Between 1924 and 1926 the St. Francis Dam was built by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, then named the Bureau of Water Works and Supply. The department was under the direction of its general manager and chief engineer, William Mulholland. The 1928 failure of the dam which resulted in the deaths of over 400 civilians was attributed to a series of human errors and poor engineering judgment, due to the foundation rock underneath the dam not being strong enough.

St. Francis Dam was a gravity structure, deriving its stability from its dead weight. The ratio between the dead load acting vertically and the hydrostatic force acting horizontally determines the overturning factor of safety. A heel crack had shifted the resultant thrust far downstream, making it unstable and overturning

The St. Francis Dam Disaster increased awareness of uplift theory and effective stress, going on to impact the passage of the Boulder Canyon Project Act and the design of Hoover Dam. After the disaster, Geological surveys became intergral in the design process. This personally teaches me the sheer importances of not focusing only the invention itself, but how it affects and interacts with the world around it.