I don't know, however Sidney Graves which owned cabin 4 on table mountain did time in san quentin for taking bribes that lead to 450 deaths.
Crooked politicians in Depression-era Los Angeles found "easy pickins" when they meshed their hunger for money with the arid state's thirst for water.
In what became known as the Great Forks Dam fiasco, and what county Supervisor John Anson Ford called "the darkest episode" in the history of Los Angeles County government, a county supervisor--evidently the only one in modern times to go to prison for corruption--was handed an envelope full of $1,000 bills on a street corner the day after he persuaded his board colleagues to vote for a huge cash payout to the contractor who paid him the bribe.
For most of the early decades of the 20th century, the city of Los Angeles was nationally notorious for its corrupt mayors, bagman cops and dishonest politicians. But the county government had escaped this bad PR--until 1933, when Supervisor Sidney T. Graves was clapped into handcuffs, hauled into court and sent to San Quentin for bribery.
Graves was a state assemblyman when he decided to run for county supervisor in the late 1920s. Then as now there were only five supervisors, and Graves won the 3rd District seat.
Along with his supervisor's title and perks came committee work--including the job as head of the rich and influential county flood control district.
Before Graves took office, voters had approved $25 million in bonds to build a dam above Azusa and to lay $300,000 in railroad tracks to reach the 12 miles from the Santa Fe Railway line to the dam site. Boosters said the dam would be the world's largest concrete structure, creating a reservoir with a water surface of eight square miles.
It was called the Forks Dam project, and somewhere along the line Graves saw an opportunity for himself. Once the board gave the dam building contract to a San Francisco construction firm and signed off, Graves, as the man in charge of county flood control, was also in charge of how the money was spent.
Almost from the beginning, the contractors used shoddy materials, grossly overbilled the county and covered up engineering faults--and Graves, according to the paper trail, began approving all that, knowing it was substandard.
Southern California was appalled to wake on the morning of March 13, 1928, and learn that the huge St. Francis Dam, north of Saugus, had burst the night before, sending 12 billion gallons of water down San Francisquito Canyon and killing 450 people. The disaster was originally attributed to engineering errors, but later to an undetected underground landslide.Out at the Forks Dam site, groundwork continued, and the first shovelful of dirt was turned about a year after the St. Francis Dam disaster. Although dam safety concerns were working their way through the state Legislature, no laws would be passed until after the Forks Dam construction was underway.
County Chief Engineer E.C. Eaton reassured Graves and the other supervisors that the Forks Dam site was safe, and so more than 600 workers, along with equipment and construction material, were taken by rail to the site.
On Sept. 16, 1929, up in Azusa Canyon, the earth roared, lurched and shifted as tons of dirt and rock that had been excavated suddenly shifted. Water and power lines and the new rail lines were destroyed. The new west wall of the dam was crushed.
No one was injured in the landslide, because no one was working in that area. The day before, Eaton had noticed earth movement there, and had ordered the workers out. No one wanted another St. Francis disaster.
State engineers almost immediately revoked the county's permit to build Forks Dam. Even though it was the state that had ordered the project stopped, the contractors turned around and sued the county for big money.
