“So vast is the field of destruction that to get an adequate idea from any point level with the town is simply impossible. It must be viewed from a height. From the top of Kernsville Mountain, just at the east of the town, the whole strange panorama can be seen.
“Looking down from the height many things about the flood that appear inexplicable from below are perfectly plain. How so many houses happened to be so queerly twisted, for instance, as if the water had a twirling instead of a straight motion, was made perfectly clear.
“The town was built in an almost equilateral triangle, with one angle pointed squarely up the Conemaugh Valley to the east, from which the flood came. At the northerly angle was the junction of the Conemaugh and Stony creeks. The southern angle pointed up the Stony Creek Valley. Now about one-half of the triangle, formerly densely covered with buildings, is swept as clear as a platter, except for three or four big brick buildings that stand near the angle which points up the Conemaugh.
“The course of the flood, from the exact point where it issued from the Conemaugh Valley to where it disappeared below in a turn in the river and above by spreading itself over the flat district of five or six miles, is clearly defined. The whole body of water issued straight from the valley in a solid wave and tore across the village of Woodvale and so on to the business part of Johnstown at the lower part of the triangle. Here a cluster of solid brick blocks, aided by the conformation of the land evidently divided the stream.
“The greater part turned to the north, swept up the brick block and then mixed with the ruins of the villages above down to the stone arch bridge. The other stream shot across the triangle, was turned southward by the bluffs and went up the valley of Stony creek. The stone arch bridge in the meantime acted as a dam and turned part of the current back toward the south, where it finished the work of the triangle, turning again to the northward and back to the stone arch bridge.
“The stream that went up Stony creek was turned back by the rising ground and then was reinforced by the back water from the bridge again and started south, where it reached a mile and a half and spent its force on a little settlement called Grubbtown.
“The frequent turning of this stream, forced against the buildings and then the bluffs, gave it a regular whirling motion from right to left, and made a tremendous eddy, whose centrifugal force twisted everything it touched. This accounts for the comparatively narrow path of the flood through the southern part of the town, where its course through the thickly clustered frame dwelling houses is as plain as a highway.
“The force of the stream diminished gradually as it went south, for at the place where the currents separated every building is ground to pieces and carried away, and at the end the houses were only turned a little on their foundations. In the middle of the course they are turned over on their sides or upside down. Further down they are not single, but great heaps of ground lumber that look like nothing so much as enormous pith balls.
“To the north the work of the waters is of a different sort. It picked up everything except the big buildings that divided the current and piled the fragments down upon the stone bridge or swept them over and so on down the river for miles.
“This left the great yellow, sandy and barren plain, so often spoken of in the dispatches where stood the best buildings in Johnstown—the opera house, the big hotel, many wholesale warehouses, shops and the finest residences.