I think I had a post about Lake Hollywood about three years ago. I think its’ been that long since I’ve taken a walk there.
So on a beautiful January afternoon, it was time to revisit. This time I’ve done more homework and gathered more Information than before. The images might be almost identical to ones I’ve posted before. That is what happens when you photograph the same places.
Wikipedia sucks, and it also sucks that I have used it too often. Here is a much better history of this dam over at LA Water and Power. Go take a look. I was unaware of many things, if you look at the images there, You will see how massive the concrete portion of the dam is, it is all covered with dirt and trees now. Oh heck, I’m just going to share one of their images here.
This is from 1923 when they were building the Dam, today, all we can see is the arched upper level. Arches are an extremely useful support system for large projects. The Romans knew this when they built huge aqueducts. So not only are they pretty, they are part of the structure.
I thought these concrete heads were dogs, silly me. They are bears!! The bear is a big symbol here in California.
See! Its a bear, not a dog.
I miss the days when one created a monumental project or even a building and real time effort and attention was paid to making it not simply functional, but also beautiful.
I’ve spoken a lot about William Mulholland. The Irish immigrant who never had an engineering degree and yet he helped create some of the most amazing large water public works in Los Angeles. And now for some history I didn’t include last time. In 1889, in PA, was the awful disaster of the Johnstown Flood. Over 2000 people dead and many more wounded, widowed or lost. Part of science and engineering, that no one wants to deal with today, is that sometimes things are done wrong and we learn from mistakes. One of the things Mulholland learned was that arch, or bow, if you look at the picture above you will see that in order to prevent a Johnstown disaster, the dam itself is built in a bow shape, good old arch, this helps mitigate the pressure on the dam itself. It works very well here. So right after this project was completed, another bow dam was being built up in the Santa Clarita area – the San Francisquito dam. Completed in 1928, it failed spectacularly and killed about 600 people in the Ventura area. The condemnation of Mulholland was swift and brutal. He carried the guilt for another 7 more years until his death. To this day people pile on him and call him a murderer, even though it turns out that geologically there were some very unstable conditions there. We have more tools and ways of measuring thing. Just like Johnstown taught engineers a lot about dams, so did the San Francisquito. Some of us learn from mistakes, others come up with the stupid saying: ‘believe science’ and are unwilling to accept that science evolves, they’d rather blame people.
So here we have this dam, right in the heart of Hollywood and the population even in 1928 is huge compared to Johnstown. So of a course a hew and cry about the safety of this dam arise. Do away with all this progress screams the woman’s club of Hollywood. Yes, they spear headed the fight to do away with this dam. Which is why the stepped dam are now completely covered with dirt and plants. The also lowered the level of the water and most of the water for Hollywood is in huge underwater reservoirs, although, this water is available if needed. So when people tell me women are better than men I laugh. No we’re not, sometimes we are much much worse.
Thank goodness we still have a beautiful lake to walk around, even if we can’t actually approach it since it is surrounded by a 3 miles of chainlink fence.
Plenty of deer graze freely inside the fence. You can see, I stuck my camera between the links, but there is a small section in the image on the lower left side. The deer don’t care, people, children stop and look. They are safe from us, although I’m hoping coyotes thin the herd or else the DWP does.
The reason the dam was built? See that sign up there, Hollywoodland and other residential developments were happening in the 20s. People need water, and water was being brought to the city.
Our dictator governor and Mayor have demanded we lockdown inside and cower in fear because of a pandemic that only kills 97% of people who get it. They are destroying the state and a lot of small business. But there were plenty of people out and about, hiking, walking, riding bikes. Closer to the sign is a large park, full of people. I’m busy getting signatures for the recall Newsom campaign. We have over 1 million and more are pouring in. We didn’t vote for a dictator (I of course didn’t vote for him, but my fellow citizens did), he and Cuomo take the prize for worst governors in America. So I’m thrilled that people are out and about. With all the awfulness of our overlords, California is a beautiful as ever.
Leah