by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Despite a name that means “dry creek” in English, the Arroyo Seco, running more than 25 miles from the San Gabriel Mountains above Pasadena, Altadena and La Cañada-Flintridge and passing through such northeast Los Angeles communities as Garvanza and Highland Park, could become swollen with water and cause immense damage from flooding during wet seasons.
Now, through flood control measures like Devil’s Gate Dam and Reservoir, completed in 1920, and the concrete channelization of most of its course, such threats have been mitigated, though there is almost nothing left to remind us of the natural stream that long enticed visitors in the mountains and in such places as Sycamore Grove near Highland Park, long a popular resort for locals and visitors.
Today, I had the privilege of receiving an in-depth tour of the Lummis Home, the remarkable residence of the redoubtable Charles Fletcher Lummis (1859-1928), one of the more notable figures in late 19th and early 20th centuries Los Angeles. I was on the board of the Historical Society of Southern California from 2008-2016, when I became director of the Homestead and stepped down. The HSSC had its headquarters in the Lummis House for about a half-century though the painful, if necessary, step of vacating the building came at the end of my tenure and I had not visited the notable edifice for several years.
For nearly a decade since, Christian Rodriguez, who was involved with the house during that period when I was with the Society, has been diligently working, with very few resources, to keep the Lummis, owned by the City of Los Angeles and under its Recreation and Parks department, open and organized for visitors. Inspired by today’s visit, this post shares some photos taken by Lummis of flood damage along the Arroyo near his dwelling, though the labeling of the images as part of a “Lummis Col. 1945,” states that the deluge occurred in 1912-1913.
Almost certainly, these real photo postcards were produced during the terrible flood of 1914, some history of which has been covered here previously, so, while we’re featuring these dramatic pictures here, we’ll offer a summary of some of the history of Arroyo Seco flooding dating back about a half-century prior. Of course, there were thousands of years of such events taking place there and the indigenous people of our region had to develop ways to deal with them.
It is important to observe, as well, that the Arroyo empties into the Los Angeles River, just a short distance south of the Lummis, and that it, and the Big Tujunga Creek, coming out of the San Gabriels west of the Devil’s Gate area, provided the lion’s share of the water for the river. So, while the Arroyo Seco was, indeed, often dry or nearly so, those seasons of heavy precipitation could cause some major flooding there, as at Tujunga, and thereby imperil Los Angeles through the flow of its augmented river.
The Los Angeles Star of 25 January 1862 informed readers that,
The rain commenced falling on the 24th of December, and continued, until the morning of the 23d January, with but two slight interruptions. On Saturday last torrents of water were precipitated on the earth—it seemed as if the clouds had been broken through, and the waters over the earth and the waters under the earth were coming into conjunction. The result was, that rivers were formed in every gulch and arroyo, and streams poured down the hill sides. The Los Angeles river, already brimful, overflowed its banks, and became a fierce and destructive flood.
The embankment lately made by the city, for the water works [north of town], was swept away—melted before the force of the water. The Arroyo Seco poured an immense volume of water down its rugged course, which emptying into the river, fretting and boiling, drove the water beyond all control.
There was another major flood period in the winter of 1867-1868 and, presumably, the Arroyo conveyed a great deal of water and contributed to damage from the river. It is also worth pointing out that the first Sycamore Grove resort opened on the west bank of the Arroyo, where the city’s Sycamore Grove Park is now, in October 1869, so it would be vulnerable to flooding over its many years of operation under several owners.
The 27 August 1870 edition of the Star included a proposal by Juan José [Jonathan Trumbull] Warner, a resident of nearly four decades, who called for a dam to be placed on the river to protect the Angel City. He remarked, “the danger is too imminent; too apparent and threatening to wait for the growth of trees to give the required protection” to the watercourse and “demands that measures should be adopted at once.”
This would involve means by which “to guard the river bank from washing, for some distance above and below the crossing of the road to the Arroyo Seco” because “a few hours of washing the bank at that place, in a flood, would let the river through into Alameda street” and cause tremendous damage in the growing city, then in the earliest stages of its first boom, which lasted for another five years. Warner added, “the large amount of property which is in great jeopardy, and would be destroyed by a break in the bank of the river, at that point, calls for action.”
The Star of 22 May 1873 published “A Scheme for Water Improvement” by someone known only as “X” and whose first recommendation was for “a submerged dam down to the bed rock across the Los Angeles [River], to be situated immediately above the mouth of the Arroyo Seco—that being the narrowest point of the river with good banks; to be either of masonry laid in hydraulic cement or of sheet piling as may be deemed most advisable, upon boring.” Moreover, this was considered to be “upon the seepage which is supposed to take place between the head of the river and point named” and this water, forced to the surface, could be used as part of the city’s water delivery system.
The 16 August 1875 issue of the Los Angeles Express contained a report from City Engineer Michael Kelleher (misspelled as “Kellcher”) with his “plans and specifications for the proposed dam in the bed of the Los Angeles river,” and which was to include waste gates, as well as open concrete conduits. Notably, however, Kelleher informed Mayor Prudent Beaudry and the Common Council, including Elijah H. Workman, that,
I have by your permission caused a shaft to be sunk in the Arroyo Seco at a point about 2,000 feet from the Los Angeles river. The depth of shaft to water is seventeen feet, which fact . . . confirms me in my opinion that the line above the railway bridge [for the Southern Pacific line north to San Fernando and, a little over a year later connecting to a line coming south from San Francisco] is the most favorable for the dam.
I am of opinion that the Arroyo Seco water follows a low bed rock formation to East Los Angeles [now Lincoln Heights] before connecting with the Los Angeles river, as is generally supposed, and that the greater portion of the water said to flow from the Arroyo Seco to the Los Angeles river occurs chiefly in times of floods, and consequently at a time when it forms a destructive instead of a useful element.
Eight days later, incidentally, the failure of the Bank of California, the Golden State’s largest financial institution, at San Francisco precipitated a panic that followed telegraph wires to Los Angeles and led to a run on the city’s two commercial banks, including Temple and Workman. So, any idea of a dam or other improvements, aside from an existing earthen levee (see the quote below) that was part of the Southern Pacific line along the narrow west bank of the river, to deal with flood control receded in the face of the economic malaise, which lasted, as part of the national “Long Depression,” through the rest of the decade and into the 1880s.
On 15 January, two days after Temple and Workman failed, the Express remarked that “we have the authority of Mr. Kelleher’s measurements and surveys for the fact that 17,000,000 gallons of water pass through our river bed above the Arroyo Seco every day during the dry season” so that the concept of “a submerged dam will bring all this great underflow to the surface and permit of its abstraction.”
Moreover, because “natural reservoirs exist in our hills on both sides of the river to safely store nearly every drop of water which can be taken out during Winter freshets, and nature has contributed everything required to enable us to establish a system of [water] works that will furnish enough water to irrigate every acre below our city to the sea for several miles in width,” it was asserted that water supply improvements affecting less valuable lands led to the question of “how much greater in value will become the lands adjacent to the city” because of the purported benefits to the dam and associated elements.
Nine days later, the paper spoke to Thomas Jefferson White, whose family’s Casa Linda estate bordered the river on its west, as rains came to the Angel City. He observed that “the rain has been a warm one,” this might have been what we know as a “Pineapple Express” atmospheric river system such as that which pounded California in 1861-1862, “and the snows in the mountains have doubtless been washed and melted.” Observing that the river had not yet crested beyond the level where it would overflow its bank, White added that the rains
will make their appearance in the shape of a heavy freshet coming down the Arroyo Seco, reaching the river some time to-night. The greatest danger is from a sudden burst of water in great volume, which may break over the bank at the East Los Angeles crossing [near the Arroyo confluence] and find its way down Alameda street [as Warner warned]. Such an overflow would be very disastrous and cause the loss of a great deal of property.
In early February 1876 came reports of major rainfall and the Express of 9 February reported to readers that, during a survey of damage,
As we passed up [from town] and opposite to the point where the Arroyo Seco debouches into the river, another turbid and raging flood was pouring out of that estuary. It drove full tilt against the western bank of the river [along the base of the Elysian Hills], and hugged that shore close all the way down to the East Los Angeles bridge [near today’s Los Angeles State Historic Park and Dodger Stadium], carrying away great slices of the levee at almost every swing of the pendulum. Had the flood not subsided almost as rapidly as it rose, there would have been very little levee or railroad track left at this writing.
While the winter of 1876-1877 was especially dry and the resulting drought was devastating for the livestock industry that was still quite dominant in the local economy (though the rise of agriculture, especially citrus and wheat, was continuing and soon surpassed the ranching sector in supremacy), there were some problems that arose at the end of 1877.
This led the Express of 27 December to remark, “it is reported that nineteen horses, the property of Mr. Ramirez, were drowned at the head of the Arroyo Seco last Sunday, by a flood coming from the melting snows in the mountains.” The reference may have been to Francisco P. Ramirez, who, still in his teens in 1855, founded El Clamor Público, the first Spanish-language newspaper in Los Angeles and a remarkable production from so young a person. In the 1870s, Ramirez was an attorney and was involved in battles over the Rancho San Rafael, including a mass partition of the ranch early in the decade, so the Homestead, which became, in 1883, part of the new Highland Park subdivision, may have been his.
The 18 February 1878 edition of the Express discussed storms that came to Los Angeles with the paper observing that “the rain visitation threatens a deluge” though it also commented that “the weather has been of an almost uniform mildness, and the rains have come at such intervals as to have produced no sudden freshets.” In northern California, storm damage was marked, but in greater Los Angeles “there has been no loss or inconvenience from floods.” The current storm, however, “is the heaviest and has lasted longest of any of the season,” so the paper continued, “we cannot foresee its result.”
What was notable about the article, though, was the statement that,
The Tejunga [sic] and Arroyo Seco drain a vast extent of mountain country [meaning from what was at the time generally called the Sierra Madre range, now the San Gabriel], and it is astonishing that so little water has been discharged into the river from these streams. It would seem to indicate that the storm is not so heavy in the mountains as it is in the valleys [which would certainly be unusual]. From present appearances the river will carry off handsomely all the water that may fall.
The following day, the paper, in its brief “Local Dots” column, remarked that “the Arroyo Seco discharged a respectable-sized river last Sunday,” but, it appears, flooding was avoided.
We will return with a second part, carrying this story over into the 1880s and some years of severe flooding, so be sure to check back with us for that.