by Paul R. Spitzzeri
We return to a look at the unusual heavy rainstorms of April 1926 and the widespread damage done in greater Los Angeles, including as represented in a group of photos from the Museum’s holdings showing the wreckage of bridges at the eastern edge of Pasadena where two main east-west thoroughfares, Foothill and Colorado boulevards, cross Eaton Wash, one of the major watercourses emanating from the San Gabriel Mountains range and draining into the San Gabriel River at the Whittier Narrows, a fulcrum for human activity in the San Gabriel Valley for millenia.
In fact, periodic heavy flooding and the destruction wrought by them finally led to the development, in the 1910s, of a flood control program that ambitiously sought to establish dams, reservoirs and other components throughout Los Angeles County and guided by engineer James W. Reagan. Over about a dozen years, he supervised a raft of projects paid for with bonds approved by voters, though one of these, the Puddingstone Dam in San Dimas, then partially completed, failed in sections during the April storms leading to major effects for farmers down Walnut Creek through Covina, West Covina and Baldwin Park as that watercourse empties into the San Gabriel River.
We left off part one and pick up here with part two with coverage from the media on 8 April, a few days after the first of the storms hit and, while there were prior assurances that damage was minimal, it became clear that, as more rain fell, the situation worsened considerably. The Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News, for example, informed readers, with dramatic photos, that there were two deaths in and just outside Angel City limits.
Nine-year-old Joseph Arena was with four other boys in the Highland Park section walking home from Loreto Street Elementary School when a footbridge crossing the Arroyo Seco gave way. While the others were rescued by city employees and firefighters, Joseph could not be saved. In the Belvedere district, just east of the municipal boundary at Boyle Heights and in what soon became known as East Los Angeles, María Robles, a widow and mother of five, was also on a small bridge over a wash, when it collapsed and she was carried downstream to her death.
In this case, the paper reported that she and others living in small houses along the watercourse were warned a couple days prior to abandon their dwellings but “most of the people living in the vicinity were financially unable to move,” a common problem in working-class areas, most of these inhabited by people of color with very few resources.
It was reported that, within an hour after some families were flooded from their houses, the Community Chest, a local consortium of charities, and member, the American Red Cross. “rushed first aid to several Mexican families in the Boyle Heights district.” The Illustrated Daily News included two images of the location where Robles was swept away and the condition of the structures in Belvedere.
The Los Angeles Times added that Robles tried to cross the bridge because a daughter was playing on the other side of the wash. It also discussed Joseph Arena’s death, while remarking that “stores and houses were flooded, streets ran deep with water, street-car lines were tied up and traffic in many parts of the city was paralyzed” by the record precipitation.
Reagan was cited as stating that “flooding of the lowlands along the San Gabriel [River] from Artesia to Alamitos Bay was expected,” with the peak danger to be in the early morning hours of the next day, while amounts of water were the highest since the flood years of 1914 and 1916. Moreover, a major wildfire from September 1924 was cited as “responsible for the high speed of the water run-off” down denuded slopes.
The Los Angeles Record commented that rainfall totals were seven inches for the storm, including 2.66 in a day, pushing the season amount to almost 17 inches, compared to six-and-a-half in 1925. It also added that Robles was crossing the bridge with her daughter, age 8, and a 19-year old son, when it collapsed and the girl fell in the wash first, with Robles and her son jumping in to save her.
A deputy sheriff saved the son and a bystander the daughter, while the paper also reported that 150 residences in Belvedere were damaged or destroyed by the flood coming down from the hills, denoted as Birdview and being what is now City Terrace, to the north. The floodwaters rushed southeast near Belvedere Middle School and Obregon County Park, as well as Calvary Cemetery and then “lost themselves in the Union Pacific yards,” in what is now the City of Commerce.
Returning to the San Gabriel Valley, the rustic community of Sierra Madre Canyon at the base of the mountains in the town of that name and which retains its bucolic character today, was swamped with raging water from Little Santa Anita Canyon. The Pasadena Star-News reported that,
Two persons miraculously escaped death by drowning, eleven cottages were wrecked and other property was badly damaged late yesterday afternoon when a mountain torrent, caused by a cloudburst, tore down through Sierra Madre Canyon, carrying everything before it.
A seven-year-old girl was just outside her house when she was swept about a quarter mile before she was wedged between the Trail Store and an uprooted tree and was freed by a resident who’d just carried his child to a safe place. At the southern end of the neighborhood, am Altadena resident and recent transplant from Ohio “was caught on a collapsing bridge” and his rented Ford plunged into the waters of the wash and was carried 1,000 feet downstream before he was pulled from wreckage.
In the Canyon community, several cottages, most weekend places, and small businesses were destroyed, while footbridges were obliterated and trees uprooted, while rocks and boulders were carried down by the flood. Road were washed out and embankments and walls gave way, while water mains were twisted into pieces and cars and furniture were strewn about. Locals sought to build a temporary dam on Woodland Avenue to prevent further damage.
The paper added that “yesterday’s storm was one of the worst within the memory of the city’s oldest inhabitants,” with Walter S. Andrews, a realtor of nearly forty years residence, saying that there were stronger storm some three decades prior, but there were many fewer structures compared to the current period, during which the major boom of the earlier Twenties added many buildings to the city and canyon community.
The Star-News also reported on the “thrilling rescue” of another school-child, a seven-year-old in Pasadena who left Longfellow School on Washington Boulevard east of Lake Avenue to head for home on Woodbury Road to the northeast, but was swept along by floodwaters for more than a block along Mar Vista Avenue. Three older pupils from the school heard her screams and two boys jumped in the torrent and got hold of the girl, but were unable to hold on. A local man driving by saw the commotion and managed to pull one of the boys out and then the young girl, who was cut and bruised, including an injury to her nose when she hit the fender of a parked car, under which she passed.
The Monrovia News commented that,
That flood control pays has been well proven by the present storm, but it has also been shown that these protective measures were not made strong enough, nor high enough, for such torrential rains as this district has experienced this week.
It then observed that “one of the worst hit sections of the Duarte area is that nearest the flood control ditch that was built down Lincoln avenue,” with water rushing down Sawpit Wash meaning that this thoroughfare was “a raging river this morning” and the six-foot deep ditch filled. The dirt sides collapsed and water spilled out into orchards and other property, even as workers tried to shore up the ditch, which continued into portions of what became Irwindale before emptying into the Río Hondo, the old course of the San Gabriel River, enveloping the groves that comprised the area. One resident opined that it was the worse series of storm he’d experienced in a quarter-century in the section.
In its 9 April edition, the Times reiterated much of what was discussed above, though it also remarked that “out in the [San Gabriel] valley the greatest bridge damage appeared to have been done along the Eaton Canyon wash,” adding that the watercourse “apparently received some of the terrific rainfall that hit the upper reaches of the Little Santa Anita [Canyon].” It continued that,
A flood that swept its length tore out the bridge at Foothill Boulevard completely. A half mile further down it tore out the eastern half of the bridge at Colorado street. Two miles farther down it pounded the bridge of Huntington Drive so hard that the west approach was partially undermined . . . The next bridge the flood put out of commission was the one on Duarte Road. Both approaches were swept out.
A bridge on Valley Boulevard not far east of San Gabriel was also taken out, while another near the Virginia Country Club (where Jonathan Temple’s adobe house at Rancho Los Cerritos still stands today) was destroyed. In Monrovia, damage to some property was also mentioned, along with the Pacific Electric Railway’s efforts to clear the streetcar track at Bliss Cut west of its station at Duarte, so that service could be resumed eastward to Azusa and Glendora.
A collage of photographs in the Times comprised of nine images included one of a caved-in hillside on Broadway between First and Temple streets in the Bunker Hill area of downtown Los Angeles, a half-dozen of the ravaged Sierra Madre Canyon and the damage to the Foothill and Colorado boulevards bridges. Elsewhere, a dramatic and altered photo showed the attempted rescue of a man who drowned in the Pacific off the Ocean Park section of Santa Monica.
On the 10th, the Los Angeles Express editorialized
The storm has been an eye opener to many. They were unaware what a California rain could do when once it cut loose. Of course, this rain was “exceptional.” The memory of man does not reach back to another like it—in the month of April . . . The storm has made plain that extraordinary measures must be taken for protection against floods. When these great rains come, in a few hours dry river beds and washes turn into raging, menacing torrents.
It was added that it was several years since floods approaching this magnitude, but “the population of city and county has practically doubled” and “neighboring communities have expanded until all the land between the mountains and the ocean is covered.” Given this, the Express continued, “progress of the works for flood control thus far have been slow and unsatisfactory” so that “after a dozen years’ effort and expenditure of great sums, when a test came, as in this storm, the work proved disappointing.”
The San Fernando Valley, very sparsely populated until the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, was said to be almost one completed lake and the need for flood control there was deemed particularly urgent. The editorial ended with the observation that “of course, no work of man can control the elements and fully stop them working their will” and that the floods of the recent storm could not have been entirely checked, “but something better than exists is possible” because “the people are paying their money for better protection, and should have it.”
The Monrovia News of the 12th reported that “a sudden and unexpected rain storm descended from the mountains onto the Duarte-Monrovia area” the prior afternoon “and wrecking the flood control channel” that was badly damaged in previous floods. A three-foot wall of water roared down Sawpit Canyon, also known as Monrovia Canyon, and the wash was four feet deep, with the level about half that when it got to the “lower Duarte canal” which broke at Euclid Avenue below Duarte Road “and flooded the ranches to the east.” A half-dozen men, the few who showed up to shore up the ditch, fled for safety, but their efforts kept two-thirds of the water in the channel, with steam shovel and other work expected soon for relief.
Despite the Express‘ misgivings about the state of the flood control system, the Pomona Bulletin of the 13th highlighted a report from Reagan that “the San Gabriel Wash handled its peak flood in the recent storm with plenty of room to spare along the lower end.” It was stated that up to 90% of the water came from the wilderness north and east of the East Fork of the San Gabriel River and up to 70% of the flow followed the Río Hondo to its junction with the Los Angeles River, where about a third of the San Gabriel total accumulated. Extensive photography of the three rivers was undertaken and it was asserted that the fifty miles captured showed that “in these sections not a dollar’s value of damage was created.
An extensive illustrated feature in the Times of the 18th and the paper exclaimed,
Well, it rained! Rained everything, it seemed, but the proverbial cats and dogs. It was one of the heaviest rainstorms the city and county ever experienced, all factors considered. It was a spectacular rain . . . Despite all this, men who are familiar with the conditions declare that, considering the extremely heavy rainfall for the period of time covered, the damage done by floods over the county was remarkably small.
Moreover, it was averred that, when it came to asking why the destruction was so limited, “flood control is the answer” as “efficient functioning of the flood control works” was achieved. Reagan was pleased with how the San Gabriel wash and river system held up, even as two major projects were underway and incomplete when the storms hit. He added that breaking up and ploughing the beds of streams helped to get some water absorbed into the soil, but most flood water ended up in the ocean, but if the massive San Gabriel Dam project (completed much later) was approved, and he scored Pasadena’s protests on this point, water storage would be very significant.
The dams at Devil’s Gate on the Arroyo Seco above Pasadena and above San Dimas were reported to have performed well, while those projected for Pacoima, Santa Anita, Big Dalton, Thompson, and Puddingstone creeks and washes with a current $35 million bond expenditure would, in Reagan’s view, mean that “disastrous floods from the mountains will be things of the past.” Additionally, once the larger streams were controlled, smaller ones, like Eaton Wash, would be addressed.
Also highlighted was that, after three years of drought, the forests in the San Gabriel range would be significantly enhanced and the late rains meant that the fire risk for the ensuing part of the year would be greatly reduced. Foresters planted a half million trees on hills and mountains before the series of storms hit, with most being Coulter pines set in the San Gabriel Canyon area and above Duarte and Monrovia where a major fire struck two years prior, while brush seed was also distributed. County Forester Spence D. Turner commented, “the rain was just what was needed after getting that planting done . . . it couldn’t have worked in better if we had ordered it.”
There was more heavy rainfall and flooding early in 1927 and, soon after, Reagan resigned amid rancor and controversy. Work pressed ahead on major projects, but the onset of the Great Depression, during which major floods took place in 1938 that did tremendous damaged, and then the Second World War, limited future work. Moreover, it was realized the county lacked the resources to take on the ambitious plans long laid out and future efforts were undertaken under the supervision of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Many today, however, are still concerned with how much water is lost through distributing water via concrete channels to the Pacific and not enough conserved, while others advocate for returning rivers and streams into more of a natural state, while still achieving the necessary goals of flood control and water retention. These matters are, of course, of vital importance in our region and important to the Homestead’s interpretation of regional history from 1830-1930.