Congressman Buck McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, held two public meetings Tuesday to discuss the St. Francis Dam National Memorial and National Monument and the Castaic Wilderness area.

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McKeon held the St. Francis Dam National Memorial and National Monument press conference to discuss the memorialization, education and preservation of the St. Francis Dam site. Officials discussed protection of wilderness and Native American land during the Castaic Wilderness area public hearing meeting. 

Castaic Wilderness

The Castaic Wilderness meeting was held at Santa Clarita City Hall, where more than 50 people squeezed into the Century Room to give their opinions, show support and present concerns about the proposed protection of the area.

“The protections of the area would prohibit all motorized and mechanical vehicles including bicycles, but all of the trails that are open now (for the hikers and cyclists) will continue to be open in the future,” said Dianne Erskine-Hellrigel, director of the Santa Clarita Community Hiking Club. “The trails that are not sustainable will not be open to anyone.”

The protected area would include hundreds of thousands of acres of Fish Canyon, Salt Creek, Elderberry Canyon, Tule and Red Mountain in the Angeles National Forest, said Erskine-Hellrigel.

The wilderness area is expected to improve the water quality of the creeks that feed into Castaic Lake, protect dozens of endangered species, Native American habitation sites and burial grounds, condor habitat, and the largest grove of Black Oak in the state of California, according to a press release.

Related: CSUN Grad Student Memorializes Victims Of 1928 St. Francis Dam Disaster

Officials also hope to preserve these sites that could be subject to vandalism, including some of the Native American burial sites that have already been vandalized.

“For me, wilderness is about an opportunity for people to experience wild places,” said Daniel Rossman regional associate of The Wilderness Society. “When you go up there with your young son and try to hike along another and stopping every few feet to look at another stick or another rock, it slows down the pace of life that is truly unique to wilderness.”

Fernandeno Tataviam Band of Mission Indians Vice President Rudy Ortega Jr., Los Angeles Equine Advisory Committee officials, local bicyclists in the areas in and around Santa Clarita Valley, Wilderness Society officials and several other organizations and individuals attended the meeting to have their voice heard.

Several local bicyclists attended the meeting and voiced concerns about losing cycling trails.

St. Francis Dam

At another meeting McKeon, representatives from the city of Santa Clarita and St. Francis Dam historians and enthusiasts met at Tesoro Adobe Historic Park in Valencia the same day to discuss the Saint Francis Dam Disaster National Memorial Act.

Several people from in and around the Santa Clarita Valley including Weste, President of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society Alan Pollack and California State University, Northridge Anthropology and Public Archaeology Grad Student Ann Stansell among many others.

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McKeon described the 140 foot wall of water that flooded the Santa Clarita, Fillmore, Santa Paula, Piru and Ventura communities. More than 600 people lost their lives in the disaster.

“The St. Francis Dam Disaster National Memorial Act would authorize a national memorial to commemorate those killed by the Saint Francis Damdisaster,” McKeon said. “The heroes and victims of this disaster deserve to be memorialized and I hope you’ll join me and the (Santa Clarita Valley) Historical Society in support this legislation.”

The whole project for the national memorial began about three years ago when, Pollack visited the Johnstown Flood National Memorial in Pennsylvania where more than 2,000 people were killed when the dam broke in 1889, he said.

“Then I started reading about Johnstown and I came to realise there were so many similarities between that disaster and this one. You had a dam that was poorly constructed, you have this big tragedy happen, hundreds of people dying whole families, terrible reception and that’s what we had here,” Pollack said.”There was one glaring difference between the two disasters, in Johnstown — they had a national memorial, visitor center, documentary film and the St. Francis Dam has nothing, so I figured why not try to do this with the St. Francis Dam.”

Pollack brought on Erskine-Hellrigel to bring the project together.

The H.R.5357 Saint Francis Dam Disaster National Memorial Act bill was introduced to the House of Representatives on July 31 and referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources, according to Congress’s website.

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