Santa Anita Dam, also known as Big Santa Anita Dam, is a concrete thin arch dam on Santa Anita Creek in the

San Gabriel Mountains The San Gabriel Mountains () are a mountain range located in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, California, United States. The mountain range is part of the Transverse Ranges and lies between the Los Angeles Basin and the Mojave Desert ...

Los Angeles County, California Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles and sometimes abbreviated as LA County, is the List of United States counties and county equivalents, most populous county in the United States, with 9,663,345 residents estimated in 202 ...

. Owned by the

Los Angeles County Flood Control District The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works (LACDPW) is responsible for the construction and operation of Los Angeles County's roads, building safety, sewerage, and flood control. DPW also operates traffic signals and intelligent transportat ...

, the dam serves for flood control, water conservation and debris control. The dam is high and long, holding of water with a maximum capacity of . The catchment area for the dam is . The dam was built between 1923 and 1927. The dam has three valves that control releases of stormwater. The dam is situated in the steep San Gabriel foothills, north of Sierra Madre and Arcadia. It is located just north of the boundary of the

Angeles National Forest The Angeles National Forest (ANF) of the United States 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 Gabri ...

. The dam is visible from Santa Anita Canyon Road, which runs along the west slope of the

Santa Anita Canyon Santa Anita Canyon is a canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains, within the cities of Sierra Madre, CA, Sierra Madre, Monrovia, CA, Monrovia, and Arcadia, CA, Arcadia in Los Angeles County, California. Geography The 'Big Santa Anita Canyon' with San ...

and provides access into trails further upstream along Santa Anita Creek. The viewing window for the dam is very short, only about a half-mile; the access road which runs down into the canyon from Santa Anita Canyon Road is closed to the public. However, the First Water trail, which leads downstream from Chantry Flat along the creek, is said to provide access to the reservoir. Since the 1990s the maximum allowed storage of water has been restricted, to ensure that the dam will not collapse due to seismic instability. This has partially caused rapid silting of the reservoir and sediment removal was started in mid-2009. The reservoir was drained and about of sediment were removed. A staged rescue at the dam was broadcast in November 1958 as an episode of the syndicated U.S. television series

Rescue 8 ''Rescue 8'' is a syndicated American action adventure drama series about Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACFD) Rescue Squad 8. It premiered in 1958 and originally ran for two seasons with syndicated reruns continuing for almost a deca ...

titled "The Chasm".

References

External links

Image of workers walking on the face of the Santa Anita Dam during construction, California, circa 1926.

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections,

Charles E. Young Research Library The Charles E. Young Research Library is one of the largest libraries on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles in Westwood, Los Angeles, California. It initially opened in 1964, and a second phase of construction was completed ...

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

. {{LA County dams Dams in Los Angeles County, California Arch dams Angeles National Forest San Gabriel Mountains Sierra Madre, California Dams completed in 1927 1927 establishments in California