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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake Bridging a 252-foot span between Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge, Devil’s Gate Dam was developed for both water conservation purposes and flood control after a major deluge in 1914 caused millions of dollars in damage to the area and resulted in the loss of 43 lives. The Los Angeles County Flood Control District was created soon after, with Devil’s Gate Dam being its first project. Erection of the arch-gravity dam, which was spearheaded by Bent Brothers Construction Company at a cost of $483,000, began in May 1919 and was completed in June 1920.
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake The narrow bridge atop the dam, which stands 103 feet above the Arroyo Seco watershed below, also served as the main thoroughfare between Pasadena and La Cañada and quickly became a hotbed of traffic. To relieve the congestion, an ancillary four-lane roadway connecting the two cities was built in the mid-1950s and the dam subsequently closed to cars, though it remains a popular walking and biking spot.
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake In 2009, storms following the Station Fire, which burned more than 160,000 acres of the San Gabriel Valley, filled Devil’s Gate Reservoir with an unprecedented amount of debris, drastically reducing its flood protection capacity. The site is currently undergoing a major sediment removal process that is scheduled to take four years. The project, which began in November 2018, is set to remove a whopping 1.7 million cubic yards of silt from the area. As such, the span and several walkways and trails are presently only accessible to the public on weekends, when work is not taking place. The site has remained open for filming, though.
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake It is there that Perry tells Pete he is “just about out of moves” in his latest case defending Emily Dodson (Gayle Rankin), who is accused of conspiring to kidnap her baby son for ransom money, in “Perry Mason’s” season one finale, titled “Chapter 8.” The only move Perry believes he has left? Bribing a juror, which (spoiler!) Pete successfully does for him – unnecessarily, it turns out, as Pete soon learns that two jurors had planned to vote for a not guilty verdict.
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake The reservoir area behind the dam was digitally filled in with water for the segment, creating a stunning vista that, indeed, looks straight out of 1930s Los Angeles.
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Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures “Perry Mason” is not the only production to make use of Devil’s Gate Dam. The school bus carrying Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano) and Layla Williams (Danielle Panabaker) goes “off-road” there at the beginning of the 2005 family film “Sky High.”
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Image Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures The dam was altered quite a bit for the shoot via CGI to make it appear unfinished.
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Image Credit: CBS Television And a blogger with a grudge against Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and his team is murdered at the dam in the season seven episode of “NCIS” titled “The Inside Man,” which aired in 2009.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Devil’s Gate Dam, from “Perry Mason,” is located adjacent to Oak Grove Dr., in between Berkshire Pl. and N. Yucca Ln., in Pasadena.
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