People tried to flee to high ground but most were caught in the fast water, a lot were crushed by debris. The townsfolk who had just survived a terrifyingly powerful flood were just emerging from the wreckage when the water came flooding back from the other direction. It took five years to rebuild Johnstown, which again endured deadly floods in 1936 and 1977. Floods have been a frequent occurrence in Johnstown as long as history has been recorded there, floods have been part of those records. In our visitor center, we show a National Park Service-produced film, nicknamed "Black Friday," that tries to recreate the Flood. Anna Fenn Maxwell's husband was washed away by the flood; she was trapped in the family home with seven children as the water rose. A thorough 2014 computer simulation of the disaster confirmed this supposition (Yetter, Bishop, 2014). In The Johnstown Flood, David McCullough gives you all as well as the heart and soul of this heinous catastrophe. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Beginning on May 28, 1988, President Ronald Reagan met Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev for a four-day summit in Russia. The Cambria Iron Works was completely destroyed. Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a thriving community with a strong economy based on the coal and steel industries. Five thousand homes had been destroyed, so many families lived in tents. The Clubs great wealth rather than the dams engineering came to be condemned. Clara Barton arrived five days later to lead the relief. 20 million tons of water rushed down the narrow Conemaugh Valley like All of the water from Lake Conemaugh rushed forward at 40 miles per hour, sweeping away everything in its path. All Rights Reserved. However, their vast influence over Americas judicial system allowed club members to escape any liability. A bridge downstream from the town caught much of the debris and then proceeded to catch fire. people are known to have died in the flood waters. The Day it Rained Forever: A Story of the Johnstown Flood. Difficult to find. perished. An engineer at the dam saw warning signs of an impending disaster and rode a horse to the village of South Fork to warn the residents. In Johnstown, the Tribune resumed publication on June 14. Over the club's ten years in existence, it grew from 16 members to, it is believed, 61 in 1889. However, people usually only turned to lawsuits as a last resort, since it was nearly impossible to win against the industry titans. Dahlstedt, Marden. Even very deep floods might not seem so scary if you assume they're moving slowly so it's important to know that the flood that hit Johnstown in 1889 wasn't moving slowly. The Johnstown Flood would become one of the worst natural disasters ever seen in this country. After all, water, like everything else, moves faster downhill. In Harrisburg, the . It had been raining heavily in the two days before the flood. In an old Carnegie Library in Johnstown is the Johnstown Flood Museum, owned by the Johnstown Area Heritage Association. As reported by the Delaware County Daily Times, bodies were eventually found as far away as Cincinnati, Ohio, (which is 367 miles away) and as late as 1911, more than two decades after the event. Workers toiled for the most part of the day, first trying to raise the height of the dam, then digging spillways and removing screens that kept fish in the lake from escaping. The Johnstown Flood was the first major disaster served by the recently formed Red Cross. Wasn't Clara Barton involved somehow? The Red Cross' efforts were covered heavily in the media of the time, instantly elevating the organization to iconic status in the United States. Most members donated nothing. Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. The viaduct was completely destroyed in the disaster. Warnings about the safety of the dam had been ignored. The matter of who was to blame was not very contentious. Legal Statement. Felt's admission, made in an article in Vanity Fair magazine, took legendary read more, Fifteen-year-old Alleen Rowe is killed by Charles Schmid in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona. The Terrible Wave. The Pennsylvania Railroad had no use for the dam or the lake, so it sold the property to John Reilly, a congressman from Altoona. Perhaps they have been so busy lamenting over the loss of their big fish pond that they have really not had time to think much of the destruction down the valley (PA Inquirer, June 13, 1889). Attempting to prove that a particular owner acted negligently was often futile and the members designed the financial structure of the club so that their personal assets were separate from it (PA Inquirer, June 27, 1889). Johnstown: Benshoff, 1988. It is a true museum, and features an Academy-Award-winning film by Charles Guggenheim called "the Johnstown Flood." "These flood events happened with frequency, not the magnitude, obviously, of . The Club's great wealth rather than the dam's engineering came to be condemned. The flood had cut everything down to the bedrock. The public was bitter that these wealthy businessmen took so little action and seemed unconcerned by the tragedy. The most powerful case against Reilly was provided by Robert Pitcairn, the executive of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. This debris caught against the viaduct, forming an ersatz dam that held the water back temporarily. 700 of the victims could not be identified. Despite the conclusions of the ASCE, many individuals attempted to sue the South Fork Fishing Club and its members. The chaos of the Johnstown Flood can't be overstated. The Pennsylvania Railroad was closely tied to the other industries in Johnstown and many club members worked for the railroad. The night of May 30, 1889 heavy rain poured non-stop. That happened 88 years after America's deadliest flash flood, also in Johnstown, prompted the construction of the Laurel Run Dam. It was the first disaster relief effort of its kind. What's Happening!! The fear of big floods remains. The reprieve lasted less than ten minutes. Barton would leave Johnstown a hero. The three remembered most happened on May 31, 1889, when at least 2,209 people died, the St. Patrick's Day flood of 1936, in which almost two dozen people died, and a third devastating flood on July 19-20, 1977 . The three remembered most happened on May 31, 1889, when at least 2,209 people died, the St. Patrick's Day flood of 1936, in which almost two dozen people died, and a third devastating flood on July 19-20, 1977, when at least 85 people died. Businesses let their employees go home early to prepare their homes and families for flooding. The Tribune-Democratreportsthat many people believe this spared communities downriver from Johnstown from a similarly horrifying fate. definitions. NEW! Find this quaint town amidst the Allegheny region and head straight to the Johnstown Flood Museum to get on first-name terms with this former steel town. Perhaps the best reference book ever written on the story. When it did come out, it favored the club. Gertrude Quinn Slattery, 6, floated through the wreckage on a roof, and when it came close to the shore a man tossed her through the air to others on land, who caught her. I dont think there has ever been a case in this country where such cold-blooded disregard of the interest of others was exhibited as in this instance. There were two primary conjectures about who was to blame: former Congressman John Reilly and the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Hydraulic experts and engineers flocked to Johnstown to analyze the situation. Johnstown, PA . By 1943, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the Johnstown Local Flood Protection Program (JLFPP), a series of channel improvements to increase the amount of water the rivers could carry. Whatever happened to Bill Collins? Every year, the town honors the dead with a reading of a list of names of those who died in this tragic event. The damage would have been less if the water had been able to slip through the viaduct unimpeded. The "Johnstown Flood" was a chaotic result for a small middle class family, natural disasters happen so much in one's lifetime and can be emotionally crippling. The club never reinstalled the drainage pipes so that the reservoir could be drained. fairly often in southwestern Pennsylvania, so most people didn't think The dam was about 15 miles upstream from Johnstown, Pa., a steel mill town of more than 10,000 people. And they argued successfully that the flood was an act of God, and thus, they couldn't be held responsible. 733 Lake Road All rights reserved. Flooding happened Daily weather map for 8 am May 30, 1889, the day before the big flood in Johnstown. Five days after the flood, the American Society of Civil Engineers, or the ASCE, met to form an official record of the event. People in the path of the rushing flood waters were often crushed as their homes and other structures were swept away. That means that if the Johnstown Flood happened today, the lawsuits against the South Fork Hunting & Fishing Club would probably be successful. It had already failed once in 1862. The umpires were done with their day's work after Baltimore's Josh Lester grounded out to end the top of the ninth inning with the Orioles trailing 7-4, officially ending the . As officials prepare to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the enormous Johnstown Flood of 1889, new research has helped explain why the deluge was so deadly. Inside, on a local news page, the paper ran a review of "Johnstown and Its Flood," a book about the firsthand memories of author Gertrude Q. Slattery, also known as Mrs. Frank P. Slattery, during the 1889 Johnstown Flood that killed more than 2,200 people. When the fire broke out, these poor people were not able to escape. but now many of Johnstown's streets were under 2 - 7 feet of water. black mountain of junk. Whose idea was the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club? The result, as reported byThe Seattle Times, was around 750 bodies that were never identified. As authorDavid McCulloughwrites, Mineral Point was home to about 30 families who lived in neat houses lining the town's only street, Front Street. The public wanted the club members to face the same type of destruction that they did. The matter of who was to blame was not very contentious. Richard Burkert, president of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association, says the research suggests that the dam "was in much poorer shape" than previously known. Was someone to blame? Make sure youre always up-to-date by subscribing to our online newsletter. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, Songs told the stories of real and imagined heroes. after what went down. Testimony Taken by the Pennsylvania Railroad, 1889-1891. He claimed that Reilly was responsible for the removal of the pipes (Coleman 2019). And asTribLIVEreports, the flood did $17 million in damage, which would be over $480 millionin today's dollars. Unfortunately, it . This natural disaster caused many families and homes to come crashing down, all the townspeople shed tears that day as they watched their homes and loved ones float away with the . Although the 1977 flood was brutal within a seven-county disaster area, the JLFPP flood control efforts kept the flood level about 11 feet lower than it would have been without it. Doctors worried especially about diseases that might breed in the unclean water and decaying bodies of humans and animals. No announcement has yet been observed of the millionaires who constitute the South Fork Fishing Club doing anything remarkable toward bearing the expense of caring for the sufferers and clearing away the debris at Johnstown. The Soviet Union, which in 1928 had only 20,000 cars and a single truck factory, was eager to join the ranks of read more. How Americas Most Powerful Men Caused Americas Deadliest Flood, The Deadliest Natural Disasters in US History. As a result, it flooded at least once or twice every year. It was clear that club members instructed the workers to carry out the fatal renovations. wave" picked up houses, trees, and even trains on its way down the The public was bitter that these wealthy businessmen took so little action and seemed unconcerned by the tragedy. There are stories of homes floating past with people trapped on the roofs, screaming for help. was loosely based on the Eric Monte-penned film Cooley High. More 1889 flood resources. The dam and the large lake behind it were the private property of an exclusive vacation retreat made up of 19th-century industrial barons including Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon. Some people survived by clinging to the tops of barns and homes. Fourteen miles up the Conemaugh River stood the South Fork Dam holding back the waters of Conemaugh Lake. At the end of the day, per History, 2,209 people were killed, many swept away by the sheer force of the water and that includes 99 entire families and nearly 400 children. In 1936 another severe flood finally produced some action with the passage of the Flood Control Act of 1936. However, the legal ambiguity allowed the club to argue that Reilly was to blame. The residents were very used to moving their possessions to the second floor of their homes and businesses and waiting a few hours for the water to recede. That when Berkman's next shot did not go off, the wounded Frick and Leishman went after Berkman. (Click here for a complete list of club members). turned out to be one of the heaviest rainfalls of the 1800s. By the end of 1889 there were more than a dozen, mostly histories but a few novels as well. YA, Walker, James. The water had brought an incredible mass of trees, animals, structures, and other stuff to the bridge, leading to a pile of debris estimated to cover about 30 acres and be as high as 70 feet. READ MORE: How Americas Most Powerful Men Caused Americas Deadliest Flood. Fishing and boating were popular activities, and the club members also enjoyed picnicking by the reservoirs spillway. The flood was the first major natural disaster in which the American Red Cross played a major role. What makes the tragic story of the Johnstown Flood so haunting isn't just the scale of the damage and the loss of life more than 2,200 people ultimately died it's the chain of events leading up to it. As theJohnstown Area Historical Associationnotes, the town had been built in a river valley. Wasn't Clara Barton involved somehow? Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Later, he would rebuild Johnstowns library that library building today houses the Johnstown Flood Museum. News of the disaster prompted an incredible outpouring of assistance from neighboring communities. The club renamed the reservoir, calling it Lake Conemaugh. The railroad lost two cases based on the loss of property. I have an old stereoview of the disasteris it worth anything? Degen, Paula and Carl. Although the water was slowed somewhat by the terrain and obstacles, it was still an incredibly destructive force when it reached Johnstown. (AP Photo/File), In this historical photo from May 31, 1889, survivors stand by homes destroyed when the South Fork Dam collapsed in Johnstown, Pa. As officials prepare to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the enormous Johnstown Flood of 1889 that killed 2,209 people, new research has helped explain why the deluge was so deadly. What might have been worth a fortune 20 years ago may be worth significantly less today. A dam was built in 1840 on the Little Conemaugh River, 14 miles upstream from Johnstown. On May 31, 1889, the Johnstown Flood killed more than 2,200 people in southwestern Pennsylvania when the long-neglected South Fork Dam suddenly gave way. or redistributed. As it is, for the people of Johnstown and the surrounding area, May 31, 1889, remains a memory of loss. The Johnstown Flood is considered the first major civilian disaster relief effort for the American Red Cross, which was less than ten years old in 1889. Who built the dam? Johnstown is 60 miles east of Pittsburgh in a valley near the Allegheny, Little Conemaugh and Stony Creek Rivers. The flood was temporarily stopped behind debris at the Conemaugh Viaduct, but when the viaduct collapsed, the water was released with renewed force and hit Mineral Point so hard it literally scraped the entire town away. They soon discovered that the absence of discharge pipes was the primary cause of the breach (Coleman 2019). After the Johnstown flood of 1936, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers undertook a study with the aim of redesigning Johnstown's infrastructure to permanently remove any future threat of serious flooding. Niagara Falls. The members of the new club were all prominent and wealthy Pittsburgh industrialists, like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. If they'd fled for high ground, many of the 2,209 who died in the flood might have survived. WHAT HAPPENED? Organized in 1879, the purpose of the club was to provide the members and their families an opportunity to get away from the noise, heat and dirt of Pittsburgh. When people think of floods, they sometimes think of slow-rising water and groups of people desperately piling up sandbags to hold back the tide. 99 entire families were wiped out, 396 of them, children. was unimaginable. People all over the nation, even the world, responded with donations of clothing, food, and shelter. about 1600 homes, 280 businesses, and much of the Cambria Iron Company. Our park, Johnstown Flood National Memorial, preserves the ruins of the South Fork Dam, part of the old lakebed, and some of the buildings of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. 2,209 1JOHNSTOWN, Pa. The house will be rocking at this year's AmeriServ Flood City Music Festival. Pittsburgh, unpublished dissertation, 1940. In the end, no lawsuit against the club was successful. Imagine the Mississippi River smashing into your living room, and you'll have some idea of the destructive force that hit the town of 30,000. PA In 1879, they made repairs and improvements to the dam to bring up the water level. Newspapers all across the country denounced the sportsmens lake. At 3:10 p.m., the dam collapsed, causing a roar that could be heard for miles. However, there was not enough substantial evidence to hold the club legally responsible. On the day of the storm, the water was already rising in Mineral Point, and most of the people had already fled to higher ground when the dam failed. As it was, many of the town's residents were trapped in the upper floors of their homes when the deadly wave hit. On Wednesday, festival organizers announced Los Lobos and Keller Williams' Grateful Grass . Below the bridge the floodwaters reached the first floor, but it did not have the force of all that debris trapped in the jam. Work began on the dam in 1838. Sadly, the Flood has proved to be a stumbling block for many genealogists. There was a census done in 1890, but little of it survivesnot enough to help us at all. Barton's branch of the American Red Cross is remembered for providing shelter to many survivors in large buildings simply known as "Red Cross Hotels," some of which stood into early 1890. They took measurements at the site and interviewed many residents. New York: Penguin, Puffin, 1991. Some people in Johnstown were able to make it to the top floors of the few tall buildings in town. By the time the Club bought the property, the dam needed some repairs. FILE - In this 1889 file photograph, people stand atop houses among ruins after disastrous flooding in Johnstown, Pa. Facts, figures and anecdotes about the Johnstown flood in Pennsylvania, which killed 2,209 people 125 years ago, gave the Red Cross its first international response effort and helped set a precedent for American liability law. The waters were 60 feet tall in places and rushed forwards at 40 mph. Members could swim, boat, fish, and socialize in the reservoir atop the dam. Legal Statement. One example was the Mrs. John Little lawsuit. As coverage of the horror of the event began to recede, the media began to look at the causes of the disaster. They built cottages and a clubhouse along the lake. And obstacles on the ground would stop it for brief moments, which meant that people who survived an initial wave would be hit by subsequent waves of equal force at random increments. The process of locating the bodies of the victims wasn't easy. The dam was envisioned by the state of Pennsylvania, and Sylvester Welch (Welsh), the principal engineer of the old Allegheny Portage Railroad, as a canal reservoir. Clara Barton and five workers arrived in Johnstown on June 5, less than a week after the flood. Cambria County Transit Authority. According to the Johnstown Area Historical Association, the wall of water that slammed into the town at somewhere between 40 and 90 miles per hour was 35 to 40 feet in height on average and water lines were found as high as 89 feet, which is almost the distance from home plate to first base in a baseball game. Wasn't there an old book on the Flood? The collapse of the South Fork Dam after torrential rain on May 31 . It did nothing to sway sentiments. During recovery and relief efforts the state of Pennsylvania put Johnstown under martial (military) law, since many of the towns leaders had perished in the flood. Train service in and out of Johnstown stopped. Slattery, Gertrude Quinn. Then the whole dam broke -- the lake full of water just pushed the dam out in front of it. Later investigations like the 2014 computer simulation refuted this claim. Beach Haven, NJ: The Attic, 1972. 2023 Johnstown Area Heritage Association It may have surged to speeds as high as 90 miles per hour. Princeton has made the title available in its online archive, and it is downloadable in a variety of formats suitable for e-readers and tablets. The world, in short, wants to kill us. The club was legally created as a nonprofit corporation in 1879. Although the Flood of 1889 was by far the worst, Johnstown had not seen the last of its floods. People who saw it coming said it looked like a moving, boiling The State of Pennsylvania built the dam originally to supply water for the Pennsylvania canal. Hydraulic experts and engineers flocked to Johnstown to analyze the situation. I want to do it tonight. The repaired dam would hold for ten years. More than 2,200 people died, making the Johnstown Flood the worst . When the South Fork Dam burst on May 31, 1889, the population of Johnstown had already spent their day dealing with floodwaters. It had been raining heavily in the two days before the flood. READ MORE:The Deadliest Natural Disasters in US History, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-johnstown-flood. . It took them seven months to finish the report and they did not publish it until 1891. Although it's not the most valuable source, internet auction sites such as Ebay can give you an idea of what you have is worth. They were buried together in a new cemetery built high above the town. Despite extensive flood control measures, about two dozen people died in a March 1936 flood, and 85 died in in a July 1977 flood that caused over $300 million in property damage. "What I suffered, with the bodies of my seven children floating around me in the gloom, can never be told," she later recalled. The club had very few assets aside from the clubhouse, but a few lawsuits were brought against the club anyway. The clubs activities were beautifully documented by member Louis Semple Clarke, a talented amateur photographer (as seen in the shot below more of Clarkes work can be seen on the Historic Pittsburgh website, thanks to a collaboration between JAHA and Pitt-Johnstown). By June 5th, the newly organized Red Cross, led by Clara Barton, arrived in Johnstown. It appears that the club was the idea of Benjamin F. Ruff, a tunnel contractor and sometime-real estate salesman from the Pittsburgh area. When we tell the story of what happened at the dam May 31, 1889, we draw from first-person accounts from Colonel Elias Unger, the President of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club in 1889, John Parke, a young engineer who had recently arrived to supervise the installation of a sewer system, William Y. Boyer, whose title was Superintendent of Lake and Grounds at the South Fork Club, and several others. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. Once the dam failed at 3:10-3:15, however, such communications were impossible. The South Fork Fishing & Hunting Club counted many of Pittsburghs leading industrialists and financiers among its 61 members, including Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, and Philander Knox. The festival will take place Aug. 4-5. Behind the numbers and stats, and even the human tragedy, there is an evil lurking here. The Pennsylvania Railroad had repaired it, but did not build it back up to its original height. However, the canal system became obsolete almost immediately after the reservoir was completed in 1852. As a result, those pipes became clogged with debris. These men had been warned of the danger time and again, but they feasted and enjoyed themselves on the lake while the very lives of the people in the valley below were in danger.. A total of 314 of the 1100 Woodvale residents died when this happened. It's difficult to imagine just how much water slammed into Johnstown that day. Some people who had survived by floating on top of debris were burned to death in the fire. (AP Photo), This photo from May 31, 1889, released by the Johnstown Flood Museum shows the destruction along Main Street in Johnstown, Pa., following the collapse of the South Fork Dam that killed 2,209 people. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. The newest chapter on the Johnstown flood, written not by historians but geologists, fixes blame for the disaster squarely on a sports club owned by some of Pittsburgh's industrial . With rebuilding also came questions: How and why did the flood happen? Some individuals even ravaged the club members houses in the resort. who weren't killed instantly, were swept down the valley to their deaths. let up just long enough for Johnstown to have its Memorial Day parade, It contained a lake that was over two miles long, a mile wide and 60 feet deep. In these pre-Social Security days, personnel records for firms like Cambria Iron or the Pennsylvania Railroad are not as sophisticated as they are today. About 80 people actually burned to death. In 1879 he ended up selling the land to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club at a loss. For copyright reasons our film is not available for purchase. As law professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman notes, the South Fork Dam held about 20 million tons of water behind it. The "terrible Littles case was dismissed almost immediately. Three separate warnings were sent which might have given people time to get to higher ground but there had been false alarms concerning the dam's failure in the past, and all three messages were ignored. Hindsight always makes things seem very clear and obvious, but at several points as the tragedy unfolded, different decisions or a simple change of luck might have averted the worst. valley. The club boasted some of the richest and most powerful men in the country as founding members, including Andrew Carnegie, Henry Frick, and Andrew Mellon. The club owners made small donations to Johnstown relief funds but were never held responsible for the disaster. Ruff was a chief stockholder and served, we believe, as president of the club until his death from cancer in March of 1887. Buildings, livestock, barbed wire, vehicles all were carried with terrifying force downriver. Tragically, as The Tribune-Democrat reports, many people had been carried by the flood to the bridge, and some had survived the journey only to find themselves trapped in the wreckage. Johnstown: Benshoff, 1964, 1993. They soon discovered that the absence of discharge pipes was the primary cause of the breach (Coleman 2019). Their pleasure and fishing boats destroyed (Harrisburg, 1889). Few of them would be considered reliable histories, although all of them are fascinating, and copies of almost all of them survive to this day. As the men were working on the dam that morning, John Parke, an engineer who worked for a Pittsburgh firm of Wilkins and Powell on a sewer system at the Club, went to South Fork about 11:00 AM to start spreading the word about the dam's condition. All that wreckage piled up behind the Pennsylvania Railroads Stone Bridge. After five years, rebuilding was so complete that the city showed no signs of the disaster. Even though the club members were able to avoid legal consequences, the public indignation regarding these lawsuits helped push the American legal system to shift from a fault-based system to one based on strict liability (Coleman 2019). We can use some tools like a city directory that was recompiled after the Flood and some other Flood related documents, but definite family histories, unless somehow preserved by the families themselves, are hard to determine. While the water continued to rise, he sent a messenger to the nearest town to telegraph a warning to Johnstown that the dam was close to overflowing. On July 19th, 1977, an unusual event occurred, resulting in pure chaos: a thunderstorm stalled over the Johnstown area, dumping 12 inches or more of rain in 24 hours. In the first edition following the disaster, the Tribunes editor George Swank placed blame for the disaster clearly on the Club: We think we know what struck us, and it was not the work of Providence.

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