"In November of 1933, what became known as the Pickens Canyon Fire had denuded some 7,000 acres of mountainside north of the Crescenta Valley. Shortly thereafter the area was beset by weeks of steady rains, and on December 31 showers that had begun to fall intensified to a downpour that dropped a record 7.31 inches in 24 hours (in pale comparison Los Angeles’ total rainfall this year, 2009, so far is around 9 inches). By midnight when the city was ringing in 1934, the San Gabriels began wringing out massive flows of mud, rocks and trees down dozens of steep narrow canyons, which reached the basin floor as 20-foot walls of debris-choked torrents..."
Blogging Los Angeles, Will Campbell
New Year's flood, Glendale, Montrose, Los Angeles,1934
Photo shows A. Van EEnooghe at 2615 Manhattan Avenue in Montrose, digging out debris caused by flooding.
LAPL
"Well, I got one here that I wrote up, uh [pauses]. When all of these okies got to California, it was a sort of a natural thing for them to drift down to all the river bottoms, along all the mountain streams and all the creeks.
I know that I’ve been in a lot of okie camps in California where a hard-working man didn’t make a dollar every two weeks. And all he depended on was maybe the fish he could catch along some of the rivers or some of the creeks..."
Woody Guthrie, 1934
New Year's flood, Glendale, Montrose, Los Angeles,1934 (2)
This home in Montrose was gutted by mud, rocks and water that came through the back of the house. No one was around at that time.
LAPL
"So along these rivers and creeks that all these Okies was camped around, why there was a lot of things happened that sort of go down as a black mark somewhere another in history because these mountain streams and all these rivers had a habit of having cloudbursts – big rains and cloudbursts — and they’d hit up on the mountains and they’d flood all them rivers and they’d flood all them creeks. And in fifteen minutes time – a lot of times – it’d wash away five- or six-hundred families of people and totally take everything that they had in the world..."
Woody Guthrie, 1934
New Year's flood, Glendale, Montrose, Los Angeles,1934 (3)
After great quantities of debris piled up behind small check dams and water pipes crossing Pickens Canyon, the dams and pipes gave way under the heavy pressure. Wall after wall of water was sent down the canyon. This water hurtled down upon La Crescenta and Montrose. The arrow points out one of the pipes. A few feet back of it was a check dam, five and a half feet high, which also was broken. In the foreground are boys holding some wire that was part of the dam structure.
LAPL
"In 1934 on New Year’s night was one of the worst that ever hit at anywhere and anytime and it killed over one hundred people – and that many was reported; I guess there was a hundred more than there was reported. But then they had all the morgues and all the funeral homes and all the church houses full of people that was drowned in this storm. And it rolled great big boulders down all the streets of Montrose, California; Tujunga, California; and all down the streets of Glendale, California; northern Burbank, California — and Los Angeles, California, the same thing..."
Woody Guthrie, 1934
New Year's flood, Glendale, Montrose, Los Angeles,1934 (4)
Scene near Rossmoyne, where torrents swept away 400 feet of La Canada Boulevard and buried autos under rocks and mud. The arrow points out an auto in which one body was found. Glendale High school student, Dean Meredith, peers into the second car hidden by whole trees and debris.
LAPL