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

The loss of life by the flood in Clinton County, in which Lock Haven is situated, was heavy. Twenty of those lost were in the Nittany Valley, and seven in Wayne Township. Lock Haven was very fortunate, as the inhabitants there dwelling in the midst of logs on the rivers are accustomed to overflows. There were many sagacious inhabitants who, remembering the flood of 1865, on Saturday began to prepare by removing their furniture and other possessions to higher ground for safety. It was this full and realizing sense of the danger that gave Lock Haven such immunity from loss of life.

The only case of drowning in Lock Haven was of James Guilford, a young man who, though warned not to do so, attempted to wade across the main street, where six feet of the overflowed river was running, and was carried off by the swift current. The other dead include William Confur and his wife and three children, all carried off and drowned in their little home as it floated away, and the two children of Jacob Kashne.

Robert Armstrong and his sister perished at Clintondale under peculiarly dreadful circumstances. At Mackeyville, John Harley, Andrew R. Stine, wife and two daughters, were drowned, while the two boys were saved. At Salona, Alexander M. Uting and wife, Mrs. Henry Snyder were drowned. At Cedar Springs, Mrs. Luther S. Eyler and three children were drowned. The husband was found alive in a tree, while his wife was dead in a drift-pile a few rods away. At Rote, Mrs. Charles Cole and her two children were drowned, while he was saved. Mrs. Charles Barner and her children were also drowned, while the husband and father was saved. This is a queer coincidence found all through this section, that the men are survivors, while the wives and children are victims.

The scenes that have been witnessed in Tyrone City during the time from Friday evening, May 31st, to Monday evening, June 3d, are almost indescribable. On Friday afternoon, May 31st, telephone messages from Clearfield gave warning of a terrible flood at that place, and preparations were commenced by everybody for high water, although no one anticipated that it would equal in height that of 1885, which had always in the past served as high-water mark in Lock Haven.

All of that Friday rain descended heavily, and when at eight o’clock in the evening the water commenced rising, the rain was falling in torrents. The river rose rapidly, and before midnight was over the top of the bank. Its rapid rising was the signal for hasty preparations for higher water than ever before witnessed in the city. As the water continued rising, both the river and Bald Eagle Creek, the vast scope of land from mountain to mountain was soon a sea of foaming water.

The boom gave away about two o’clock Saturday morning, and millions of feet of logs were taken away. Along Water Street, logs, trees, and every conceivable kind of driftwood went rushing by the houses at a fearful rate of swiftness. The night was one to fill the stoutest heart with dread, and the dawn of day on Saturday morning was anxiously awaited by thousands of people.

In the meantime men in boats were busy during the night taking people from their houses in the lower portions of the city, and conveying them to places of imagined security.

When day dawned on June 1st, the water was still rising at a rapid rate. The city was then completely inundated, or at least all that portion lying east of the high lands in the Third and Fourth Wards. It was nearly three o’clock Saturday afternoon before the water reached the highest mark. It then was about three feet above the high-water mark of 1885.

At four o’clock Saturday evening the flood began to subside, slowly at first, and it was nearly night on Sunday before the river was again within its banks. Six persons are reported missing at Salona, and the dead bodies of Mrs. Alexander Whiting and Mrs. William Emenheisen were recovered at Mill Hall and that of a six-year old child near by. The loss there is terrible, and the community is in mourning over the loss of life.

G. W. Dunkle and wife had a miraculous escape from drowning early Saturday A. M. They were both carried away on the top of their house from Salona to Mill Hall, where they were both rescued in a remarkable manner. A window in the house of John Stearn was kicked out, and Mr. and Mrs. Dunkle taken in the aperture, both thus being rescued from a watery grave.