Here Comes The Flood: Some History of Flooding in the Arroyo Seco, 1861-1914, Part Three

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

With a major flood in 1884, the most significant in nearly a quarter-century, followed two years later by another deluge of less magnitude, the Arroyo Seco, the usually “dry creek” that wends its way from the San Gabriel Mountains above Pasadena and Altadena to its confluence with the Los Angeles River below Highland Park and at Cypress Park and Lincoln Heights, continued to be a watercourse that posed problems for the increasing numbers of people who lived and worked along and near its banks.

With the development in the 1880s of some of these communities, specifically Glassell and Highland parks and, further north, Garvanza, not to mention an increased rail presence, with the Southern Pacific line of the 1870s joined by the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad, the risks mounted when heavy rain seasons descended on greater Los Angeles. Rainfall was at about 14 inches in each of the years from 1886 to 1888.

The Los Angeles Times of 9 March 1888 cited a Pasadena newspaper as stating that, “water is now running in the Arroyo Seco all the way from the mountains to Los Angeles” and that “this is an evidence of the fact that the loose gravel is saturated and a very material rainfall is now liable to cause the flood which has been predicted.” It was added that Big Tujunga Canyon and its creeks and washes that fed the Los Angeles River at what is now Studio City was from which “the greater part of the water flowing into” the latter derived.

The 1889-1890 season included nearly 35 inches of rain, not far below the level of six years prior. There was a point in the prior season, in March 1889, in which a theatrical troupe heading to Pasadena was trying to cross the Arroyo and “the horses fell and floundered about in the seething torrent,” though there were no injuries, just a troupe of drenched thespians, who decided to return to Los Angeles by an electric streetcar but who were “thoroughly disgusted with the boasted climate of Southern California.”

At Christmas, the Times of the 26th reported, a few inches of rain fell in short order, following earlier storms, so that “falling as it did upon already oversoaked ground and running into overflowing streams, the result could hardly be else than a disastrous flood.” While there were no reported deaths from the deluge, the paper remarked that “a few people living on the low lands of the Arroyo Seco and along the river bottom have been obliged to leave their homes and several small buildings have gone down the stream.” Moreover, the Southern Pacific bridge on the line north to San Francisco was washed away completely and the Santa Fe line crossing over the Arroyo was significantly damaged.

The next day’s issue of the paper observed that, while there wasn’t much change since its earlier report, “the principal place of resort was along the banks of the Arroyo Seco and during the day quite a number of people came down to see the work of the flood.” One result was a realignment of part of the creek’s channel and this would require a new bridge of about 100 feet for a crossing. It was added that fording in this area was “a dangerous experiment” as one man lost his carriage and another a horse in trying to cross.

In the Pasadena-area portion, the Times stated that “the Arroyo Seco (dry creek) became a rushing, roaring river carrying all before it. At many places the stream was bank full, and many trees were swept down on the tide to lodge against any obstruction which would afford temporary resistance to the raging waters.” At the section of the Arroyo just north of its terminus with the Los Angeles River, a water pipe was broken cutting off service to East Los Angeles (Lincoln Heights) for several days.

Although rainfall for 1890-1891 was some 60% less than the prior year, the “Storm King” returned to the region in later February 1891. The Los Angeles Express of the 23rd commented that,

The heavy rain of the past two days has resulted in raising all the mountain streams and is doing some damage to the city. The Arroyo Seco is cutting new channels as it rushes along. The bright pellucid little stream of a few days ago is today a rushing, roaring torrent, muddy and bearing along great logs and timbers. The booming of great boulders can be distinctly heard as they roll along in the water.

Once again, emphasis was placed on the damage to railroad bridges, with the Southern Pacific span washed out “just above where it joins the Arroyo Seco,” this being on the Cypress Park side. The paper added that “the bridge across the Arroyo Seco, over which the Santa Fe Railroad crosses, is washed away at its city end,” or on the East Los Angeles (Lincoln Heights) side. A third bridge, recently built by the Los Angeles, Pasadena and Glendale Railway and taken over by the newly established Los Angeles Terminal Railway, crossing the creek was damaged so that the “road and ties being suspended in the air.”

The Express continued that “there is great danger of two small cottages being washed away” as “the entire force of the stream [is] being directed against the bank at that point.” It continued that “some distance further up the [Terminal] track, in the direction of Pasadena, the current has washed out the cribbing and track for a distance of 600 feet” near the Sycamore Grove station, this being where the popular creek-side resort, now a Los Angeles city park, was situated. Service was interrupted on what, today, is where the Metro A Line follows this route.

The Los Angeles Herald commented that, while “it was indeed damp for a day or two” and the storms presumed to have ceased after nine days of precipitation, even as there was broad concern of a drought year, the flooding was about half of what was experienced in 1884 and 1889. Two days later, the paper did note,

In the last eight years, the last of which we are now passing through, there have been four disastrous floods in the Los Angeles river, augmented by those from the Arroyo Seco. These floods have done a great deal of damage to railroads, [and] public and private property inside the corporate [city] limits, not to speak of what has been done outside. The precipitation in this section is increasing, and at a noticeable rate, too. Any one acquainted with the appearance of the river bed and the Arroyo Seco in the first years of the past decade knows how small the water way was, and how overgrown with brush. The great freshets of the years referred to above and the liberal volume of water flowing in years not producing an absolute flood, have made a much wider, deeper and clearer bed for the water courses than used to be. The change is really remarkable. And the floods are not at all particular as to where they make way for themselves.

What’s interesting about this statement is that official records began in 1877 and between 1883 and 1893, there were four seasons of 22 to 38 inches and only one year under 10. Unusual wet winters obviously changed the landscape in and around the Arroyo, but environmental factors regarding flooding went beyond what was mentioned here, as noted below.

Moreover, there would not be a winter of 20 inches or more of rain for two decades, until the winter of 1913-1914 that included the floods that Charles F. Lummis photographed and of which some examples are featured in this post. The 1892-1893 tally was a little over 26 inches, but, in the next seven years taking us through the end of the Nineties and the Nineteenth Century, five of those had precipitation totals of just 5.5 to 8.5 inches, with the other two being in the 16-17 range.

The Christmas Day 1892 edition of the Herald remarked on “A Menace to Local Interests” with respect to what logging in the forests in the San Gabriel (then often called the Sierra Madre) Mountains, but hailed the results of the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 (the paper said the year was 1890), which “withdraws from public entry the rain shed from the Arroyo Seco to the San Bernardino, and prohibits the cutting of timber or burning of grasses on this mountain range by sheep and cattle men.” It acknowledged that the legislation “will work some hardship to a few” but celebrated that “its beneficence as a whole cannot for a moment be overlooked.”

The paper went on to observe that,

The rapid disafforestation of this region is a crying evil, and the effects are already being felt in the severe wind storms and violent winter floods experienced in recent years. The dweller on the plains and in the cities rarely stops to reason why these things happen . . .

It was noted that the last two seasons had “comparatively small” amounts of rain of 11.85 and 13.36 inches after the 34.84 of 1889-1890, which “have demonstrated that the supply of water in our mountain reserve is not inexhaustible” as “never for years have the springs been so low nor the flow of the cañon streams been so meager.” Of course, the growth in population, expansion of citrus and nut raising, along with field crop growing, and other factors meant a much more rapid depletion of subsurface water, as well. Concerns were mounting about water supply, which led two decades later to the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the importation of the precious fluid from the Owens Valley of eastern California more than 200 miles away.

The newly-launched Los Angeles Record, in its 28 October 1896 edition, as it referred to an “embryo flood” and referred to “a condition not a theory” about another important environmental phenomenon: forest fires. With those fall Santa Ana winds blowing at high speeds during dry conditions and the 1895-1896 season featuring 8.5 inches of rain, even a small amount of rain could have a major effect amidst denuded forests. The paper remarked,

A significant effect of the mountain fires which were allowed to burn unchecked for six weeks was witnessed yesterday. With one day’s rain storm and no extraordinary precipitation, more water came down the Arroyo Seco yesterday than has come down that water course for years.

In previous years it would have taken four days with even a heavier rainfall to have brought down such a torrent.

With the onrush of water down the Arroyo, the Los Angeles River crested its banks and rock-crushing plant tramway was destroyed, with the Record pointing out that “the water carried its own lesson with it in that the Arroyo flood was black as ink from the drainage of the burnt mountain district.” This, of course, was because “the timber which formerly caught part of the rainfall and held it, letting the supply down gradually, is destroyed.” In turn, “the water has fallen on the denuded earth and rushed away to the ocean at once leaving no storage supply for the dry season.”

Logging the forests for timber, as noted above, and then the mass effects of wildfires clearly led to the conditions described here and another factor that would become a greater issue in terms of ocean health was the increasing drainage of wetlands which marked the South Bay and coast from Long Beach down through Orange County for “reclamation,” but which removed the natural filters that these area provided for increasing urban and suburban runoff. It is notable to see these early references regarding environmental degradation and its effects, though there would also be a problem with, for example, forest policy as the quest to stamp out all blazes led to overcrowding of trees and unmanageable conditions when it came to inevitable wildfires.

In the meantime, occasional calls for some modicum of flood control continued. The Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance for engineering studies for a portion of the Arroyo Seco bed near the Los Angeles River confluence as part of determining what future work might entail. Concerned residents of the increasingly developing communities along the Arroyo also addressed the council regarding railroad bridges, so that the Express of 16 January 1894 reported that,

A petition was presented by property owners in and adjoining the Arroyo Seco, East Los Angeles, stating that the construction of the Santa Fe and Terminal bridges in the arroyo is in such a diagonal position and spans so close together that flood waters are diverted and that in 1889 and 1891 much land was destroyed, cottages undermined and property damaged [to the amount of over $26,000].

Petitioners say that unless said bridges are condemned and removed, great loss and damage will be sustained by those whose property abuts on the right [east] bank of the arroyo.

Additionally, another group of landowners offered to deed over 125 feet of right-of-way to the City “of the bed of the arroyo from north city limits to [the] junction of the river . . . if the city will construct substantial banks on each side, and if the railroads . . . be required to reconstruct their bridges in such a way that they will not cause further damage.” Annette Stock simply added in the petition, “I lost my home; it went down the stream. Mrs. Lizzie Smith lost her home also.”

Yet, the effects of the Depression of 1893, one of the worst in American history, were part of the equation when it came to flood remediation efforts. The Times of 19 September 1894 pointed out in a headline that control projects were “VERY EXPENSIVE” as it observed that “the question of how to protect settlers living along the banks of the San Gabriel and Los Angeles rivers from winter floods has been considered for some time by the [County] Board of Supervisors.” This included the forming of an engineering commission to look at the river beds and a summary stated,

Nearly every year the rivers overflow their banks, and much valuable soil is washed away, and not infrequently [the] lives of residents are endangered. Necessarily the work of straightening the streams and providing suitable embankments would be one of great magnitude, and the lack of funds has heretofore provided the greatest impediment in the way of starting operations in the direction of improvement.

Quoting directly from the report, it was mentioned that the Los Angeles River drew mainly from the Arroyo, the aforementioned Tujunga creeks and washes, as well as Pacoima Creek, all draining from the San Gabriels as the rest of the San Fernando Valley contributed relatively little to the river’s volume. Incidentally, the San Gabriel River was mentioned as receiving much water from the “Arroyos Hondo [the old course now the Río Hondo] and Puente,” this latter including San José Creek, which was the southern border of the Workman Homestead, then owned by John H. Temple.

After recording the changes in the Los Angeles River due to the deluge of 1889, the engineers further commented that,

No works of a permanent character have as yet been constructed to prevent [the] damage [caused by floods], and here we are confronted with a problem the magnitude and importance of which is not generally appreciated.

It is obvious that any works for protection in order to possess any value must be permanent and necessarily expensive. It is useless to excavate channels, or to build levees to be obliterated by the next flood . . . [The damage] justifies the building of first-class works for protection. The question of providing the necessary funds for this work we deem it not our province to discuss.

At the start of 1894, the Express reported, the city engineer, Charles Compton, “mentioned the need of a levee in the Arroyo Seco on the east side of the river to protect the properties of a number of residents subject to flood damage.” Compton told the City that “this could be done with wire fencing and brush at a cost of about $500” and that the ten men needed for the project could be culled from among the unemployed who proliferated as a result of the severe economic downturn. How this squared with the county report in terms of the above quote, however, is a notable question.

We’ll stop here and return with a concluding part four taking in the first decade of the 20th century and in the period just prior to Lummis’ photographs and the 1914 flood, which has been discussed here previously, so check back in for that.