San Francisquito Canyon is a canyon created through erosion of the

Sierra Pelona Mountains The Sierra Pelona, also known as the Sierra Pelona Ridge or the Sierra Pelona Mountains, is a mountain ridge in the Transverse Ranges in Southern California. Located in northwest Los Angeles County, the ridge is bordered on the north by the San An ...

by the

San Francisquito Creek San Francisquito Creek (Spanish for "Little San Francisco" - the "little" referring to size of the settlement compared to Mission San Francisco de Asís) is a creek that flows into southwest San Francisco Bay in California, United States. Histo ...

, in Los Angeles County,

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban a ...

Geography

The canyon cuts through the

, which are central part of the

Transverse Ranges The Transverse Ranges are a group of mountain ranges of southern California, in the Pacific Coast Ranges physiographic region in North America. The Transverse Ranges begin at the southern end of the California Coast Ranges and lie within Santa ...

system of

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. At the San Francisquito Canyon head is the San Francisquito Pass, which the early routes between Los Angeles and the

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven ...

crossed. The canyon grows wider as it approaches the

Santa Clarita Valley The Santa Clarita Valley (SCV) is part of the upper watershed of the Santa Clara River in Southern California. The valley was part of the Rancho San Francisco Mexican land grant. Located in Los Angeles County, its main population center is th ...

. The middle and upper portions of this canyon fall within the

Angeles National Forest The Angeles National Forest (ANF) of the U.S. Forest Service is located in the San Gabriel Mountains and Sierra Pelona Mountains, primarily within Los Angeles County in southern California. The ANF manages a majority of the San Gabriel Mounta ...

History

Miners operate hydraulic sluice, San Francisquito Canyon, LA 1890-1900

Mining

San Francisquito Canyon was the site of placer mining for

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

by Spanish missionaries from the

San Fernando San Fernando may refer to: People *Ferdinand III of Castile (c. 1200–1252), called ''San Fernando'' (Spanish) or ''Saint Ferdinand'', King of Castile, León, and Galicia Places Argentina *San Fernando de la Buena Vista, city of Greater Buenos ...

and San Buenaventura Missions, and later by Mexican

Californios Californio (plural Californios) is a term used to designate a Hispanic Californian, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries. California's Spanish-speaking community has resided there sinc ...

. Their activity stopped in 1848, when the gold discovery at

Sutter's Mill Sutter's Mill was a water-powered sawmill on the bank of the South Fork American River in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California. It was named after its owner John Sutter. A worker constructing the mill, James W. Marshall, found gol ...

started the California Gold Rush. Placer mining later occurred in the canyon into at least the late 19th century.

St. Francis Dam

Between 1924 and 1926, the canyon was the site of the construction of the

St. Francis Dam The St. Francis Dam was a concrete gravity dam located in San Francisquito Canyon in Los Angeles County, California, United States, built from 1924 to 1926 to serve Los Angeles's growing water needs. It catastrophically failed in 1928 due to a d ...

. The

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal utility in the United States with 8,100 megawatts of electric generating capacity (2021-2022) and delivering an average of 435 million gallons of water per day to more ...

began filling a reservoir in the San Francisquito Canyon in 1926. At 11:57pm on March 12, 1928, the dam catastrophically failed, and the resulting flood took the lives of at least 431 people. The collapse of the St. Francis Dam is considered to be one of the worst American civil engineering disasters of the 20th century and remains the second-greatest loss of life in California's history, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. The ruins of this disaster can still be seen today.

Roads

Since 1820, San Francisquito Canyon and San Francisquito Pass were part of the original route of the

El Camino Viejo El Camino Viejo a Los Ángeles ( en, the Old Road to Los Angeles), also known as El Camino Viejo and the Old Los Angeles Trail, was the oldest north-south trail in the interior of Spanish colonial Las Californias (1769–1822) and Mexican Alta Cal ...

, an alternate land route to the El Camino Real for reaching northern Spanish and Mexican colonial Alta California. From 1854, the wagon route of the

Stockton - Los Angeles Road Stockton may refer to: Places Australia * Stockton, New South Wales * Stockton, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region New Zealand *Stockton, New Zealand United Kingdom * Stockton, Cheshire *Stockton, Norfolk * Stockton, Chi ...

followed its course as did the

Butterfield Overland Mail in California Butterfield may refer to: * Butterfield (surname) * Butterfield Market Places * Butterfield, Dublin, a suburb and townland of Dublin, Ireland * Butterfield Green, Luton, England United States * Butterfield, Minnesota * Butterfield, Missouri ...

from 1858 to 1861. This Tejon Pass Route and the Tehachapi or Midway Route (first followed by the Southern Pacific Railroad), remained the major north-south wagon and later automobile routes to the San Joaquin Valley until the construction of the more direct

Ridge Route The Ridge Route, officially the Castaic–Tejon Route, was a two-lane highway between Los Angeles County and Kern County, California. Opened in 1915 and paved with concrete between 1917 and 1921, the road was the first paved highway directly ...

in 1915. Scott, Harrison Irving, Ridge Route: The Road That United California. Torrance, California: Harrison Irving Scott. 2003, . p.29 Today, a two-lane road named after the canyon itself connects

Santa Clarita Santa Clarita (; Spanish for "Little St. Clare") is a city in northwestern Los Angeles County in the U.S. state of California. With a 2020 census population of 228,673, it is the third-largest city by population in Los Angeles County, the 17t ...

to the mountain communities of Green Valley and Elizabeth Lake. It roughly parallels the river's course between San Francisquito Pass and its southern terminus in the northern

References

External links

{{Authority control Canyons and gorges of California Landforms of Los Angeles County, California Sierra Pelona Ridge