Sepulveda Dam

The Sepulveda Dam is a dry dam constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withhold winter flood waters along the Los Angeles River. Completed in 1941, at a cost of $6,650,561 (equivalent to $132,319,000 in 2022), it is located south of center in the San Fernando Valley, approximately eight miles east of the river's source in the western end of the Valley, in Los Angeles, California.

Sepulveda Dam, along with Hansen Dam located in the north San Fernando Valley, was constructed in response to the historic 1938 floods which killed 144 people. The dam's 17,300 acre ft. capacity would allow it to hold back roughly 2+1⁄4 inches of runoff from the 141 mi² of catchment upstream. It was placed at what was the then-current edge of the city. East of the dam the river was crowded into a narrow bottom by the city's growth. One legacy of Sepulveda Dam is its flood control basin, a large and undeveloped area in the center of the Valley, used mostly for wildlife refuge and recreation. Another legacy of the 1938 Los Angeles River flood was the post-World War II channelization of all the Valley's dry washes, which along with the post-World War II rapid suburbanization left the Valley with hot, dry, concrete-lined river bottoms instead of greenbelts. Currently these are being devolved in part as interconnecting bike paths.

Behind the dam, the Sepulveda Basin is home to several large recreation areas including Woodley Park, a model aircraft field, The Japanese Garden, a wildlife refuge, a water reclamation plant, and an armory. The Basin is kept free of urban over-building so that water can collect there during a prospective hundred-year flood.

It is an often-used location for films (such as Escape from New York), music videos (such as BTS' "On (Kinetic Manifesto)" and Keedy's "Save Some Love"), and car commercials.