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- Herausgeber: Krill Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
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Seitenzahl: 508
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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HISTORY OF THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD
Willis Fletcher Johnson
FIREWORK PRESS
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This book is a work of nonfiction and is intended to be factually accurate.
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Copyright © 2015 by Willis Fletcher Johnson
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
History of the Johnstown Flood
By
Willis Fletcher Johnson
History of the Johnstown Flood
Published by Firework Press
New York City, NY
First published 1889
Copyright © Firework Press, 2015
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
About Firework Press
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PREFACE
THE SUMMER OF 1889 WILL ever be memorable for its appalling disasters by flood and flame. In that period fell the heaviest blow of the nineteenth century—a blow scarcely paralleled in the histories of civilized lands. Central Pennsylvania, a centre of industry, thrift and comfort, was desolated by floods unprecedented in the records of the great waters. On both sides of the Alleghenies these ravages were felt in terrific power, but on the western slope their terrors were infinitely multiplied by the bursting of the South Fork Reservoir, letting out millions of tons of water, which, rushing madly down the rapid descent of the Conemaugh Valley, washed out all its busy villages and hurled itself in a deadly torrent on the happy borough of Johnstown. The frightful aggravations which followed the coming of this torrent have waked the deepest sympathies of this nation and of the world, and the history is demanded in permanent form, for those of the present day, and for the generation to come.
CHAPTER 1
SPRINGTIME IN THE MOUNTAINS. GRACEFUL slopes and frowning precipices robed in darkest green of hemlock and spruce. Open fields here and there verdant with young grass and springing grain, or moist and brown beneath the plow for the planting time. Hedgerow and underwood fragrant with honeysuckle and wild blackberry bloom; violets and geraniums purpling the forest floor. Conemaugh creek and Stony creek dash and plunge and foam along their rocky channels to where they unite their waters and form the Conemaugh river, hastening down to the Ohio, to the Mississippi, to the Mexican Gulf. Trout and pickerel and bass flash their bronze and silver armor in the sparkling shallows of the streams and in the sombre and placid depths of the lake up yonder behind the old mud dam. Along the valley of the Conemaugh are ranged villages, towns, cities: Conemaugh, Johnstown, Cambria, Sang Hollow, Nineveh, and others, happy and prosperous. Conemaugh nestles at the very foot of the Alleghenies; all railroad trains eastward bound stop there to catch their breath before beginning the long climb up to Altoona. Sang Hollow nestles by the river amid almost tropical luxuriance of vegetation; yon little wooded islet in mid-stream a favorite haunt of fishermen. Nineveh is rich in bog iron and coal, and the whirr of the mill-wheel is heard. Johnstown, between the two creeks at their junction, is the queen city of the valley. On either side the creek, and beyond, the steep mountain sides; behind, the narrow valley reaching twenty miles back to the lake; before, the Conemaugh river just beginning its romantic course. Broken hillsides streaked with torrents encompass it. Just a century ago was Johnstown founded by one Joseph Johns, a German settler. Before then its beauteous site was occupied by an Indian village, Kickenapawling. Below this was the head of navigation on the Conemaugh. Hither came the wagoners of the Alleghenies, with huge wains piled high with merchandise from seaboard cities, and placed it on flat-bottomed boats and started it down the river-way to the western markets. The merchandise came up from Philadelphia and Baltimore by river, too; up the Susquehanna and Juniata, to the eastern foot-hills, and there was a great portage from the Juniata to the Conemaugh; the Kittanning Trail, then the Frankstown Turnpike. Later came the great trunk railroad whose express trains now go roaring down the valley.
Johnstown is—nay, Johnstown was!—a busy and industrious place. The people of the town were the employees of the Cambria Iron and Steel Company, their families, and small storekeepers. There was not one rich man in the town. Three-quarters of the 28,000 people lived in small frame tenement housses on the flats by the river around the works of the Cambria Company. The Cambria Company owns almost all the land, and the business and professional men and the superintendents of the company live on the hills away up from the creeks. The creeks become the Conemaugh river right at the end of the town, near where the big stone Pennsylvania Railroad bridge crosses the river.
The borough of Johnstown was on the south bank of Conemaugh creek, and the east bank of Stony creek, right in the fork. It had only about a third of the population of the place. It had never been incorporated with the surrounding villages, as the Cambria Company, which owned most of the villages and only part of Johnstown, did not wish to have them consolidated into one city.
Conemaugh was the largest village on the creek between the lake and Johnstown. It is often spoken of as part of Johnstown, though its railroad station is two or three miles up the creek from the Johnstown station. The streets of the two towns run into each other, and the space between the two stations is well built up along the creek. Part of the Cambria Iron and Steel Company’s works are at Conemaugh, and five or six thousand of the workingmen and their families lived there. The business was done in Johnstown borough, where almost all the stores of Johnstown city were.
The works of the Cambria Company were strung along from here down into Johnstown proper. They were slightly isolated to prevent a fire in one spreading to the others, and because there was not much flat land to build on. The Pennsylvania road runs along the river, and the works were built beside it.
Between Conemaugh and Johnstown borough was a string of tenements along the river which was called Woodvale. Possibly 3000 workmen lived in them. They were slightly built of wood, many of them without cellars or stone foundations. There were some substantially built houses in the borough at the fork. Here the flats widen out somewhat, and they had been still further increased in extent by the Cambria Company, which filled up part of the creek beds with refuse and the ashes from their works. This narrowed the beds of the creeks. The made land was not far above the water at ordinary times. Even during the ordinary spring floods the waters rose so high that it flowed into the cellars of the tenements, and at times into the works. The natural land was occupied by the business part of the town, where the stores were and the storekeepers had their residences. The borough had a population of about 9000. On the north bank of the river were a third as many more people living in tenements built and owned by the Cambria Company. Further down, below the junction of the two creeks, along both banks of the Conemaugh river, were about 4000 employees of the Cambria Company and their families. The place where they lived was called Cambria or Cambria City. All these villages and boroughs made up what is known as the city of Johnstown.
The Cambria Company employed about 4000 men in its works and mines. Besides these were some railroad shops, planing mills, flour mills, several banks and newspapers. Only the men employed by the Cambria Company and their families lived on the flats and made ground. The Cambria Company owned all this land, and made it a rule not to sell it, but to lease it. The company put rows of two-story frame tenements close together, on their land close to the works, the cheaper class of tenements in solid blocks, to cheapen their construction. The better tenements were separate buildings, with two families to the house. The tenements rented for from $5 to $15 a month, and cost possibly, on the average, $500 to build. They were all of wood, many of them without cellars, and were built as cheaply as possible. The timbers were mostly pine, light and inflammable. It was not an uncommon thing for a fire to break out and to burn one or two rows of tenements. But the different rows were not closely bunched, but were sprinkled around in patches near the separate works, and it was cheaper for the company to rebuild occasionally than to put up brick houses.
Besides owning the flats, the Cambria Company owned the surrounding hills. In one of the hills is limestone, in another coal, and there is iron ore not far away. The company has narrow-guage roads running from its mines down to the works. The city was at the foot of these three hills which meet in a double V shape. Conemaugh creek flowing down one and Stony creek flowing down the other. The hills are not so far distant that a man with a rifle on any one could not shoot to either of the others. They are several hundred feet high and so steep that roads run up them by a series of zigzag grades. Few people live on these hills except on a small rise of ground across the river from Johnstown. In some places the company has leased the land for dwelling houses, but it retains the ownership of the land and of the coal, iron and limestone in it. The flats having all been occupied, the company in recent years had put up some tenements of a better class on the north bank of the river, higher up than the flood reached. The business part of the town also was higher up than the works and the tenements of the company.
In normal times the river is but a few hundred feet wide. The bottom is stony. The current is so fast that there is little deposit along the bank. It is navigable at no time, though in the spring a good canoeist might go down it if he could stear clear of the rocks. In the summer the volume of water diminishes so much that a boy with a pair of rubber boots on can wade across without getting his feet wet, and there have been times when a good jumper could cross the river on the dry stones. Below Johnstown, after Stony creek has joined the Conemaugh creek, the volume of water increases, but the Conemaugh throughout its whole length is nothing but a mountain stream, dry in the summer and roaring in the spring. It runs down into the Kiskiminitas river and into the Allegheny river, and then on to Pittsburgh following the windings of the river, twice as far as the straight line.
Johnstown was one of the busiest towns of its size in the State. Its tonnage over the Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio roads was larger than the tonnage of many cities three times its size. The Iron and Steel Company is one of the largest iron and steel corporations in the world. It had its main rolling mills, Bessemer steel works, and wire works at Johnstown, though it also has works in other places, and owns ore and coal mines and leases in the South, in Michigan, and in Spain, besides its Pennsylvania works. It had in Johnstown and the surrounding villages 4000 or 5000 men usually at work. In flush times it has employed more than 6000. So important was the town from a railroad point of view that the Baltimore and Ohio ran a branch from Rockwood, on its main line to Pittsburgh, up to Johnstown, forty-five miles. It was one of the main freight stations on the Pennsylvania road, though the passenger business was so small in proportioin that some express trains do not stop there. The Pennsylvania road recently put up a large brick station, which was one of the few brick buildings on the flats. Some of the Cambria Company’s offices were also of brick, and there was a brick lodging house for young men in the employ of the company. The Pennsylvania road had repair shops there, which employed a few hundred men, and the Baltimore and Ohio branch had some smaller shops.
Johnstown had several Catholic and Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Lutheran churches. It had several daily and weekly papers. The chief were the Tribune, the Democrat, and the Freie Presse.
The Cambria Iron Works, the great industry of Johnstown, originated in a few widely separated charcoal furnaces built by pioneer iron workers in the early years of the century. As early as 1803 General Arthur St. Clair engaged in the iron business, and erected the Hermitage furnace about sixteen miles from the present site of Johnstown. In 1809 the working of ores was begun near Johnstown. These were primitive furnaces, where charcoal was the only fuel employed, and the raw material and product were transported entirely on wagons, but they marked the beginning of the manufacture of iron in this country.
The Cambria Iron Company was chartered under the general law in 1852, for the operation of four old-fashioned charcoal furnaces in and near Johnstown, which was then a village of 1300 inhabitants, to which the Pennsylvania railroad had just been extended. In 1853 the construction of four coke furnaces was begun, but it was two years before the first was finished. England was then shipping rails into this country under a low duty, and the iron industry here was struggling for existence. The company at Johnstown was aided by a number of Philadelphia merchants, but was unable to continue in business, and suspended in 1854. At a meeting of the creditors in Philadelphia soon afterward a committee was appointed, with Daniel J. Morrell as Chairman, to visit the works at Johnstown and recommend the best means, if any, to save themselves from loss. In his report, Mr. Morrell strongly urged the Philadelphia creditors to invest more money and continue the business. They did so, and Matthew Newkirk was made President of the company. The company again failed in 1855, and Mr. Morrell then associated a number of gentlemen with him, and formed the firm of Wood, Morrell & Co., leasing the works for seven years. The year 1856 was one of the great financial depression, and 1857 was worse, and, as a further discouragement, the large furnace was destroyed by fire in June, 1857. In one week, however, the works were in operation again, and a brick building was soon constructed. When the war came, and with it the Morrill tariff of 1861, a broader field was opened up, and in 1862 the present company was formed.
The years following the close of the war brought about an unprecedented revival in railroad building. In 1864 there were but 33,908 miles of railroad in the United States, while in 1874 there were 72,741 miles, or more than double. There was a great demand for English steel rails, which advanced to $170 per ton. Congress imposed a duty of $28 a ton on foreign rails, and encouraged American manufacturers to go into the business. The Cambria Company began the erection of Bessemer steel works in 1869, and sold the first steel rails in 1871, at $104 a ton.
The company had 700 dwelling-houses, rented to employees. The works and rolling mills of the company were situated upon what was originally a river flat, where the valley of the Conemaugh expanded somewhat, just below Johnstown, and now part of Millville. The Johnstown furnaces, Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 formed one complete plant, with stacks 75 feet high and 16 feet in diameter at the base. Steam was generated in forty boilers fired by furnace gas, for eight vertical, direct-acting blowing engines. Nos. 5 and 6 blast furnaces formed together a second plant, with stacks 75 feet high and 19 feet in diameter. The Bessemer plant was the sixth started in the United States (July, 1871). The main building was 102 feet in width by 165 feet in length. The cupolas were six in number. Blast was supplied from eight Baker rotary pressure blowers, driven by engines 16 x 24 inches at 110 revolutions per minute. The Bessemer works were supplied with steam by a battery of twenty-one tubular boilers. The best average, although not the very highest work done in the Bessemer department, was 103 heats of 8½ tons each for each twenty-four hours. The best weekly record reached 4847 tons of ingots, and the best monthly record 20,304 tons. The best daily output was 900 tons of ingots. All grades of steel were made in the converters, from the softest wire and bridge stock to spring stock. The open-hearth building, 120 x 155 feet, containing three Pernot revolving hearth furnaces of fifteen tons capacity each, supplied with natural gas. The rolling mill was 100 feet in width by 1900 feet in length, and contained a 24-inch train of two stands of three-high rolls, and a ten-ton traveling crane for changing rolls. The product of the mill was 80,000 pounds per turn. The bolt and nut works produced 1000 kegs of finished track bolts per month, besides machine bolts. The capacity of the axle shop was 100 finished steel axles per day. The “Gautier steel department” consisted of a brick building 200 x 50 feet, where the wire was annealed, drawn and finished; a brick warehouse 373 x 43 feet, many shops, offices, etc.; the barb-wire mill, 50 x 250 feet, where the celebrated Cambria link barb wire was made, and the main merchant mill, 725 x 250 feet. These mills produced wire, shafting, springs, plough-shares, rake and harrow teeth, and other kinds of agricultural implement steel. In 1887 they produced 50,000 tons of this material, which was marketed mainly in the Western States. Grouped with the principal mills thus described were the foundries, pattern and other shops, draughting offices and time offices, etc., all structures of a firm and substantial character.
The company operated about thirty-five miles of railroad tracks, employing in this service twenty-four locomotives, and owned 1500 cars. To the large bodies of mountain land connected with the old charcoal furnaces additions have been made of ores and coking coals, and the company now owns in fee simple 54,423 acres of mineral lands. It has 600 beehive coke ovens in the Connellsville district, and the coal producing capacity of the mines in Pennsylvania owned by the company is 815,000 tons per year.
In continuation of the policy of Daniel J. Morrell, the Cambria Iron Company has done a great deal for its employees. The Cambria Library was erected by the Iron Company and presented to the town. The building was 43 x 68½ feet, and contained a library of 6914 volumes. It contained a large and valuable collection of reports of the United States and the State, and it is feared that they have been greatly damaged. The Cambria Mutual Benefit Association is composed of employees of the company, and it is supported by it. The employees receive benefits when sick or injured, and in case of death their families are provided for. The Board of Directors of this association also controls the Cambria Hospital, which was erected by the Iron Company in 1866, on Prospect Hill, in the northern part of the town. The company also maintained a club house, and a store which was patronized by others, as well as by its employees.
CHAPTER 2
TWENTY MILES UP CONEMAUGH CREEK, beyond the workingmen’s villages of South Fork and Mineral Point, was Conemaugh lake. It was a Part of the old and long disused Pennsylvania Canal system. At the head of the Conemaugh creek, back among the hills, three hundred feet or more above the level of Johnstown streets, was a small, natural lake. When the canal was building, the engineers took this lake to supply the western division of the canal which ran from there to Pittsburgh. The Eastern division ended at Hollidaysburgh east of the summit of the Alleghanies, where there was a similar reservoir. Between the two was the old Portage road, one of the first railroads constructed in the State. The canal was abandoned some years ago, as the Pennsylvania road destroyed its traffic. The Pennsylvania Company got a grant of the canal from the State. Some years after the canal was abandoned the Hollidaysburg reservoir was torn down, the water gradually escaping into the Frankstown branch of the Juniata river. The people of the neighborhood objected to the existence of the reservoir after the canal was abandoned, as little attention was paid to the structure, and the farmers in the valley below feared that the dam would break and drown them. The water was all let out of the reservoir about three years ago.
The dam above Johnstown greatly increased the small natural lake there. It was a pleasant drive from Johnstown to the reservoir. Boating and fishing parties often went out there. Near the reservoir is Cresson, a summer resort owned by the Pennsylvania road. Excursion parties are made up in the summer time by the Pennsylvania Company, and special trains are fun for them from various points to Cresson. A club called the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was organized some years ago, and got the use of the lake from the Pennsylvania Company. Most of the members of the club live in Pittsburgh, and are prominent iron and coal men. Besides them there are some of the officials of the Pennsylvania road among the members. They increased the size of the dam until it was not far from a hundred feet in height, and its entire length, from side to side at the top, was not far from nine hundred feet. This increased the size of the lake to three miles in length and a mile and a quarter in width. It was an irregular oval in shape. The volume of water in it depended on the time of the year.
Some of the people of Johnstown had thought for years that the dam might break, but they did not think that its breaking would do more than flood the flats and damage the works of the Cambria Company.
When the Hunting and Fishing Club bought the site of the old reservoir a section of 150 feet had been washed out of the middle. This was rebuilt at an expense of $17,000 and the work was thought to be very strong. At the base it was 380 feet thick and gradually tapered until at the top it was about 35 feet thick. It was considered amply secure, and such faith had the members of the club in its stability that the top of the dam was utilized as a driveway. It took two years to complete the work, men being engaged from ‘79 to ‘81. While it was under process of construction the residents of Johnstown expressed some fears as to the solidity of the work, and requested that it be examined by experts. An engineer of the Cambria Iron Works, secured through Mr. Morrell, of the institution, one provided by Mr. Pitcairn, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Nathan McDowell, chosen by the club itself, made a thorough examination. They pronounced the structure perfectly safe, but suggested some precautionary measures as to the stopping of leaks, that were faithfully carried out. The members of the club themselves discovered that the sewer that carried away the surplus or overflow from the lake was not large enough in times of storm. So five feet of solid rock were cut away in order to increase the mouth of the lake. Usually the surface of the water was 15 feet below the top of the dam, and never in recent years did it rise to more than eight feet. In 1881, when work was going on, a sudden rise occurred, and then the water threatened to do what it did on this occasion. The workmen hastened to the scene and piled debris of all sorts on the top and thus prevented a washout.
For more than a year there had been fears of a disaster. The foundations of the dam at South Fork were considered shaky early in 1888, and many increasing leakages were reported from time to time.
“We were afraid of the lake,” said a gentleman who had lived in Johnstown for years; “We were afraid of that lake seven years ago. No one could see the immense height to which that artificial dam had been built without fearing the tremendous power of the water behind it. The dam must have had a sheer height of 100 feet, thus forcing the water that high above its natural bed, and making a lake at least three miles long and a mile wide, out of what could scarcely be called a pond. I doubt it there is a man or woman in Johnstown who at some time or other had not feared and spoken of the terrible disaster that has now come.
“People wondered, and asked why the dam was not strengthened, as it certainly had become weak; but nothing was done, and by and by they talked less and less about it, as nothing happened, though now and then some would shake their heads as if conscious the fearful day would come some time when their worst fears would be transcended by the horror of the actual occurrence.”
There is not a shadow of doubt but that the citizens of Cambria County frequently complained, and that at the time the dam was constructed a vigorous effort was made to put a stop to the work. It is true that the leader in this movement was not a citizen of Johnstown, but he was and is a large mine owner in Cambria County. His mine adjoins the reservoir property. He was frequently on the spot, and his own engineer inspected the work. He says the embankment was principally of shale and clay, and that straw was used to stop the leaking of water while the work was going on. He called on the sheriff of Cambria County and told him it was his duty to apply to the court for an injunction. The sheriff promised to give the matter his attention, but, instead of going before court, went to the Cambria Company for consultation. An employee was sent up to make an inspection, and as his report was favorable to the reservoir work the sheriff went no further. But the gentleman referred to said that he had not failed to make public his protest at the time and to renew it frequently. This recommendation for an injunction and protest were spoken of by citizens of Altoona as a hackneyed subject.
Confirmation has certainly been had at South Fork, Conemaugh, Millvale and Johnstown. The rumor of an expected break was prevalent at these places but citizens remarked that the rumor was a familiar incident of the annual freshets. It was the old classic story of “Wolf, wolf.” They gave up the first floors to the water and retired upstairs to wait until the river should recede, as they had done often before, scouting the oft-told story of the breaking of the reservoir.
An interesting story, involving the construction and history of the Conemaugh lake dam, was related by J. B. Montgomery, who formerly lived in Western Pennsylvania, and is now well known in the West as a railroad contractor. “The dam,” said he, “was built about thirty-five years ago by the State of Pennsylvania, as a feeder for the western division of the Pennsylvania Canal. The plans and specifications for the dam were furnished by the Chief Engineer of the State. I am not sure, but it is my impression, that Colonel William Milnor Roberts held the office at the time. Colonel Roberts was one of the most famous engineers in the country. He died several years ago in Chili. The contractors for the construction of the dam were General J. K. Moorhead and Judge H. B. Packer, of Williamsport, a brother of Governor Packer. General Moorhead had built many dams before this on the rivers of Pennsylvania, and his work was always known to be of the very best. In this case, however, all that he had to do was to build the dam according to the specifications furnished by the State. The dam was built of stone and wood throughout, and was of particularly solid construction. There is no significance in the discovery of straw and dirt among the ruins of the dam. Both are freely used when dams are being built, to stop the numerous leaks.
“The dam had three-waste-gates at the bottom, so arranged that they could be raised when there was too much water in the lake, and permit the escape of the surplus. These gates were in big stone arches, through which the water passed to the canal when the lake was used as a feeder.
“In 1859 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company purchased the canal from the State, and the dam and lake went into the possession of that company. Shortly afterward the Pennsylvania Company abandoned the western division of the canal, and the dam became useless as a feeder. For twenty-five years the lake was used only as a fish-pond, and the dam and the gates were forgotten. Five years ago the lake was leased to a number of Pittsburgh men, who stocked it with bass, trout, and other game fish. I have heard it said that the waste-gates had not been opened for a great many years. It this is so, no wonder the dam broke. Naturally the fishermen did not want to open the gates after the lake was stocked, for the fish would have run out. A sluiceway should have been built on the side of the dam, so that when the water reached a certain height the surplus could escape. The dam was not built with the intention that the water should flow over the top of it under any circumstances, and if allowed to escape in that way the water was bound to undermine it in a short time. With a dam the height of this the pressure of a quantity of water great enough to overflow it must be something tremendous.
“If it is true that the waste-gates were never opened after the Pittsburgh men had leased the lake, the explanation of the bursting of the dam is to be found right there. It may be that the dam had not been looked after and strengthened of late years, and it was undoubtedly weakened in the period of twenty-five years during which the lake was not used. After the construction of the dam the lake was called the Western Reservoir. The south fork of the Conemaugh, which fed the lake, is a little stream not over ten feet wide, but even when there were no unusual storms it carried enough water to fill the lake full within a year, showing how important it was that the gates should be opened occasionally to run off the surplus.”
Mr. Montgomery was one of a party of engineers who inspected the dam when it was leased by the Pennsylvania Company, five years ago. It then needed repairs, but was in a perfectly safe condition if the water was not allowed to flow over it.
CHAPTER 3
FRIDAY, MAY 31ST, 1889. THE day before had been a solemn holiday. In every village veterans of the War for the Union had gathered; in every cemetery flowers had been strewn upon the grave-mounds of the heroic dead. Now the people were resuming the every-day toil. The weather was rainy. It had been wet for some days, Stony Creek and Conemaugh were turbid and noisy. The little South Fork, which ran into the upper end of the lake, was swollen into a raging torrent. The lake was higher than usual; higher then ever. But the valley below lay in fancied security, and all the varied activities of life pursued their wonted round.
Friday, May 31st, 1889. Record that awful date in characters of funereal hue. It was a dark and stormy day, and amid the darkness and the storm the angel of death spread his wings over the fated valley, unseen unknown. Midday comes. Disquieting rumors rush down the valley. There is a roar of an approaching storm—approaching doom! The water swiftly rises. A horseman thunders down the valley: “To the hills, for God’s sake! To the hills, for your lives!” They stare at him as at a madman, and their hesitating feet linger in the valley of the shadow of death, and the shadow swiftly darkens and the everlasting hills veil their faces with rain and mist before the scene that greets them.
This is what happened:—
The heavy rainfall raised the lake until its water began to pour over the top of the dam. The dam itself—wretchedly built of mud and boulders—saturated through and through, began to leak copiously here and there. Each watery sapper and miner burrowed on, followers swiftly enlarging the murderous tunnels. The whole mass became honeycombed. And still the rain poured down, and still the South Fork and a hundred minor streams sent in their swelling floods, until with a roar like that of the opening gates of the Inferno belching forth the legions of the damned, the wall gave way, and with the rush of famished tiger into a sheepfold, the whirlwind of water swept down the valley on its errand of destruction—
“And like a horse unbroken,
When first he feels the rein,
The furious river struggled hard,
And tossed his tawny mane,
And burst the curb, and bounded
Rejoicing to be free,
And, whirling down in mad career,
Battlement and plank and pier,
Rushed headlong to the sea!”
According to the statements of people who lived in Johnstown and other towns on the line of the river, ample time was given to the inhabitants of Johnstown by the railroad officials and by other gentlemen of standing and reputation. In hundreds of cases this warning was utterly disregarded, and those who heeded it early in the day were looked upon as cowards, and many jeers were uttered by lips that now are cold. The people of Johnstown also had a special warning in the fact that the dam in Stony Creek, just above the town, broke about noon, and thousands of feet of lumber passed down the river. Yet they hesitated, and even when the wall of water, almost forty feet high, was at their doors, one man is said by a survivor to have told his family that the stream would not rise very high.
How sudden the calamity is illustrated by an incident which Mr. Bender, the night chief operator of the Western Union in Pittsburgh, relates: “At 3 o’clock that Friday afternoon,” said he, “the girl operator at Johnstown was cheerfully ticking away that she had to abandon the office on the first floor, because the water was three feet deep there. She said she was telegraphing from the second story and the water was gaining steadily. She was frightened, and said many houses were flooded. This was evidently before the dam broke, for our man here said something encouraging to her, and she was talking back as only a cheerful girl operator can, when the receiver’s skilled ear caught a sound on the wire made by no human hand, which told him that the wires had grounded, or that the house had been swept away in the flood from the lake, no one knows which now. At 3 o’clock the girl was there, and at 3.07 we might as well have asked the grave to answer us.”
The water passed over the dam about a foot above its top, beginning at about half-past 2. Whatever happened in the way of a cloud-burst took place in the night. There had been little rain up to dark. When the workmen woke in the morning the lake was full, and rising at the rate of a foot an hour. It kept on rising until 2 P.M., when it began breaking over the dam and undermining it. Men were sent three or four times during the day to warn people below of their danger. When the final break came at 3 o’clock, there was a sound like tremendous and continued peals of thunder. Trees, rocks and earth shot up into mid-air in great columns and then started down the ravine. A farmer who escaped said that the water did not come down like a wave, but jumped on his house and beat it to fragments in an instant. He was safe on the hillside, but his wife and two children were killed.
Herbert Webber, who was employed by the Sportsmen’s Club at the lake, tells that for three days previous to the final outburst, the water of the lake forced itself out through the interstices of the masonry, so that the front of the dam resembled a large watering pot. The force of the water was so great that one of these jets squirted full thirty feet horizontally from the stone wall. All this time, too, the feeders of the lake, particularly three of them, more nearly resembled torrents than mountain streams, and were supplying the dammed up body of water with quite 3,000,000 gallons of water hourly.
At 11 o’clock that Friday morning, Webber says he was attending to a camp about a mile back from the dam, when he noticed that the surface of the lake seemed to be lowering. He doubted his eyes, and made a mark on the shore, and then found that his suspicions were undoubtedly well founded. He ran across the country to the dam, and there saw, he declares, the water of the lake welling out from beneath the foundation stones of the dam. Absolutely helpless, he was compelled to stand there and watch the gradual development of what was to be the most disastrous flood of this continent.
According to his reckoning it was 2.45 when the stones in the centre of the dam began to sink because of the undermining, and within eight minutes a gap of twenty feet was made in the lower half of the wall face, through which the water poured as though forced by machinery of stupendous power. By 3 o’clock the toppling masonry, which before had partaken somewhat of the form of an arch fell in, and then the remainder of the wall opened outward like twin gates, and the great storage lake was foaming and thundering down the valley of the Conemaugh.
Webber became so awestruck at the catastrophe the he declares he was unable to leave the spot until the lake had fallen so low that it showed bottom fifty feet below him. How long a time elapsed he says he does not know before he recovered sufficient power of observation to notice this, but he does not think that more than five minutes passed. Webber says that had the dam been repaired after the spring freshet of 1888 the disaster would not have occurred. Had it been given ordinary attention in the spring of 1887 the probabilities are that thousands of lives would have been saved.
Imagine, if you can, a solid piece of ground, thirty-five feet wide and over one hundred feet high, and then, again, that a space of two hundred feet is cut out of it, through which is rushing over seven hundred acres of water, and you can have only a faint conception of the terrible force of the blow that came upon the people of this vicinity like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky. It was irresistible in its power and carried everything before it. After seeing the lake and the opening through the dam it can be readily understood how that outbreak came to be so destructive in its character.
The lake had been leaking, and a couple of Italians were at work just over the point where the break occurred, and in an instant, without warning it gave way and they went down in the whirling mass of water, and were swept into eternity.
Mr. Crouse, proprietor of the South Fork Fishing Club Hotel says: “When the dam of Conemaugh lake broke the water seemed to leap, scarcely touching the ground. It bounded down the valley, crashing and roaring, carrying everything before it. For a mile its front seemed like a solid wall twenty feet high.” The only warning given to Johnstown was sent from South Fork village by Freight Agent Dechert. When the great wall that held the body of water began to crumble at the top he sent a message begging the people of Johnstown for God’s sake to take to the hills. He reports no serious accidents at South Fork.
Richard Davis ran to Prospect Hill when the water raised. As to Mr. Dechert’s message, he says just such have been sent down at each flood since the lake was made. The warning so often proved useless that little attention was paid to it this time. “I cannot describe the mad rush,” he said, “At first it looked like dust. That must have been the spray. I could see houses going down before it like a child’s play, blocks set on edge in a row. As it came nearer I could see houses totter for a moment, then rise and the next moment be crushed like egg shells, against each other.”
Mr. John G. Parke, of Philadelphia, a civil engineer, was at the dam superintending some improvements in the drainage system at the lake. He did all he could with the help of a gang of laborers to avert the catastrophe and to warn those in danger. His story of the calamity is this:—
“For several days prior to the breaking of the dam, storm after storm swept over the mountains and flooded every creek and rivulet. The waters from these varied sources flowed into the lake, which finally was not able to stand the pressure forced upon it. Friday morning I realized the danger that was threatened, and although from that time until three o’clock every human effort was made to prevent a flood, they were of no avail. When I at last found that the dam was bound to go, I started out to tell the people, and by twelve o’clock everybody in the Conemaugh region did or should have known of their danger. Three hours later my gravest fears were more than realized. It is an erroneous idea, however, that the dam burst. It simply moved away. The water gradually ate into the embankment until there was nothing left but a frail bulwark of wood. This finally split asunder and sent the waters howling down the mountains.
CHAPTER 4
THE COURSE OF THE TORRENT from the broken dam at the foot of the lake to Johnstown is almost eighteen miles, and with the exception of one point, the water passed through a narrow V-shaped valley. Four miles below the dam lay the town of South Fork, where the South Fork itself empties into the Conemaugh river. The town contained about 2000 inhabitants. About four-fifths of it has been swept away. Four miles further down on the Conemaugh river, which runs parallel with the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, was the town of Mineral Point. It had 800 inhabitants, 90 per cent of the houses being on a flat and close to the river. Terrible as it may seem, very few of them escaped. Six miles further down was the town of Conemaugh, and here alone there was a topographical possibility—the spreading of the flood and breaking of its force. It contained 2500 inhabitants, and has been almost wholly devastated. Woodvale, with 2000 people, lay a mile below Conemaugh in the flat, and one mile further down were Johnstown and its suburbs—Cambria City and Conemaugh borough, with a population of 30,000. On made ground, and stretched along right at the river’s verge, were the immense iron works of the Cambria Iron and Steel Company, who have $5,000,000 invested in their plant. Besides this there are many other large industrial establishments on the bank of the river.
The stream of human beings that was swept before the angry floods was something most pitiful to behold. Men, women and children were carried along frantically shrieking for help, but their cries availed them nothing. Rescue was impossible. Husbands were swept past their wives, and children were borne along, at a terrible speed, to certain death, before the eyes of their terrorized and frantic parents. Houses, outbuildings, trees and barns were carried on the angry flood of waters as so much chaff. Cattle standing in the fields were overwhelmed, and their carcasses strewed the tide. The railroad tracks converging on the town were washed out, and wires in all directions were prostrated.
Down through the Packsaddle came the rushing waters. Clinging to improvised rafts, constructed in the death battle from floating boards and timbers, were agonized men, women and children, their heart-rending shrieks for help striking horror to the breasts of the onlookers. Their cries were of no avail. Carried along at a railway speed on the breast of this rushing torrent, no human ingenuity could devise a means of rescue.
It is impossible to describe briefly the suddenness with which the disaster came. A warning sound was heard at Conemaugh a few minutes before the rush of water came, but it was attributed to some meteorological disturbance, and no trouble was borrowed because of the thing unseen. As the low, rumbling noise increased in volume, however, and came nearer, a suspicion of danger began to force itself even upon the bravest, which was increased to a certainty a few minutes later, when, with a rush, the mighty stream spread out in width, and when there was no time to do anything to save themselves. Many of the unfortunates where whirled into the middle of the stream before they could turn around; men, women and children were struggling in the streets, and it is thought that many of them never reached Johnstown, only a mile or two below.
At Johnstown a similar scene was enacted, only on a much larger scale. The population is greater and the sweeping whirlpool rushed into a denser mass of humanity. The imagination of the reader can better depict the spectacle than the pen of the writer can give it. It was a twilight of terror, and the gathering shades of evening closed in on a panorama of horrors that has few parallels in the history of casualties.
When the great wave from Conemaugh lake, behind the dam, came down the Conemaugh Valley, the first obstacle it struck was the great viaduct over the South Fork. This viaduct was a State work, built to carry the old Portage road across the Fork. The Pennsylvania Railroad parallels the Portage road for a long distance, and runs over the Fork. Besides sweeping the viaduct down, the bore, or smaller bores on its wings, washed out the Portage road for miles. One of the small bores went down the bed of a brook which comes into the Conemaugh at the village of South Fork, which is some distance above the viaduct. The big bore backed the river above the village. The small bore was thus checked in its course and flowed into the village.
The obstruction below being removed, the backed-up water swept the village of South Fork away. The flood came down. It moved steadily, but with a velocity never yet attained by an engine moved by power controllable by man. It accommodated itself to the character of the breaks in the hill. It filled every one, whether narrow or broad. Its thrust was sideways and downward as well as forward. By side thrusts it scoured every cave and bend in the line of the mountains, lessening its direct force to exert power laterally, but at the same time moving its centre straight on Johnstown. It is well to state that the Conemaugh river is tortuous, like most streams of its kind. Wherever the mountains retreat, flats made out from them to the channel of the stream. It was on such flats that South Fork and Mineral Point villages and the boroughs of Conemaugh, Franklin, Woodvale, East Conemaugh and Johnstown were built.
After emerging from the South Fork, with the ruins of the great viaduct in its maw, it swept down a narrow valley until just above the village of Mineral Point. There it widened, and, thrusting its right wing into the hollow where the village nestled, it swept away every house on the flat. These were soon welded into a compact mass, with trees and logs and general drift stuff. This mass followed the bore. What the bore could not budge, its follower took up and carried.
The first great feat at carrying and lifting was done at East Conemaugh. It tore up every building in the yard of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It took locomotives and carried them down and dug holes for their burials. It has been said that the flood had a downward thrust. There was proof of this on the banks of the river, where there was a sort of breakwater of concreted cinders, slag, and other things, making a combination harder than stone. Unable to get a grip directly on these banks, the flood jumped over them, threw the whole weight of the mass of logs and broken buildings down on the sand behind them, scooped this sand out, and then, by backward blows, knocked the concrete to pieces. In this it displayed almost the uttermost skill of human malice.
After crossing the flat of East Conemaugh and scooping out of their situations sixty-five houses in two streets, as well as tearing passenger trains to pieces, drowning an unknown number of persons, and picking up others to dash against whatever obstacles it encountered, it sent a force to the left, which cut across the flat of Franklin borough, ripped thirty-two houses to pieces, and cut a second channel for the Conemaugh river, leaving an island to mark the place of division of the forces of the flood. The strength of the eastern wing can be estimated from the fact that the iron bars piled in heaps in the stock yard of the Cambria Iron Company were swept away, and that some of them may be found all along the river as far as Johnstown.
After this came the utter wiping out of the borough of Woodvale, on the flat to the northeast of Johnstown and diagonally opposite it. Woodvale had a population of nearly 3000 people. It requires a large number of houses to shelter so many. Estimating 10 to a family, which is a big estimate, there were 300 houses in Woodvale. There were also a woolen mill, a flour mill, the Gautier Barb Wire Mills of the Cambria Iron Company, and the tannery of W. H. Rosenthal & Co. Only the flour mill and the middle section of the bridge remain. The flat is bare otherwise. The stables of the Woodvale Horse Railroad Company went out with the water; every horse and car in them went also
The change was wrought in five minutes. Robert Miller, who lost two of his children and his mother-in-law, thus describes the scene: “I was standing near the Woodvale Bridge, between Maple avenue and Portage street, in Johnstown. The river was high, and David Lucas and I were speculating about the bridges, whether they would go down or not. Lucas said, ‘I guess this bridge will stand; it does not seem to be weakened.’ Just then we saw a dark object up the river. Over it was a white mist. It was high and somehow dreadful, though we could not make it out. Dark smoke seemed to form a background for the mist. We did not wait for more. By instinct we knew the big dam had burst and its water was coming upon us. Lucas jumped on a car horse, rode across the bridge, and went yelling into Johnstown. The flood overtook him, and he had to abandon his horse and climb a high hill.
“I went straight to my house in Woodvale, warning everybody as I ran. My wife and mother-in-law were ready to move, with my five children, so we went for the hillside, but we were not speedy enough. The water had come over the flat at its base and cut us off. I and my wife climbed into a coal car with one of the children, to get out of the water. I put two more children into the car and looked around for my other children and my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law was a stout woman, weighing about two hundred and twelve pounds. She could not climb into a car. The train was too long for her to go around it so she tried to crawl under, leading the children.
“The train was suddenly pushed forward by the flood, and she was knocked down and crushed, so were my children, by the same shock. My wife and children in the car were thrown down and covered with coal. I was taken off by the water, but I swam to the car and pulled them from under a lot of coal. A second blow to the train threw our car against the hillside and us out of it to firm earth. I never saw my two children and mother-in-law after the flood first struck the train of coal cars. I have often heard it said that the dam might break, but I never paid any attention to it before. It was common talk whenever there was a freshet or a big pack of ice.”
The principal street of Woodvale was Maple avenue. The Conemaugh river now rushes through it from one side of the flat to the other. Its pavement is beautifully clean. It is doubtful that it will ever be cleared by mortal agency again.
Breaking down the barbed steel wire mill and the tannery at the bridge, the flood went across the regular channel of the river and struck the Gautier Steel Works, made up of numerous stanch brick buildings and one immense structure of iron, filled with enormous boilers, fly wheels, and machinery generally. The buildings are strewn through Johnstown. Near their sites are some bricks, twisted iron beams, boilers, wheels, and engine bodies, bound together with logs, driftwood, tree branches, and various other things, woven in and out of one another marvelously. These aggregations are of enormous size and weight. They were not too strong for the immense power of the destroying agent, for a twenty-ton locomotive, taken from the Gautier Works, now lies in Main street, three-quarters of a mile away. It did not simply take a good grip upon them; it was spreading out its line for a force by its left wing, and hit simultaneously upon Johnstown flat, its people and houses, while its right wing did whatever it could in the way of helping the destructive work. The left wing scoured the flat to the base of the mountain. With a portion of the centre it then rushed across Stony Creek. The remainder of the central force cleared several paths in diverging directions through the town.
While the left and centre were tearing houses to pieces and drowning untold lives, the right had been hurrying along the base of the northern hills, in the channel of the Conemaugh river, carrying down the houses, bridges, human beings and other drift that had been picked up on the way from South Fork.
Thus far the destruction at Johnstown had not been one-quarter what it is now. But the bed of the Conemaugh beyond Johnstown is between high hills that come close together. The cut is bridged by a viaduct. The right wing, with its plunder, was stopped by the bridge and the bend. The left and centre came tearing down Stony creek. There was a collision of forces. The men, women, children, horses, other domestic animals, houses, bridges, railroad cars, logs and tree branches were jammed together in a solid mass, which only dynamite can break up. The outlet of Stony creek was almost completely closed and the channel of the Conemaugh was also choked. The water in both surged back. In Stony creek it went along the curve of the base of the hill in front of which Kernville is built. Dividing its strength, one part of the flood went up Stony creek a short distance and moved around again into Johnstown. It swept before it many more houses than before and carried them around in a circle, until they met and crashed against other houses, torn from the point of Johnstown flat by a similar wave moving in a circle from the Conemaugh.
The two waves and their burdens went around and around in slowly-diminishing circles, until most of the houses had been ground to pieces. There are living men, women and children who circled in these frightful vortices for an hour. Lawyer Rose, his wife, his two brothers and his two sisters are among those. They were drawn out of their house by the suction of the retreating water, and thus were started on a frightful journey. Three times they went from the Kernville side of the creek to the centre of the Johnstown flat and past their own dwelling. They were dropped at last on the Kernville shore. Mr. Rose had his collar bone broken, but the others were hurt only by fright, wetting and some bruises.
