Popular demand and the hearty support of all Southern Californians conspired to keep the Exposition open an additional year. "More than 2,000,000 visitors came to San Diego during the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. These dams improved the water supply but did not prevent flooding, as recently as 19. After the flood, the Lower Otay Dam was rebuilt and more dams were added to the South Bay watersheds, including Barrett in 1922, Rodriguez in 1936, Judson in 1937 and Loveland in 1945. The gardens and fields of Chinese workers who helped build the dam in 1888 were destroyed. The adobe walls of the Old Red Barn packinghouse dissolved, leaving only a skeleton building. The Sweetwater Woman's Club house and all its contents, including the local library, were carried into the bay. The Friend's Church washed away and the Sunnyside school was damaged. The railroad in the valley was destroyed, as were the bridges at Willow Street, Edgemere Road, Highland and National Avenues. The water pipelines in the valley from the Sweetwater reservoir were destroyed, and there was no drinking water in the South Bay for the next three weeks. The earthen dike on the low side of the reservoir also broke, sending another flood of water down the canyon past Central Avenue. The rain filled the Sweetwater Reservoir until the abutment below the dam gave way, unleashing a torrent of water that rushed into the valley. The Tijuana River flood destroyed the town of Tijuana and the utopian village of Little Landers. Eleven Japanese farmers living below the dam were killed, The flood carried debris and topsoil into San Diego Bay, forming shoals that filled the south end of the bay blocking ship channels for years. The Otay dam broke and a wall of water flooded the entire valley, destroying the town of Otay, the Salt Works and hundreds of farms. All the river canyons in the county were flooded and every bridge destroyed. Hatfield and the storms caused a massive amount of rain to fall during the last two weeks in January, more than has ever been recorded for two weeks in the history of the South Bay. The Weather Bureau said the rain came from several Pacific storms that converged at the same time on San Diego, an early version of today's El NiƱo. 1, 1916, sending chemicals into the air that produced the rain that ended a four-year drought. It has been blamed on Charles Hatfield, the infamous rainmaker who erected platforms near the Morena Reservoir Jan. The flood of 1916 was the worst natural disaster in the history of the South Bay. The break in the Sweetwater Dam south abutment was photographed on Jan.
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