May 31st marks the 112th anniversary of the great flood that devastated Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Briefly, a dam 14 miles upstream from Johnstown (located at the confluence of the Connemaugh and Stony Creek rivers) burst following unusually heavy rains. Due to the very sudden disruption of the dam and the narrow channel of the Stony Creek the flood waters reached Johnstown as a 40-foot high wall of water moving at 40 miles an hour. The water scoured the low-lying portions of the city of Johnstown, carrying away houses and buildings including, incredibly, a barbed-wire factory! The flood waters and the debris were swept downstream to the Old Stone Bridge, which somehow remained intact. The force of the water piled the debris (consisting of houses, trees, etc., and an infernal tangle of barbed wire) against the bridge. Some 80 people who had escaped drowning were trapped in the pile of debris, but later died when the debris caught fire and burned shortly afterwards. In all, more than 2,000 people lost their lives.
Although legal challenges were defeated, it is generally believed that the cause of the disaster was the poor quality of engineering and materials used in the reconstruction of the old dam, which had been rebuilt ten years earlier. The rebuilding of the dam was ordered and financed by the South Park Hunting and Fishing Club, whose members included wealthy men like Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon and David Frick, to provide an idyllic (and exclusive) summer getaway from the grime and dirt of the steel mills in and around Pittsburgh.
For those interested, an excellent history of the disaster is given in The Johnstown Flood, by David McCollough.
Just thought this might give you some perspective – and you thought you were having a bad day!
Actually, I live in Johnstown. Yes, this was the first major flood the city had. Since its founding Johnstown has had over a dozen minor floods and three major floods. The major ones were in 1889, 1936, and 1977. After the 1936 flood, flood walls were placed on all of the rivers and our mayor declared the town “flood proof.” Yet, in 1977 it rained for 12 days straight and the Tanneryville dam broke, killing all those who lived below it (all of Tanneryville was built below the dam). The 1977 flood was the last flood; however, there is always the threat–especially with the Quemahoning dam (12.4 billion gallons) falling into disrepair.
Sadly, few people my age (high school) have ever been to one of the two flood museums in town. One is located at the site of the South Fork dam and shows a movie that was a major award winner. Most people in town over thirty have at least one good flood story, yet the kids have no interest in the town’s history. It’s sad almost.
i read that book just a week ago. fantastic read. the things that went on back then and people’s reaction to it is amazing. so very different from now. could you imagine the press today if a dam built and maintained by an exclusive club, burst and flooded out a few cities and killed thousands of people?!?
sometimes this board really makes me happy, this is the only place i found that people buy and read the same types of books i do.
I remember the 1977 flood, but I was just a kid, so I conflated the 1889 flood and the 1977 one for years. I thought the Flood Museum was all about the 1977 flood until I was 15.
I’ve since seen pictures of the pile of debris and bodies piled up against the bridge. I’ve also read a timeline account of that flood, from the time just before the dam started to give up to the clean-up. Nasty stuff. It gave me a fear of being caught in a flood that still twinges from time to time. Luckily, the valley that Altoona lies in is a bit more open than Johnstown’s, so major floods of that type are unlikely, though we’ve had minor floods in the lower-lying areas.
That would be “The Johnstown Flood (1989)” which won the Academy Award for best documentary short.
The only theatrical feature made about the flood was a silent film in 1926. Seems about time for a modern theatrical treatment of this event, but I’m thinking more along the lines of Tora! Tora! Tora! than Pearl Harbor.
Thanks for educating this European. I’ve been wondering about the Johnstown Flood ever since I heard it mentioned in Springsteens Highway Patrolman.
My country has had its fair share of floods as well. This is not surprising, as over 40% of our land mass lies below sea level. The biggest flood in recent history was in 1953, when the entire province of Zeeland was flooded and over 1850 people drowned in one night. The Delta Works that protect the province from floods today are a masterpiece of engineering.
I read McCullouch’s book years ago, after I’d read his others. A few years ago I finally got a chance to visit the site (just as the museum was CLOSING, dang it!)and I was amazed to see that most of that dam is still there! The flood waters poured over the top of that earthen dam and washed away much of it, but about 2/3 of the dam still appears to be intact! No one ever mentioned that!
By the way, I live a block away from a sizeable Lake (officially called a “pond”, but pretty darn big) that is held back by a similar earthen dam. I’m up above the water level, so it’s no threat to me, but I look at the many houses below the level of the water and wonder. Of course, they keep th dam in repair, and this one has its control pipes (which were removed from the Johnstown dam, according to McCullouch), but I still can’t help but wonder. I wouldn’t have bought house below the dam.
Johnstowner, born and raised (though I no longer live there).
Just a couple of adds:
In the OP, I believe that’s the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club.
The '77 flood occurred after 11-12 inches of rain fell over the area in 12 hours, not 12 days. A few scandals grew out of that one as well. My favorite was the story that all but three of the city’s police cruisers were destroyed because no one bothered to move them from their overnight parking area (by the river) when the water started rising.
The Stone Bridge (built for the Pennsylvania Railroad) that played a key role in the 1889 flood still stands today, carrying 50-odd Norfolk Southern and Amtrak trains daily. Those PRR engineers sure built things to last.
In ‘77 I was living on Fairfield Avenue in the West End, opposite a local barflies’ hangout called Laffey’s Tavern. Two days after the flood, the street was in chaos: dirt and mud everywhere, smashed cars scattered about, sirens screaming, National Guard helicopters clattering overhead.
I had been out of town the night of the flood and had just returned. As me and some friends were gearing up to go in and muck out the basement of the building I lived in, the door of Laffey’s bangs open. A disheveled-looking guy stumbles out, rubs his eyes, looks around and says to no one in particular, “what the HELL happened out here?”
My mother lost her watch in the '77 flood–she took it in to get repaired, and they sent it to Johnstown for the work.
I find Johnstown kind of eerie, given its history. If you look up from downtown, the whole place is surrounded by hills–it’s a natural basin. The wonder to me isn’t that they’ve had three major floods; the wonder is that they’ve onlyhad three major floods.
McCullough’s book on the flood is one of my all time favorite books, ever. I hate to touch the book, because everytime I do, I stop everything and re-read it. I read it my freshman year in college for my history class (thank you, Mr. Grossman!) and I’ve re-read it at least once a year in the (more than I care to think about) years since! If anyone here’s thinking about reading that book, DO IT!!! You won’t regret it, trust me. (This may be the best advice I’ve ever given in my life.)
May 16th marked the 127th anniversary of the Mill River flood in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. There used to be on-line versions of a commemorative newspaper article on the 50th anniversary, but the link seems to have expired. So instead I’ll set a couple of links from contemporary photographs detailing some of the destruction.
It wasn’t as big as the Johnstown flood, but it did wipe out several towns between Williamsburg and Leeds, including the town of Skinnerville, where my paternal great-great-grandfather worked in his brother’s silk mill. Several branches of my mother’s family were also in Williamsburg at the time and my grandmother tells stories she heard from her grandfather about it.
No-one in my ancestors’ immediate families were killed, but it is a rather interesting experience to see the names of the dead take up page after page in the town’s death ledgers from that year.
