Alluvial Fan Flooding: The Montrose, California, Flood of 1934

Abstract

During the last day of 1933 and the first day of 1934 Los Angeles County was struck by the greatest rainstorm of any 24-hour period in its history. The greater part of the damage done by the storm was concentrated in the communities of Montrose, La Crescenta, and Glendale, where a number of people lost their lives and several hundred houses and other property were partially or completely destroyed. The chief cause of this localization of the principal damage was a burnt-over watershed in the San Gabriel Mountains whose forest cover had been destroyed only a month before the storm and whose drainage passed directly through these communities. It is seldom that retribution for deforestation follows so swiftly and unmistakably.

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