Did you follow the link? Most everything useful and interesting is somewhere on that site. But…from my poor recollection, it was built around 1918 by the local Rindge family primarily to create a steady supply of water for themselves. But the watershed upstream is quite large, so when it rains, an awful lot of water come pouring all at once down what is a very narrow channel, bringing giant boulders, trees and a lot of silt and sand, the latter of which helped build the offshore reefs which create the waves and surf Malibu Beach is famous for. With so much silt, the streambed above the 100-ft dam silted up within about 10 years, so it hasn’t functioned as a holding tank for water for almost a century.

Flood control may have been a secondary consideration, as the Rindges were interested in selling some land or at least building rental cabins for people. Google AI probably knows a lot more about this subject than I do.

Prior to the building of the dam not a whole lot is known (as far as I know) about the creek because there were only a handful of people living in the area and records are non-existent, and no one really cared about the subject.

LikeLike