The Mulholland Dam, now commonly known as the Hollywood Reservoir or Lake Hollywood, got off to a rocky start when a sister dam buckled and ruined the career of its creator -- Willam Mulholland. The St Francis disaster of 1928 cast doubt on the the safety of the antecedent Hollywood dam, and for decades afterward, kept Hollywood residents on edge. William Mulholland (1855–1935), the LA superintendent of water and power, was the engineer who carried out the transit plan that brought drinkable water and blue pools from the Owens Valley and the Sierra to the city. This is the history that lies behind the film Chinatown. On March 17, 1925, the completed dam was renamed in honor of Mulholland. In a ceremony attended by dignitaries and filmland luminaries, including a canine movie star named Strongheart, Mulholland was feted as a genius. The Los Angeles demigod, after which the infamous Mulholland Dr is named, was forced to retire in 1928, a depressed, dimmed man since the St. Francis disaster.
Expert consensus now holds that its sister dam buckled due to a perfect storm of factors, including its placement on an undetectable (at the time) ancient landslide and Mulholland’s inability to tailor the dam’s design to San Francisquito Canyon, relying too heavily on plans drawn up for the Mulholland Dam. Its collapse was a combination of geography and man’s folly. And so, the Mulholland Dam remains, as does the Mulholland Memorial Fountain and Mulholland Drive. Mulholland’s legacy has been remarkably rehabilitated, as the story of Saint Francis and its sister dam have been washed away from the city’s memory by the passing of time. Today, as a century ago, water is a daily topic of conversation across the state of California. Many of its water systems were built in the 20th century for a different climate, unaltered by the effects of global heating and for a smaller population. Both a visionary and a tactician, Mulholland is being looked at through a different lens in the context of a broader reassessment of history. For some, L.A. represents everything that has gone wrong in the relationship between man and nature.