History of the Johnstown Flood

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[Illustration: MAP OF THE DELUGED CONEMAUGH DISTRICT.]

HISTORY

OF

THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD.

INCLUDING

ALL THE FEARFUL RECORD; THE BREAKING OF THE SOUTH FORK DAM; THE SWEEPING OUT OF THE CONEMAUGH VALLEY; THE OVER-THROW OF JOHNSTOWN; THE MASSING OF THE WRECK AT THE RAILROAD BRIDGE; ESCAPES, RESCUES, SEARCHES FOR SURVIVORS AND THE DEAD; RELIEF ORGANIZATIONS, STUPENDOUS CHARITIES, ETC., ETC.

WITH FULL ACCOUNTS ALSO OF THE

DESTRUCTION ON THE SUSQUEHANNA AND JUNIATA RIVERS, AND THE BALD EAGLE CREEK.

BY

WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON.

ILLUSTRATED.

EDGEWOOD PUBLISHING CO., 1889. Copyright, 1889, by WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON.

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.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

The Conemaugh Valley in Springtime--Johnstown and its Suburbs--Founded a Hundred Years ago--The Cambria Iron Works--History of a Famous Industry--American Manufacturing Enterprise Exemplified--Making Bessemer Steel--Social and Educational Features--The Busiest City of its Size in the State, 15

CHAPTER II.

Conemaugh Lake--Remains of an Old-time Canal System--Used for the Pleasure of Sportsmen--The Hunting and Fishing Club--Popular Distrust Growing into Indifference--The Old Cry of "Wolf!"--Building a Dam of Straw and Mud--Neglect Ripening into Fitness for a Catastrophe, 31

CHAPTER III.

Dawning of the Fatal Day--Darkness and Rain--Rumors of Evil--The Warning Voice Unheeded--A Whirlwind of Watery Death--Fate of a Faithful Telegrapher--What an Eye-Witness Saw--A Solid Wall of Water Rushing Down the Valley, 42

CHAPTER IV.

The Pathway of the Torrent--Human Beings Swept away like Chaff--The Twilight of Terror--The Wreck of East Conemaugh--Annihilation of Woodvale--Locomotives Tossed about like Cockle-shells by the mighty Maelstrom, 51

CHAPTER V.