McKeon discusses his bill to commemorate the St. Francis Dam disaster.

U.S. Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon spent Tuesday morning in Santa Clarita to discuss a pair of legislative proposals related to the Angeles National Forest.

One, at the request of Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society members, would memorialize the victims of the St. Francis Dam. Located seven miles up San Francisquito Canyon Road from today’s Copper Hill Drive, the dam broke in 1928 and killed hundreds of people in what was America’s deadliest civil engineering failure of the 20th Century and California’s second-largest loss of life in a single event.

The second and more controversial proposal would give a “wilderness” designation to a large swath of forest between Castaic on the west and San Francisquito Canyon on the east.

Mountain biker Tony Arnold tells McKeon the non-motorized vehicle users want a seat at the table – literally and figuratively – as the wilderness proposal advances.

Castaic Wilderness

More than 50 people squeezed into the Century Room at City Hall to voice their opinions about the proposed Castaic Wilderness.

“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 about 70,000 acres of Fish Canyon, Salt Creek, Elderberry Canyon, Tule and Red Mountain in the Angeles National Forest, Erskine-Hellrigel said.

Wilderness proponent Dianne Erskine-Hellrigel at the first of two McKeon events Tuesday.

The wilderness designation 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 trees in California. 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.”

Rudy Ortega Jr., leader of the Fernandeno-Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, along with  Los Angeles Equine Advisory Committee officials, Wilderness Society officials and others expressed their support for the designation.

McKeon said his goal is to identify the interested parties, and any wilderness designation would have to be taken up by his successor.

Several local mountain biking enthusiasts raised concerns about losing trail access. McKeon said the purpose of the meeting was to identify the interested parties to make sure their concerns are addressed as the proposal moves forward. McKeon also noted that a wilderness designation can take years, and he reminded the audience that he’s retiring from Congress this year.

St. Francis Dam

Just before the wilderness meeting, McKeon held a press conference at Tesoro Adobe Park in Saugus to unveil H.R.5357, the Saint Francis Dam Disaster National Memorial Act.

Among those on hand were Erskine-Hellrigel, Santa Clarita Mayor Laurene Weste and SCV Historical Society President Alan Pollack, along with CSUN anthropology professor James Snead and grad student Ann Stansell, who’ve spent three years identifying all of the victims of the dam disaster. Along they way, they whittled down the previous guesstimate of 450-600 victims to 431.

Tesoro Adobe Park in Saugus was the backdrop for McKeon’s press conference on the dam disaster. The park was once the property of actor Harry Carey. It was partially wiped out in the 1928 flood.

McKeon and Weste noted that the enormous wall of water that flooded the Santa Clarita, Fillmore, Santa Paula, Piru and Ventura communities.

“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 a dam broke in 1889, he said.

“Then I started reading about Johnstown, and I came to realize 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; the St. Francis Dam has nothing. So I figured, why not try to do this with the St. Francis Dam?”

Pollack recruited Erskine-Hellrigel to spearhead and promote the legislation.

H.R.5357 introduced in the House of Representatives on July 31 and referred to the Committee on Natural Resources.