Built by Joseph Chapman, known as Jose el Ingles, a woodman from Maine who was taken prisoner during a pirate raid near Santa Barbara in 1818, this dam supplied water to a new flour mill he erected at San Gabriel Mission in 1821-1822 with Indian labor furnished by Father Jose Maria Zalvides. Chapman also helped construct the new Plaza Church in Los Angeles, and in 1819-1820 he built a grist mill at Mission Santa Inez.