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The St. Francis Dam Disaster: California's Forgotten Deadliest Night | Sleep History
Two and a half minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam gave way. Within 70 minutes, a wall of water and concrete had erased everything in the Santa Clara River Valley from San Francisquito Canyon to the Pacific. More than 400 people died in their beds. It remains the second-deadliest disaster in California history, and almost no one remembers it.
Tonight on Sleepless History, we tell the complete story of the Saint Francis Dam collapse and the man who built it: William Mulholland. A self-taught immigrant ditch-digger from Belfast who taught himself hydraulic engineering…
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