Scenes From the New Year’s Flood of 1934

It was 92 years ago on this very day that the valley suffered its most traumatic disaster. A fire on the San Gabriels in November 1933 set the stage for mudslides at the first rain. The rain that came in late December proved to be a downpour of historic magnitude that came to a crescendo on New Year’s Eve. 

The American Legion Hall then stood at the corner of Rosemont and Fairway avenues. The Red Cross had set up a refugee center in the hall for people flooded out of their homes. The Red Cross volunteers, headed by Myrtle Adams and Vera Kahn, supplied blankets and warm coffee for people who were coming in drenched and cold. 

Near midnight the rain intensified and the slopes of the mountains gave way. In the blackness of night, gigantic slugs of mud and rocks accelerated down the mountain and into the valley, huge waves 20 feet tall moving at 30 miles per hour, tearing straight through homes. 

About 20 people were gathered in the hall that night as the rain poured down. At midnight a little girl was carried into the hall, covered in mud. She and her family had been washed out of their home moments before. She was wrapped in a blanket. She spotted her father and brother and called out to them. 

Tob Lamar, the head of the American Legion, could hear over the sound of the pelting rain a roar like the sound of a freight train. He went out the front door onto the porch of the hall to see what it was and heard it getting louder. Myrtle Adams stood in the open doorway and began to pray. The roar was getting really loud now and the ground began to shake.

Lamar heard a tremendous rending crash in the hall behind him. He didn’t know it at the time but a wall of mud and rocks hurtling down the Pickens Canyon Wash had hit the back of the building and caved it in, funneling the debris flow into the interior of the hall. From inside the hall, Lamar could hear screams and the sound of rocks crashing together. The terrifying sound was coming toward where he stood on the porch. 

He knew there was a small tree just to one side of the building. Panicked and filled with adrenaline, he took a mighty leap in the dark to where he thought the tree was. He connected, grabbed a branch and swung his gaze to where he had been standing. Even in the dark, he saw Myrtle Adams get pushed by mud through the doorway and off the porch. Sludge began to pour out the front door. Next he saw the little girl that had been brought in moments before. She too was pushed out the door by the mud. She grabbed the front railing of the porch, holding on for a couple seconds, then was torn away by the increasing flow. 

With a tremendous crash the floor of the hall and part of the front wall gave way to the heavy rocks and mud. It all came crashing and gushing out, carrying all the people from inside. They disappeared into the darkness. 

Lamar held onto the tree for several minutes. The rain slackened and stopped. Save for the sound of water flowing around the destroyed hall and down Rosemont, it was quiet. Lamar lowered himself to the ground. What had been the neighborhood around the hall was now a moonscape of mud and rocks.

This all happened in a few seconds just before midnight on New Year’s Eve. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed. Twelve of the people from inside the hall perished. The Legion Hall was afterward patched up and moved to its present location on La Crescenta Avenue. The tree that saved Tob Lamar still stands in front of a newer home at 2537 Fairway Ave. A flood control channel was built where the flood waters came and over the channel on the landscaped corner of Rosemont and Fairway is a memorial to the events of that night.