The Complete Story of the Galveston Horror

by Unknown

Overwhelming of Johnstown, Pa., by the Waters from Conemaugh Lake—One of the Most Peculiar Happenings in History—Actual Number of Deaths Will Never Be Known—About Twenty-Five Hundred Bodies Found.

On Friday, May 31, 1889, at 12:45 p. m., the stones in the center of the dam which confined the waters of Conemaugh Lake began to sink because of leaks in the masonry; at 1 o’clock the dam broke and the flood rushed fiercely down the beautiful Conemaugh Valley to Johnstown, two and a half miles directly to the southwest—but thirteen miles by way of the winding valley—and within a few minutes nearly 2,300 men, women and children (this many, it is known, perished, although it is probable the loss of life was much greater) were lying dead in the wreckage of the city; millions of dollars’ worth of property were destroyed and thousands of people beggared—and all because the members of the fishing club which controlled the lake were too penurious to have the leaks in the dam repaired. The coroner’s verdict was to the effect that the club was to blame for the disaster.

Hundreds of business buildings and residences were destroyed, and less than a score of the structures composing the town were uninjured; complete paralysis followed, and many said, as in the case of Galveston, the city would not be rebuilt; hundreds were crazed by their sufferings and never regained their reason; thieves swarmed to the place and looted the bodies of the dead until the arrival of several thousand State troops put an end to the carnival of crime; the impoverished survivors were cared for until they could get upon their feet again, relief pouring in from everywhere in the shape of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and thousands of carloads of supplies of all sorts; the business men plucked up courage and went to work with a will when the apathy succeeding the calamity had worn off, and to-day Johnstown is greater than ever, and has added to both her wealth and population.

Conemaugh Lake is three and one-half miles in length, one and one-quarter miles in width, and in some places one hundred feet in depth, located on a mountain three hundred feet above the level of Johnstown, its waters being held within bounds by a huge earth dam nearly one thousand feet long, ninety feet thick and one hundred and twenty feet in height, the top having a breadth of over twenty feet. It was once a reservoir and a feeder for the Pennsylvania Canal. It had been widened and deepened and was the property of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, an organization of rich and influential citizens of Pittsburg. It was a constant menace to the residents of the Conemaugh Valley, but engineers of the Pennsylvania Railroad regularly inspected it once a month and pronounced it safe.

The club leased the lake in 1881 from the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. It paid no attention to the fears of the people of Johnstown, but merely quoted the opinions of experts to the effect that nothing short of an extraordinary convulsion of nature could affect the protecting dam.

Johnstown’s geographical situation is one that renders it peculiarly liable to terrible loss of life in the event of such a casualty as that reported. It is a town built in a basin of the mountains and girt about by streams, all of which finally find their way into the Allegheny River, and thence into the Ohio. On one side of the town flows the Conemaugh River, a stream which during the dry periods of the summer drought can be readily crossed in many places by stepping from stone to stone, but which speedily becomes a raging mountain torrent, when swollen by the spring freshets or heavy summer rains.

On the other side of the town is the Stony Creek, which gathers up its own share of the mountain rains and whirls them along toward Pittsburg. The awful flood caused by the sudden outpouring of the contents of the reservoir, together with the torrents of rain that had already swollen these streams to triple their usual violence, is supposed to be the cause of the sudden submersion of Johnstown and the drowning of so many of its citizens. The water, unable to find its way rapidly enough through its usual channels, piled up in overwhelming masses, carrying before it everything that obstructed its onward rush upon the town.

Johnstown, the center of the great disaster, is on the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, 276 miles from Philadelphia. It is the headquarters of the great Cambria Iron Company, and its acres of ironworks fill the narrow basin in which the city is situated. The rolling mill and Bessemer steel works employ 6,000 men. The mountains rise quite abruptly almost on all sides, and the railroad track, which follows the turbulent course of the Conemaugh River, is above the level of the iron works. The summit of the Allegheny Mountains is reached at Gallatizin, about twenty-four miles east of Johnstown.

The people of Johnstown had been warned of the impending flood as early as 1 o’clock in the afternoon, but not a person living near the reservoir knew that the dam had given way until the flood swept the houses off their foundations and tore the timbers apart. Escape from the torrent was impossible. The Pennsylvania Railroad hastily made up trains to get as many people away as possible, and thus saved many lives.

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 2,000 inhabitants. It has not been heard from, but it is said that four-fifths of it has been swept away.