South Fork Dam: Disaster, Heroes, and Villains

It was a gorgeous, blue-sky day, with wall-to-wall sunshine. My husband and I seized the day, and we packed a cooler and our daysacks and chairs and hiking boots, and took off on a road trip to the Johnstown area, where he is from. Our adventures included visiting the Johnstown Flood National Memorial in South Fork, as well as hiking in the melting snow and ice at Prince Gallitzin State Park.
 
I have only visited the flood memorial once before, many years ago, and so it was a real treat, this brush with Pennsylvania (and U.S.) history. And I am not sure I have ever visited Prince Gallitzin in winter before. So both events were rare, and I took lots of photos. It breaks my heart to have to select just one of these two adventures to tell you about. And I can only share one image, of the hundreds I took. So the choice was tough. But in the end, history wins out. Through marriage, I have family who were involved in the Johnstown floods. And so this is the image that I’ll share and the story that I’ll tell you on this day.
 
The photo you see depicts the area where once stood the South Fork Dam, about 14 miles above Johnstown, PA. I was standing atop the remains of the dam itself to get this shot of the valley below. It includes some railroad tracks to the left, and the Little Conemaugh River. An interpretive trail featuring white signs with stories that reveal the tale of the disaster as it unfolded runs along the river.
 
Johnstown is famous for its floods. There have been several major floods in Johnstown, the biggest of which occurred on May 31, 1889; St. Patrick’s Day of 1936; and July 20, 1977. The greatest loss of life occurred in the Johnstown flood of 1889, which has been declared one of the worst disasters in U.S. history. In fact, according to the Johnstown Area Heritage Association, with a death toll of more than 2,000 lost souls, the 1889 flood "was the greatest single-day civilian loss of life in this country before September 11, 2001.” And this location, right in front of you, is where it all began.
 
The South Fork Dam was originally built by the state of Pennsylvania to provide water for the Pennsylvania canal. The dam was sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad, and then eventually to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, with a membership roster that included many wealthy individuals from the Pittsburgh area whose names (Frick, Carnegie, Mellon) you would recognize. They renamed it Lake Conemaugh, and the dam and about 160 acres of the surrounding area became a playground for the leading industrialists of the early 20th century.
 
The dam was not well maintained, and in fact, when a thousand expensive black bass from Lake Erie (at the unheard-of price at that time of a dollar a fish) were brought in via special railroad tank car and stocked in its waters, screens were installed in the dam spillways to keep the fish from escaping. An unintended side-effect was that the screens also caught debris in them, rendering them pretty useless during any attempt to drain the lake in case of emergency.

It rained heavily beginning on May 30, 1889; in fact, six to 10 inches fell within 24 hours. Creeks became torrents. Telegraph lines came down. Rail lines were washed away. Shortly after 3 pm on May 31, the dam finally gave way, sending 20 million tons of water - and a torrent of water and debris almost 40 feet high - rampaging down into the valley of Johnstown. (A poem about the flood from this era written by Isaac Reed contains these lines: “All the horrors that hell could wish/Such was the price that was paid for fish.”)
 
According to historical accounts, the waters contained what one survivor described as a “dark mass in which seethed houses, freight cars, trees, and animals." Locomotive engineer John C. Hess, in a train traveling the very tracks you see in this photo, heard the thunderous sound of the oncoming water and debris, threw his train in reverse, tied down the train's whistle so it would blow continuously, and threw open the throttle, flying at top speed down the tracks, trying to warn the people in the valley below of the coming deluge. Many people heard that whistle, sought higher ground, and lived to tell the tale.

Hess the engineer also survived, although his train did not. Further down the valley, the railroad tracks had been washed away, and so Hess abandoned his train and ran up the hill to safety; the train was swept away by the flood. You can read a brief version of his story here. The people of East Conemaugh gave Hess a gold watch for Christmas that year, in gratitude for his efforts. His heroism is also described in a brief news story upon his death in 1906; you can read that here. The Johnstown Flood National Memorial's Facebook page includes the transcript of an interview with Mr. Hess, which you may find interesting, as well.

By shortly after 4 pm, the flood waters reached Johnstown, sending waves crashing against Westmont Hill, up the Stoneycreek River, and flooding Kernville. Survivors tell tales of the ravages of the water; and of the heroes who rescued others from the raging currents.
 
Just before 4:30, the Stone Bridge caught the debris from the flood, effectively forming a dam. By 6 pm, the wreckage at the Stone Bridge caught fire, and that fire burned for three days. One of the great ironies of the tale is that some people who initially survived, washed along on the wreckage, were caught in the debris at the bridge and died by fire instead of by flood.
 
The flood had effectively washed out all means of communication between the Johnstown area and the outside world. However, shortly, the details were pieced together and the press began arriving on scene, with bag and baggage. And so it was that the 1889 Johnstown flood became one of the first national disasters to be covered in a major way by the press.

Several hundred journalists, photographers, and artists arrived in Johnstown, and the world newspapers began to carry the tales (some true and some more far-fetched) of the flood, and of its heroes and villains. They sent out requests for aid, and the world responded, generously assisting the people of Johnstown throughout their recovery.

Disaster relief efforts commenced; less than a week after the flood, Clara Barton herself arrived on site with five other individuals, and they began the first peacetime relief efforts of the American Red Cross.

And the recovery of bodies continued for days. In all, 2,209 people died; 99 entire families (including 396 children) were wiped off the face of the earth. More than 750 victims were never identified, and their bodies lie in the Plot of the Unknown in Grandview Cemetery, in Johnstown, PA.
 
Numerous complaints were brought against the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, but in the end, they were never officially charged with anything. The flood was declared to be an Act of God. The club members contributed blankets and money toward the flood relief efforts (and Andrew Carnegie donated money for a library - the first of 2500 libraries funded by the steel magnate - which has since become the home of the Johnstown Flood Museum). However, the popular local sentiment toward them was hostile, these “robber barons” whose watery playground tragically turned into a watery grave for so many of the residents of Johnstown and the surrounding areas.
 
I do not know if my husband had family who were directly impacted by the great flood of 1889. His mother and sister are interred in Grandview, a cemetery in Johnstown where many of the flood victims also lie. I must get there someday to take some pictures and pay our respects. My husband’s mother and father grew up in Johnstown and would have experienced the flood of St. Patrick's Day in 1936; however, both of them have passed and so we have no way to ask them about that. I have sent inquiries to Aunt Sue, one of the last surviving members of my husband’s father’s family, to see what first-hand memories of that event she may be able to share.
 
My husband’s personal tie with Johnstown flood history is that he assisted with the clean-up efforts after the 1977 flood. There was a federal initiative in which workers were paid minimum wage and bused into Johnstown each day to clean up mud from the basements in town. He remembers the filthy, stinking river mud, worse smelling than any mud he’d ever experienced before or since.

Each day, the workers would go down into the basements, and they would emerge covered in filth, and move on to the next basement. The venues they worked in included business, jewelry stores, and residences. “They searched us each night before we got back on the buses to make sure we weren’t looting,” my husband said. “But that made everybody mad, and so soon they stopped that. You know what? Some of the people of Johnstown thought of us . . . as heroes.” (This was, by the way, the first time he has shared the details of his own Johnstown flood story.)
 
As I was visiting the remains of the dam on this day, the lyrics of a Bruce Springsteen song kept running through my head (and I was even singing them out loud as we visited this site), about the band playing a song about the night of the Johnstown flood. That tune is Highway Patrolman, and I’m including a fantastic Johnny Cash cover of the tune.
 
Thank you for taking this little walk through history with me. For those who may be interested, here are some resources you may wish to visit to learn more about the Johnstown Flood. Facts mentioned in this write-up (such as numbers, etc.) were obtained primarily from the resources listed below.

Johnstown Flood National Memorial Web site. 

Johnstown Flood Museum, History of the Johnstown Flood.

Johnstown Flood Museum, the Great Flood of 1889, Telling the Story.

Harper's Weekly, June 15, 1889, images from The Johnstown Flood. (If the link does not work, try http://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/175404 and click on "show image list.")

Johnstown Flood of 1889, Greatest Disaster in State Continues to Resonate. 125th-year anniversary of the flood. Watch the short video, about 3 minutes long; I highly recommend it. (On the 125th anniversary, 2,209 luminarias were lighted in the evening along the very ruins that you see in this photo; wouldn't that have been a sight to see!?)

Johnstown Flood, Wikipedia entry.

You can also simply do a google image search on "Johnstown Flood" to  obtain lots of photos of the disaster and the wreckage from the 1889 flood. The photo of people standing on the rooftops of houses smashed together (you'll know it when you see it) is one that gets me every time. You can also find the image of the houses in the second link on this list.