Johnstown Flood

Courtesy Heritage Association Area of the Johnstown Courtesy Heritage Association Area of the Johnstown The JohnsTown Flood In one devastating afternoon in 1889, a wall of water converged on a thriving Pennsylvania steel town, killing thousands in a tragedy that could well have been avoided BY EUGENE FINERMAN ohnstown, Pennsylvania, was single-day civilian loss of life in American company employed 7,000 people in accustomed to floods. Winter’s thaw history until September 11, 2001. Johnstown, one-quarter of the popula- Jand spring rains would overflow the In the Conemaugh Valley of western tion. Cambria was as much a patron as valley creeks that converged on the Pennsylvania, the creeks converge into an employer. It subsidized the culture town. The housing was always cheaper a river that flows 60 miles to Pittsburgh. and pleasures of Johnstown: a library, along the creek banks. Despite the In the late 1700s, the creeks offered two theaters and a roller rink. As for the spring swamp and its two feet of water water for crops and transportation spring floods, they were endured and in the streets, Johnstown in the late to markets. Where the river formed, dismissed as a chronic inconvenience. 1800s was booming. A mill town of a German immigrant named Josef The Johnstown Flood was not 30,000 people, it produced more steel Schantz founded a farming settlement simply the random reminder of nature’s than Pittsburgh. Steel was shaping a in 1800 known as Schantzstadt; it was power. The devastation and death were new, dynamic America in the late prudently Anglicized to Johnstown. But the consequences of human failings. 19th century. Girders for skyscrapers, the surrounding hills promised a more Fourteen miles upstream from the city, rails for trains … the prospects for lucrative future than farming. There in the hills above the valley, a neglected Johnstown seemed as expansive as were lodes of coal and iron, and dam held back the waters of a man- America itself. Johnstown soon became the center of made lake. The earthen dam dated to Yet, Johnstown would not be steel production. Cambria Iron Works 1853 and originally was part of the remembered as the Steel Capital of the would become the chief employer of the canal system that linked Philadelphia to nation but as “The American Pompeii.” town. Its foundries ran day and night, Pittsburgh. The South Fork Dam was an On May 31, 1889, Johnstown was six days a week. So did the workers, on impressive undertaking: Made of rock destroyed by a flood—the greatest 12-hour shifts. By the 1880s, the and earth, surfaced with shale masonry, 30 BOSS 4 fa ll/w i nte r 2014 Opposite page: Johnstown before (left) and after the devastating flood on May 31, 1889. it was 931 feet long and 72 feet high. At 3 p.m., the center of the dam gave Ironically, as soon as the dam was way. The flood that struck Johnstown was dark completed, it was pointless. The statewide canal system was being “ and thick with debris: the remnants supplanted by the faster railroads. Yet, water still pooled behind the of smaller towns as well as bodies— dam, gradually eroding the earthen construction and sometimes leaking livestock and human. through. The damage was never alarming, however, and continued to be ignored. Finally, in 1879, the South Fork appearance. The club members wanted and was pouring” over it. Worse, water Dam found an interested owner. The to look at sloping hillsides rather than was seeping through the dam’s walls and dam, along with its 450-acre lake and utilitarian walls. And the beautified under its foundation. the surrounding 160 acres of shoreline, dam continued to leak. As the impending disaster became was purchased by the South Fork Over the years, there were obvious, an employee of the club went The Fishing and Hunting Club. A summer complaints and warnings. The club to the nearest telegraph office to send retreat for the elite of Pittsburgh, the undertook perfunctory patchwork. The Johnstown a warning. His telegram club counted as members Andrew mayor of Johnstown promised to pass did not raise any real concern. After all, JohnsTown Flood Carnegie, Andrew Mellon and Henry C. the complaints on to the state capital. Johnstown was used to floods and the Frick. Here, in the Appalachian foot- But nothing justified alarm. The spring dam was 14 miles away. As a precaution, hills, these millionaires could “rough” it. of 1889, however, had unprecedented people were advised to go to the second Their summer cottages were somewhat rainfall. At the end of May, six to 10 floor of their homes. George Swank, smaller than their customary mansions inches of rain fell within one day. the editor of the Johnstown Tribune, but included piers and boating houses The rainfall and the torrents from the reflected the town’s nonchalance for their yachts. For their further rustic hills were flowing into the lake at an about the warning, noting, “It is idle delight, the lake was stocked with game estimated rate of 3 million gallons an to speculate.” fish. As for the South Fork Dam, it hour. By the morning of May 31, the At 3 p.m. the center of the dam was redesigned for a landscaped water had reached the top of the dam gave way. Twenty million tons of water disgorged through a 100-foot gap in the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, homes on the lakeshore wall. Within an hour the lake was dry. The deluge was 35 feet high, racing down the valley at 40 miles an hour and scouring all in its path. The flood that struck Johnstown was dark and thick Lake Conemaugh after the flood Courtesy Heritage Association Area of the Johnstown Courtesy Area of the Johnstown Heritage Association www.dixonva lve.co m fa ll/w i nte r 2014 4 BOSS 31 Flood paTh Courtesy Area of the Johnstown Heritage Association The Schultz house, a famous image from the flood. All six people in the house survived. Courtesy Heritage Association Area of the Johnstown with debris: the remnants of smaller Cincinnati. When telegraph service was towns as well as bodies—livestock restored, a request was made for every Of the 2,209 and human. available coffin in Pittsburgh; 50 Johnstown was engulfed. volunteer morticians accompanied the dead, some 700 Homes were crushed or torn off their coffins. The flood had also left 25,000 foundations. The survivors were afloat people homeless and hungry. On June 5, “were never identified. on the wreckage. For 10 minutes the Clara Barton arrived in Johnstown; the torrents submerged the city and carried founder of the American Red Cross (See Families were much of it away. As the deluge raged BOSS, Fall/Winter 2012) would person- west, it battered and poured through ally direct the distribution of supplies wiped out; the a railroad bridge, but the bridge and the construction of shelters in the withstood the flood and became Red Cross’ first major peacetime dead included 396 a barrier for the debris. Wrecked homes disaster relief effort. The tireless Barton now piled up against the bridge; the was 67 years old; she would remain in children. Bodies were debris reached 40 feet and extended Johnstown until October 24 and set a three-quarters of a mile. Within the standard that the American Red Cross found as far away wreckage were hundreds of trapped still strives to follow. people. They had survived the flood, but The governor of Pennsylvania called as Cincinnati. now the debris caught fire. Their fate up the state militia—10,000 men—to was worse than drowning. Many were assist in the cleanup of Johnstown. burned beyond recognition. The Pennsylvania Railroad worked at a ” Of the 2,209 dead, some 700 were frantic pace for the relief of the town, never identified. Families were wiped rebuilding 20 miles of destroyed track in out; the dead included 396 children. two weeks. The nation responded to Bodies were found as far away as the tragedy by raising $3,742,818 for 32 BOSS 4 fa ll/w i nte r 2014 the victims ($4.4 billion today). The Cambria Iron Works vowed to rebuild its foundries; the people of Johnstown when IT RaIns, IT pouRs were guaranteed their livelihood. Johnstown was rebuilt. And the Sadly, misery revisited Johnstown in two more Johnstown Flood would take its place in devastating floods during the 20th century: American culture, the tragic inspiration 1936: About two dozen people died and some for songs, art, melodramas and— 77 buildings were destroyed after a flood eventually—movies. caused by heavy runoff from melting snow and The South Fork Fishing and Hunting three days of rain swept through town on Club denied any responsibility for March 17, rising to 14 feet in some areas. Johnstown’s devastation, insisting that The disaster became the catalyst for major the flood was an Act of Providence. federal support to restore Johnstown, and Unfortunately, the liability laws of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) efforts time did indemnify the club. Only the continued—in the form of new roads and Courtesy Heritage Association Area of the Johnstown original engineer of the 1853 construc- bridges—even after the initial wreckage was tion was considered responsible, but he Baumer Street after the 1936 flood cleared. Hoping to prevent future such was long dead. Public outrage and devastation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the U.S. Army Corps of political acumen would change the Engineers to channelize the rivers through town to increase their capacity. liability laws, so that today the club and its members would be culpable.

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