 December edition of the Progress included a photo of the construction site and reported that a “severe test” was undertaken with current conditions and the opening of the temporary gates to release storm water. It was averred that “the dam was holding splendidly” given the heavy rain from which “a genuine flood would have poured out” from the canyon. Tenuous phone communication, with lines said to be severed at one point from falling tree branches, helped convey the information that the partially-finished dam was successful at holding back water during the recent deluge.
A little over a week later, Reagan was in Covina and told the Argus, in an account from the 30th, that “flood control dams are not conservation dams” saying that San Dimas was to “conserve water for the rancher by holding back the water and allowing it to seep into the ground as it passes down the streambeds,” thereby saving a good deal of the precious fluid underground. He amplified this by observing,
In fact you will find that the action of the San Dimas dam in the last series of rains has saved a great amount of water for underground storage, as is shown by the dry wash-bed one day after the rain stopped. But there will be no attempt to back up water into a great lake behind the dam, because the dam is a flood-control device and not a dam to impound water for irrigation purposes. The dam must be empty or nearly so following each storm up until the danger from heavy storms is past.
As to scuttlebutt that there would be battles over who received released water, Reagan told the paper that he would take responsibility for distribution, doing so as soon as storms began to fill the reservoir “and it will all go into the ground for the use of all the people of the valley.” Work, however, was not completed until early August and it is notable that, just prior, the Los Angeles Times published an article that asserted that water conservation was the biggest issue in the region.
In late 1922, another important component was the creation of the Puddingstone Reservoir to the south to direct water from San Dimas Canyon and away from San Dimas Wash the through a two-mile long open conduit, with a dam at the northwestern section built to regulate water released to Glendora. The reservoir was built over three years and completed in 1928 at a cost of not far over $1 million. As Reagan explained, the water from the canyon is not retained long in the reservoir behind the dam, the fluid being sent to Puddingstone and so it is dry most of the year, except for storing water after heavy rain years—such as shown in Frasher’s photo.
The caption for the image states that the dam was near the Wolfskill Falls Camp (named for the prominent family who were close with the Workman and Temple clan), with the earliest located reference to the facility from June 1925—though the above poem about the falls is from a decade earlier.
A Bulletin article from that month reported that a firm was to be formed to turn San Dimas Canyon into a “one of the greatest mountain resorts” in the region. The camp’s manager, Albert Colautti, was identified as a key figure in the scheme and the piece added that there were 200 cabins in the canyon, which had Wolfskill Falls, with one portion some 100 feet high, as well as an abandoned gold mine and prospector’s cabin nearby.
The Los Angeles Express of 10 August 1928 offered this assessment:
San Dimas canyon winds its cool, shady way into the heart of the Sierra Madre [San Gabriel] mountains. Crowning the canyon and overlooking its green flanks is cozy Wolfskill Falls camp. From the windows of the comfortable little cabins you can look out at the three gleaming Wolfskill falls . . .
Wolfskill camp is as clean and cozy as any one could wish. There is cleanliness and hominess, unspoiled woods and shady streams there . . .
The accommodations are of the best. There are cozy cabins and tents under the trees in shady secluded nooks or out in the open in the sunshine or down on the bank of the stream. Some are completely furnished for housekeeping. Fine meals are served in the dining room and supplies may be had at the general store.
This card is a great document of one of the many important flood control projects built by Los Angeles County under Reagan’s direction during the late Teens and first half of the Twenties and representative of increasing government efforts to deal with an issue that caused major problems for a region developing rapidly during the period.