March 12 of that same year, the St. Francis Dam (also designed and built by Mulholland) tragically collapsed, taking both 600 lives and the brilliant engineer’s reputation in one terrible night.

In 1922, William Mulholland began building the St. Francis Dam to create a reservoir for the Los Angeles–Owens River aqueduct. To meet the growing water needs of Los Angeles, he decided to ...

A colossal engineering failure, the dam was built by William Mulholland, who had ensured the growth of Los Angeles by bringing water to the city via aqueduct.