by Paul R. Spitzzeri
While there was certainly growth in Gilded Age Los Angeles, the 1890s included a national depression that took place in 1893, while local drought included five years with rainfall totals between 5.5 and 8.5 inches (at the Homestead, John H. Temple’s struggles to keep the 75-acre ranch were undoubtedly made worse by these conditions and he lost the place to foreclosure in 1899).
With the dawn of the 20th century, however, a third great boom was unleashed, while precipitation was quite a bit higher in the first decade, with one year under 10 inches, although no year surpassed 20, even as four of them came close. As the population of the Angel City and environs continued to climb, however, water supply continued to be a more pressing issue and the recently formed water department (a private firm supplied the city for three decades, from 1868 to 1898), the necessity of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in 1913, because ever more pronounced.
As noted here, the Los Angeles River was a principal source for municipal water and it was largely fed by creeks and washes coming from the San Gabriel Mountains, including Pacoima Creek, the Big Tujunga Wash and the Arroyo Seco, this latter being our focus for this post, specifically some history of the flooding of the “dry creek” during especially wet seasons.
Because more persons settled the Northeast Los Angeles area, including Cypress Park, Highland Park and Garvanza and major railroads headed from downtown towards San Francisco (the Southern Pacific) and through the Arroyo to Pasadena (this was the Los Angeles, Pasadena and Glendale, then the Terminal Railway and, finally, the Santa Fé), one of the main concerns was damage by deluges to tracks and bridges at the particularly troublesome confluence of the Arroyo with the Los Angeles River.
The 3 November 1901 edition of the Los Angeles Times lauded work done by the Southern Pacific, which hired 40 laborers and spent half a year to date and $70,000 in an area “extending from what people call the ‘first crossing,’ that is at the bridge just above [north] where the Arroyo Seco meets the river.” There, on five acres, the railroad company bought from the City, “along the new line of the river . . . a wall of riprap work has been constructed, which is about fifteen feet high and five feet thick.” Rock was obtained from a quarry at Chatsworth at the west end of the San Fernando Valley and at Declez, near Fontana to the east and was the same material used in construction of the breakwater at the port at San Pedro.
This work was conducted at the base of the Elysian Hills and earth and sand taken from the river bed was also utilized, but this affected the channel, so the Southern Pacific, which built three new tracks and was expanding its yard to handle more cars, took out 50 feet of the opposite bank “and moved back the riprap work there from the mouth of the Arroyo Seco to the east approach of the Santa Fé [Railroad] bridge, thus giving plenty of water way and making a straight shoot for the river, instead of the bow-shaped course of the old bed.”
This spot was also where the head of the zanja madre, or mother ditch, that supplied water to Los Angeles from its earliest days, was situated and a 2,500-foot long redwood flume was built and protected by riprap and rock, so that flooding could not destroy it, with the work’s cost pegged at $5,000. The account went on that, “the Arroyo Seco comes in at this point and pours its floods at right angles into the river. The current there in high water is very rapid.” In all, the SP was expected to expend $150,000 on the project, while the Santa Fé was engaged in separate work, not discussed in the piece, but anticipated to run some $200,000.
The 1902-1903 season included precipitation of above 19 inches, the most in a decade, and the Los Angeles Record of 28 January 1903 reported that “for the first time in eight years the Arroyo Seco has become a water course.” For an hour that morning, “people living along its banks were astonished to see a torrent of water come rushing madly down the arroyo.” At the Santa Fé’s bridge on Avenue 20, now San Fernando Road, crossing the creek “a lake many feet deep was quickly formed, and then overflowed and the water rushed on to the Los Angeles river, swelling the stream to double its proportions.” The cause for the rapid rise in volume was said to be a cloudburst in the San Gabriels, the steep granitic slopes of which met storm clouds to create periodic dramatic rainstorms, feeding the Arroyo.
The following season was the only one in the decade with rain totals under 10 inches, the amount being 8.72. Educator and historian James M Guinn essayed the history of “Great Floods in the Past” in the 19 December 1903 edition of the Los Angeles Express, going back as far as major deluges in 1815 and 1825 which altered the course of the Los Angeles River and another in 1832 affecting the San Gabriel River.
The great flood of 1861-1862, he wrote, included the fact that “the fall for the season footed up nearly fifty inches,” an astounding amount, and among the effects was that “the Arroyo Seco, swollen to a mighty river, brought down from the mountain canyons great rafts of driftwood that formed dams in the channel of the Los Angeles river and spread its waters over the valley.” Six years later, a deluge changed the San Gabriel course, so we now have the older one on the west as the Río Hondo.
Guinn noted the major flood of 1884, another two years later and a third in 1890 in which the Los Angeles again shifted to the southeast to join the Río Hondo, but he concluded,
The benefits from floods in Southern California vastly exceed the damages. They fill up the springs and mountain lakes and reservoirs that feed our creeks and rivers and increase the supply of water for irrigation. A flood year is always followed by several fruitful years.
Of course, engineers and others felt differently about the balance of benefit, which is why discussion about how to handle flood control continued to be bandied about after each major flood. At the start of 1905, the Los Angeles Times, of 6 January, reported on more work being undertaken by the latest major railroad in the region, the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake, which had two tracks a bit north of that Avenue 20 bridge and which was removing sand and gravel from the Arroyo bed for the roadbed and other needs.
Moreover, the Salt Lake dredged this material for its competitors, the Santa Fé and Southern Pacific, while “much of the new material used in the piers of the new Long Beach wharf came from the Arroyo Seco.” The company purchased a strip of property next to the watercourse’s defined bed and worked as far as 20 feet down and was to continued moving down the creek.
Meanwhile, the paper added, sand and gravel extracted from the Los Angeles River bed was such that “the advantage of this work to the city may be tested before the winter closes.” The Times added that, if ample rain was to fall and “the waterways were full to running over,” this effort by the Salt Lake would be blessed by residents because of the positive effects the work was bringing.
Shortly afterward, amid a season that, at 19.52 inches, was the highest level of rain during the decade, more flooding came to the region. The 4 February issue of the Herald reported that “the Arroyo Seco at 12 o’clock last night at Highland Park was filled bank full with a swiftly moving stream of water which swept down from the [mountain] canyons and from the hillsides with the speed of a mill race.” The account went on that,
Along the old dry river bed, during the past several years, many small buildings have been erected, particularly near the city limits of Los Angeles. These buildings, with trees, bushes, dirt and sand are being swept toward Pasadena in the flood that is gaining volume every hour from the heavy rain which began anew shortly after midnight.
Presumably, the heightened development activity was in the Altadena area, a few miles northeast of Los Angeles city limits, unless it was meant that the material was heading south from the Crown City toward Garvanza and Highland Park. As for the Los Angeles River, it was transformed from “a brooklet ten days ago . . . to a river respectable in size and volume” with “the old channel” full earlier in the morning, while “in many places the river was almost bank full.”
The next day’s edition of the Herald remarked that,
Dwellers in the Arroyo Seco became alarmed during the early hours of Saturday morning by the rush and swirl of the rapidly rising waters, which filled the old river bed. Small outbuildings were carried away by the flood and at road crossings the debris was piled up, in some cases blocking traffic.
The street railways also suffered from the flood and men were out during the entire night protecting railway property and keeping the lines open.
Electric streetcars from the Los Angeles Railway were plying the Arroyo from the Angel City to the Crown City, while the automobile was gradually coming to greater use in the region. In a 4 February piece, commenting that flood damage was expected to be about $100,000, the Record noted that “where the usually dry bed of the Arroyo Seco forms an inexhaustible mine for sand diggers, a raging torrent boiled” and this included the observation that “the tracks in the bed of the Arroyo are buried 10 feet deep between thousands of tons of sand and earth washed down by the flood.” Inspectors for the Railway were concerned because “there was great danger of their being washed away or so weakened that to cross them would be dangerous.”
More storms followed, so that the Record of 13 March noted that “not for years have such floods poured down the Arroyo Seco from the Pasadena valley as are rushing to join the Los Angeles river.” It was added that “the flood brought down a great quantity of wreckage—chicken coops, barns and fences, cut a new channel in the arroyo, washed away 100 yards of more of the Salt Lake tracks . . . and buried a number of flat cars under sand and debris.” The following day, the paper recorded the crews were “mining” for those cars and cut a new channel to divert water for that purpose, while the Salt Lake had workers reinforcing its bridge.
The Times of the 26th remarked that crews completed repairs on a bridge crossing the Arroyo on Avenue 60 and leading eastward to the community of Hermon, established two years before and annexed Los Angeles in 1912 as “both approaches to this bridge were washed out by the floods.” Notably, “the showy new bridge” was apparently going to collapse, but “a chain gang rushed out to the arroyo in the heavy rain” and filled 65 bags with boulders from the creek’s banks and tossed into what was described as a “whirlpool” while more were added until the waters were diverted away from the bridge’s supports. This led the paper to conclude that the members of the chain gang “worked as well and as swiftly as though they were receiving the pay of skilled artisans.”
In the aftermath of these latest storms, the Times of 12 May commented that “a cobblestone trust is said to have been forced in this city to control the debris washed down the Arroyo Seco by the recent floods.” Moreover, the price for the stones rose from half a dollar to three dollars a load and this led to complaints from those who were used to “pick up the cobbles were they chose,” but now “are perpetually warned off.”
The problem was that companies “near the mouth of the arroyo, where it flows into the Los Angeles river” were taking control of the extraction of boulders, as well as gravel and sand, while “farther up the bed has been leased” to firms “who control the market” on those materials used to generate concrete and macadam in increasing demand for buildings and paved roads.
Despite all of the clear and obvious risks associated with any development along the “dry creek” when those deluges wreaked havoc with floods, the Times of 20 August ran a short editorial under the heading of “The Arroyo Seco Idea.” It observed that there were advocates for a plan “of making a park of the whole old river bed” and it concurred regarding that there was “no doubt of the beauty of such a park and of its availability by a large number of citizens!” It cautioned, however,
But it will be a very difficult bit of work. In heavy rains the floods that come down the arroyo are terrific. The bed of the old channel runs ten to twenty feet deep and swifter than any millrace ever seen. It is more like the rapids at Niagra. There will be the difficulty about a park in the arroyo. Perhaps engineering skill may succeed in overcoming this flood, and if so the park will be a great benefit to the city.
The recurring flooding in the Arroyo was such that the paper even published a children’s story in its edition of 20 November 1904 called “Chum’s Camp” and which concerned a near-death experience by a pair of “chums” in a section north of Garvanza where an island was a favored site for children to play, but who were trapped there when a flood came. When a damaged bridge floated by, the two youngsters miraculously jumped from a sycamore tree to the bridge and were able to escape!
On the other end of the spectrum was a poem published in the Express of 5 April 1906 and simply titled “The Arroyo Seco.” The versifier was Ivers Louise Ashley, whose husband, Frederic, was an architect who worked with John C. Austin on such landmarks as Griffith Observatory, Hamilton High School and the Guaranty Building in Hollywood. The couple’s house still stands on Avenue 66 in Garvanza and the idyll by Ashley, known as Ivy, includes this sample of her reverie:
Peaceful lies our fair Arroyo
Spread across her, robes of green
Here and there the flow’ring trees grow
Adding beauty to the scene . . .
Hither comes the tired and weary
From the city’s grime and toil—
Back to mother nature cheery
Back to fresh air and the soil.
Slumber on, Arroyo Seco,
Sleeping Beauty of the West,
May your lovers dare defend you
From the hands that would molest.
Arcadian as the poem is in its depiction of the Arroyo, the dangers of flooding continued on and we’ll do the same with part five, so check back for that.