The course of the torrent from the broken dam at the foot of the lake to
Johnstown is almost eighteen miles, and with the exception of one point,
the water passed through a narrow V-shaped valley. 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 2000 inhabitants. About
four-fifths of it has been swept away. Four miles further down on the
Conemaugh river, which runs parallel with the main line of the
Pennsylvania Railroad, was the town of Mineral Point. It had 800
inhabitants, 90 per cent. of the houses being on a flat and close to the
river. Terrible as it may seem, very few of them have escaped. Six miles
further down was the town of Conemaugh, and here alone there was a
topographical possibility--the spreading of the flood and the breaking
of its force. It contained 2500 inhabitants, and has been almost wholly
devastated. Woodvale, with 2000 people, lay a mile below Conemaugh in
the flat, and one mile further down were Johnstown and its
suburbs--Cambria City and Conemaugh borough, with a population of
30,000. On made ground, and stretched along right at the river's verge,
were the immense iron works of the Cambria Iron and Steel Company, who
have $5,000,000 invested in their plant. Besides this there are many
other large industrial establishments on the bank of the river.
The stream of human beings that was swept before the angry floods was
something most pitiful to behold. Men, women and children were carried
along frantically shrieking for help, but their cries availed them
nothing. Rescue was impossible. Husbands were swept past their wives,
and children were borne along, at a terrible speed, to certain death,
before the eyes of their terrorized and frantic parents. Houses,
out-buildings, trees and barns were carried on the angry flood of waters
as so much chaff. Cattle standing in the fields were overwhelmed, and
their carcasses strewed the tide. The railroad tracks converging on the
town were washed out, and wires in all directions were prostrated.
Down through the Packsaddle came the rushing waters. Clinging to
improvised rafts, constructed in the death battle from floating boards
and timbers, were agonized men, women and children, their heart-rending
shrieks for help striking horror to the breasts of the onlookers. Their
cries were of no avail. Carried along at a railway speed on the breast
of this rushing torrent, no human ingenuity could devise a means of
rescue.
It is impossible to describe briefly the suddenness with which the
disaster came. A warning sound was heard at Conemaugh a few minutes
before the rush of water came, but it was attributed to some
meteorological disturbance, and no trouble was borrowed because of the
thing unseen. As the low, rumbling noise increased in volume, however,
and came nearer, a suspicion of danger began to force itself even upon
the bravest, which was increased to a certainty a few minutes later,
when, with a rush, the mighty stream spread out in width, and when there
was no time to do anything to save themselves. Many of the unfortunates
were whirled into the middle of the stream before they could turn
around; men, women and children were struggling in the streets, and it
is thought that many of them never reached Johnstown, only a mile or two
below.
At Johnstown a similar scene was enacted, only on a much larger scale.
The population is greater and the sweeping whirlpool rushed into a
denser mass of humanity. The imagination of the reader can better depict
the spectacle than the pen of the writer can give it. It was a twilight
of terror, and the gathering shades of evening closed in on a panorama
of horrors that has few parallels in the history of casualties.
When the great wave from Conemaugh lake, behind the dam, came down the
Conemaugh Valley, the first obstacle it struck was the great viaduct
over the South Fork. This viaduct was a State work, built to carry the
old Portage road across the Fork. The Pennsylvania Railroad parallels
the Portage road for a long distance, and runs over the Fork. Besides
sweeping the viaduct down, the bore, or smaller bores on its wings,
washed out the Portage road for miles. One of the small bores went down
the bed of a brook which comes into the Conemaugh at the village of
South Fork, which is some distance above the viaduct. The big bore
backed the river above the village. The small bore was thus checked in
its course and flowed into the village.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS, LOOKING UP STONY CREEK.]
The obstruction below being removed, the backed-up water swept the
village of South Fork away. The flood came down. It moved steadily, but
with a velocity never yet attained by an engine moved by power
controllable by man. It accommodated itself to the character of the
breaks in the hill. It filled every one, whether narrow or broad. Its
thrust was sideways and downward as well as forward. By side thrusts it
scoured every cave and bend in the line of the mountains, lessening
its direct force to exert power laterally, but at the same time moving
its centre straight on Johnstown. It is well to state that the Conemaugh
river is tortuous, like most streams of its kind. Wherever the mountains
retreat, flats make out from them to the channel of the stream. It was
on such flats that South Fork and Mineral Point villages and the
boroughs of Conemaugh, Franklin, Woodvale, East Conemaugh and Johnstown
were built.
After emerging from the South Fork, with the ruins of the great viaduct
in its maw, it swept down a narrow valley until just above the village
of Mineral Point. There it widened, and, thrusting its right wing into
the hollow where the village nestled, it swept away every house on the
flat. These were soon welded into a compact mass, with trees and logs
and general drift stuff. This mass followed the bore. What the bore
could not budge, its follower took up and carried.
The first great feat at carrying and lifting was done at East Conemaugh.
It tore up every building in the yard of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It
took locomotives and carried them down and dug holes for their burials.
It has been said that the flood had a downward thrust. There was proof
of this on the banks of the river, where there was a sort of breakwater
of concreted cinders, slag, and other things, making a combination
harder than stone. Unable to get a grip directly on these banks, the
flood jumped over them, threw the whole weight of the mass of logs and
broken buildings down on the sand behind them, scooped this sand out,
and then, by backward blows, knocked the concrete to pieces. In this it
displayed almost the uttermost skill of human malice.
After crossing the flat of East Conemaugh and scooping out of their
situations sixty-five houses in two streets, as well as tearing
passenger trains to pieces, drowning an unknown number of persons, and
picking up others to dash against whatever obstacles it encountered, it
sent a force to the left, which cut across the flat of Franklin borough,
ripped thirty-two houses to pieces, and cut a second channel for the
Conemaugh river, leaving an island to mark the place of division of the
forces of the flood. The strength of the eastern wing can be estimated
from the fact that the iron bars piled in heaps in the stock yard of the
Cambria Iron Company were swept away, and that some of them may be found
all along the river as far as Johnstown.
After this came the utter wiping out of the borough of Woodvale, on the
flat to the northeast of Johnstown and diagonally opposite it. Woodvale
had a population of nearly 3000 people. It requires a large number of
houses to shelter so many. Estimating 10 to a family, which is a big
estimate, there were 300 houses in Woodvale. There were also a woolen
mill, a flour mill, the Gautier Barb Wire Mills of the Cambria Iron
Company, and the tannery of W. H. Rosenthal & Co. Only the flour mill
and the middle section of the bridge remain. The flat is bare otherwise.
The stables of the Woodvale Horse Railroad Company went out with the
water; every horse and car in them went also.
The change was wrought in five minutes. Robert Miller, who lost two of
his children and his mother-in-law, thus describes the scene: "I was
standing near the Woodvale Bridge, between Maple avenue and Portage
street, in Johnstown. The river was high, and David Lucas and I were
speculating about the bridges, whether they would go down or not. Lucas
said, 'I guess this bridge will stand; it does not seem to be weakened.'
Just then we saw a dark object up the river. Over it was a white mist.
It was high and somehow dreadful, though we could not make it out. Dark
smoke seemed to form a background for the mist. We did not wait for
more. By instinct we knew the big dam had burst and its water was coming
upon us. Lucas jumped on a car horse, rode across the bridge, and went
yelling into Johnstown. The flood overtook him, and he had to abandon
his horse and climb a high hill.
"I went straight to my house in Woodvale, warning everybody as I ran. My
wife and mother-in-law were ready to move, with my five children, so we
went for the hillside, but we were not speedy enough. The water had come
over the flat at its base and cut us off. I and my wife climbed into a
coal car with one of the children, to get out of the water. I put two
more children into the car and looked around for my other children and
my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law was a stout woman, weighing about two
hundred and twelve pounds. She could not climb into a car. The train was
too long for her to go around it, so she tried to crawl under, leading
the children.
"The train was suddenly pushed forward by the flood, and she was knocked
down and crushed, so were my children, by the same shock. My wife and
children in the car were thrown down and covered with coal. I was taken
off by the water, but I swam to the car and pulled them from under a lot
of coal. A second blow to the train threw our car against the hillside
and us out of it to firm earth. I never saw my two children and
mother-in-law after the flood first struck the train of coal cars. I
have often heard it said that the dam might break, but I never paid any
attention to it before. It was common talk whenever there was a freshet
or a big pack of ice."
The principal street of Woodvale was Maple avenue. The Conemaugh river
now rushes through it from one side of the flat to the other. Its
pavement is beautifully clean. It is doubtful that it will ever be
cleared by mortal agency again.
Breaking down the barbed steel wire mill and the tannery at the bridge,
the flood went across the regular channel of the river and struck the
Gautier Steel Works, made up of numerous stanch brick buildings and one
immense structure of iron, filled with enormous boilers, fly wheels, and
machinery generally. The buildings are strewn through Johnstown. Near
their sites are some bricks, twisted iron beams, boilers, wheels, and
engine bodies, bound together with logs, driftwood, tree branches, and
various other things, woven in and out of one another marvelously. These
aggregations are of enormous size and weight. They were not too strong
for the immense power of the destroying agent, for a twenty-ton
locomotive, taken from the Gautier Works, now lies in Main street,
three-quarters of a mile away. It did not simply take a good grip upon
them; it was spreading out its line for a force by its left wing, and
hit simultaneously upon Johnstown flat, its people and houses, while its
right wing did whatever it could in the way of helping the destructive
work. The left wing scoured the flat to the base of the mountain. With a
portion of the centre it then rushed across Stony creek. The remainder
of the central force cleared several paths in diverging directions
through the town.
While the left and centre were tearing houses to pieces and drowning
untold lives, the right had been hurrying along the base of the northern
hills, in the channel of the Conemaugh river, carrying down the houses,
bridges, human beings and other drift that had been picked up on the way
from South Fork.
Thus far the destruction at Johnstown had not been one-quarter what it
is now. But the bed of the Conemaugh beyond Johnstown is between high
hills that come close together. The cut is bridged by a viaduct. The
right wing, with its plunder, was stopped by the bridge and the bend.
The left and centre came tearing down Stony creek. There was a collision
of forces. The men, women, children, horses, other domestic animals,
houses, bridges, railroad cars, logs and tree branches were jammed
together in a solid mass, which only dynamite can break up. The outlet
of Stony creek was almost completely closed and the channel of the
Conemaugh was also choked. The water in both surged back. In Stony creek
it went along the curve of the base of the hill in front of which
Kernville is built. Dividing its strength, one part of the flood went up
Stony creek a short distance and moved around again into Johnstown. It
swept before it many more houses than before and carried them around in
a circle, until they met and crashed against other houses, torn from the
point of Johnstown flat by a similar wave moving in a circle from the
Conemaugh.
The two waves and their burdens went around and around in
slowly-diminishing circles, until most of the houses had been ground to
pieces. There are living men, women and children who circled in these
frightful vortices for an hour. Lawyer Rose, his wife, his two brothers
and his two sisters are among those. They were drawn out of their house
by the suction of the retreating water, and thus were started on a
frightful journey. Three times they went from the Kernville side of the
creek to the centre of the Johnstown flat and past their own dwelling.
They were dropped at last on the Kernville shore. Mr. Rose had his
collar bone broken, but the others were hurt only by fright, wetting and
some bruises.
Some of the back water went up the creek and did damage at Grubtown and
Hornerstown. More of it, following the line of the mountain, rushed in
at the back of Kernville. It cut a clear path for itself from the lower
end of the village to the upper end, diagonally opposite, passing
through the centre. It sent little streams to topple homes over in side
places and went on a round trip into the higher part of Johnstown,
between the creek and the hill. It carried houses from Kernville to the
Johnstown bank of the creek, and left them there. Then it coursed down
the bank, overturning trains of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, and
also houses, and keeping on until it had made the journey several times.
How so marvelous a force was exerted is illustrated in the following
statement from Jacob Reese, of Pittsburg, the inventor of the basic
process for manufacturing steel. Mr. Reese says:--
"When the South Fork dam gave way, 16,000,000 tons of water rushed down
the mountain side, carrying thousands of tons of rocks, logs and trees
with it. When the flood reached the Conemaugh Valley it struck the
Pennsylvania Railroad at a point where they make up the trains for
ascending the Allegheny Mountains. Several trains with their locomotives
and loaded cars were swept down the valley before the flood wave, which
is said to have been fifty feet high. Cars loaded with iron, cattle, and
freight of all kinds, with those mighty locomotives, weighing from
seventy to one hundred tons each, were pushed ahead of the flood, trucks
and engines rolling over and over like mere toys.
"Sixteen million tons of water gathering fences, barns, houses, mills
and shops into its maw. Down the valley for three miles or more rushed
this mighty avalanche of death, sweeping everything before it, and
leaving nothing but death and destruction behind it. When it struck the
railroad bridge at Johnstown, and not being able to force its way
through that stone structure, the débris was gorged and the water dammed
up fifty feet in ten minutes.
"This avalanche was composed of more than 100,000 tons of rocks,
locomotives, freight cars, car trucks, iron, logs, trees and other
material pushed forward by 16,000,000 tons of water falling 500 feet,
and it was this that, sliding over the ground, mowed down the houses,
mills and factories as a mowing machine does a field of grain. It swept
down with a roaring, crushing sound, at the rate of a mile a minute, and
hurled 10,000 people into the jaws of death in less than half an hour.
And so the people called it the avalanche of death."