History of the Johnstown Flood

History Of The Johnstown Flood By Willis Fletcher Johnson History Of The Johnstown Flood CHAPTER I. 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 houses 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-gauge 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 steer 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. It is over 100 miles from Johnstown 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.

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