This horror probably wouldn't have happened if not for a "let them eat cake" attitude by an elite few who wanted to maintain their Summer-fun pleasure palaces . The Pennsylvania Railroad was closely tied to the other industries in Johnstown and many club members worked for the railroad. Parke talked to people in South Fork and sent somebody to the telegraph tower at South Fork so that messages could be sent down the valley. 1JOHNSTOWN, Pa. The house will be rocking at this year's AmeriServ Flood City Music Festival. The process of locating the bodies of the victims wasn't easy. She was met by Knox and Reed, and the jury was overwhelmingly comprised of railroad and steel workers whose jobs and livelihoods would be threatened if the industrialists were found guilty (Coleman 2019). One of the American Red Crosss first major relief efforts took place in the aftermath of the Johnstown flood. Train service in and out of Johnstown stopped. anymore. 400 children under the age of ten were killed. Nine hundred feet by 72 feet, it was the largest earth dam (made of dirt and rock, rather than steel and concrete) in the United States and it created the largest man-made lake of the time, Lake Conemaugh. 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. The famous tower clock known as Big Ben, located at the top of the 320-foot-high Elizabeth Tower, rings out over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time on May 31, 1859. A 30-foot (9-metre) wall of water smashed into Johnstown at 4:07 pm, killing 2,209 people. Most members donated nothing. after it happened. Legal Statement. 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. There's always some terrible event lurking to destroy property, take lives, and burn itself into the history books. The Johnstown Flood would become one of the worst natural disasters ever seen in this country. In minutes, most of downtown Johnstown was destroyed. David Beale Published in 1890, this book is widely considered the best memoir of the flood by someone who experienced it. 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. The Johnstown Flood of 1889: The Tragedy of the Conemaugh. The fire continued to burn for three days. or redistributed. I want to do it tonight. But in Johnstown and other communities above the bridge, the devastation For most, The only time the rivers have flooded the downtown since then was in July 1977, when 11 inches of rain fell over two days, causing six dams to fail. In a list printed about fourteen months after the Flood, the death toll was set at 2,209. READ MORE:The Deadliest Natural Disasters in US History, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-johnstown-flood. The waters hadn't even receded yet when hundreds of journalists arrived to document the disaster for the world. The Clubs great wealth rather than the dams engineering came to be condemned. 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. The most powerful case against Reilly was provided by Robert Pitcairn, the executive of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Floods have been a frequent occurrence in Johnstown as long as history has been recorded there, floods have been part of those records. The Pennsylvania Railroad had no use for the dam or the lake, so it sold the property to John Reilly, a congressman from Altoona. (Click here for a complete list of club members). South Fork University of Pittsburgh scientists have used ground-penetrating radar and computers to analyze the dam site and the volume and speed of floodwaters that hit Johnstown at 4:07 p.m., an hour after the break. There are two Johnstown Flood-related sites in the area. They were buried together in a new cemetery built high above the town. 9:00 PM. 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. As it was, many of the town's residents were trapped in the upper floors of their homes when the deadly wave hit. What is the fishing club doing? definitions. Johnstown and Its Flood. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. One example was the Mrs. John Little lawsuit. Johnstown is located around seventy miles east of Pittsburgh in a . This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The report admitted that the club removed the pipes, but maintained that in our opinion they cannot be deemed to be the cause of the late disaster, as we find that the embankment would have been overflowed and the breach formed if the changes had not been made (ASCE Report, 1891) As discussed in the, Regardless if they were to blame or not, the public resented that the club members provided little relief relative to their respective wealth. About 4 square miles of downtown Johnstown were destroyed. 2023 A&E Television Networks, LLC. Some people in Johnstown were able to make it to the top floors of the few tall buildings in town. With rebuilding also came questions: How and why did the flood happen? By the end of 1889 there were more than a dozen, mostly histories but a few novels as well. The repaired dam would hold for ten years. AsABC Newsnotes,the litigation chiefly took place in Pittsburgh courts, where the owners of the club had tremendous influence. I think I can get away with it! Schmid went on to kill three other read more, Just before four oclock on the afternoon of May 31, 1916, a British naval force commanded by Vice Admiral David Beatty confronts a squadron of German ships, led by Admiral Franz von Hipper, some 75 miles off the Danish coast. 19 35 feet high at its crest, it had the force of As the raging waters tore down the river valley moving at speeds as fast as 100 miles per hour at times, everything in its path was torn up and carried along. As anyone who has ever experienced a flood knows, water flows in unexpected ways, and there were no satellites, Internet, or airplanes in 1889. NEW! This antagonism was to break out into violence during the 1892 Homestead steel strike in Pittsburgh. For several days in late May of 1889 in Pennsylvania it rained and rained and rained resulting in tremendous flooding and a dam break that killed thousands in Johnstown. The flood caused 17 million dollars in damages. let up just long enough for Johnstown to have its Memorial Day parade, The Johnstown Flood was so damaging in part due to a confluence of events that augmented its power at every point. It contained a lake that was over two miles long, a mile wide and 60 feet deep. Their quiet retreat from the city life was just a train ride away from Pittsburgh. For copyright reasons our film is not available for purchase. Clara Barton: Professional Angel. The matter of who was to blame was not very contentious. He was such a nice guy. The Johnstown Flood was the first major disaster served by the recently formed Red Cross. When the fire broke out, these poor people were not able to escape. Privacy Policy | Terms of Service, Membership, archives, facility rentals & more, Johnstown Flood Museum/Heritage Discovery Center/Cultural Programming, Johnstown Children's Museum/Children's Programming, Los Lobos to headline AmeriServ Flood City Music Festival 2023, collaboration between JAHA and Pitt-Johnstown. Learn the story through sights of what happened when 20 million tons of water destroyed the area and the effort to rebuild it . 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 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. But when trains were finally able to get close to the town, the first items delivered were coffins. Johnstown was about 14 miles away from the South Fork Dam, and standing in between was the Conemaugh Viaduct. All of the water from Lake Conemaugh rushed forward at 40 miles per hour, sweeping away everything in its path. That bit of mercy came at a terrible price for the people of Johnstown, however. AsThe Vintage Newsnotes, after tearing through the town and causing incredible destruction, the water was again stopped by debris at Stone Bridge. The clubs boat fleet included a pair of steam yachts, many sailboats and canoes, and boathouses to store them in. The Cambria Iron Works was completely destroyed. 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. All that wreckage piled up behind the Pennsylvania Railroads Stone Bridge. Over the club's ten years in existence, it grew from 16 members to, it is believed, 61 in 1889. The Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers of southern Africa. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. Francis P. Sempa is the author of Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century and America's Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics, and War. Many people drowned. No other disaster prior to 1900 was so fully described. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Testimony Taken by the Pennsylvania Railroad, 1889-1891. 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. However, no club member ever expressed a sense of personal responsibility for the disaster. It did nothing to sway sentiments. Clara Barton arrived five days later to lead the relief. There are stories of homes floating past with people trapped on the roofs, screaming for help. They had set the club up as a limited liability company, which meant they couldn't be held personally accountable and that their vast personal fortunes were never in danger. Dahlstedt, Marden. Create your own unique website with customizable templates. Although the Flood of 1889 was by far the worst, Johnstown had not seen the last of its floods. (AP Photo/File) (The Associated Press), 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. (AP Photo) (The Associated Press), 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. On the day of the flood, the town woke up to find water already rising in the streets from the torrential rains, and everyone moved to the upper floors in order to wait it out. 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). 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. As theJohnstown Area Historical Associationnotes, the town had been built in a river valley. What might have been worth a fortune 20 years ago may be worth significantly less today. Beach Haven, NJ: The Attic, 1972. That means that if the Johnstown Flood happened today, the lawsuits against the South Fork Hunting & Fishing Club would probably be successful. A total of 314 of the 1100 Woodvale residents died when this happened. The damage would have been less if the water had been able to slip through the viaduct unimpeded. General Hastings took charge for several months, making sure relief supplies went to survivors who needed them and keeping the press from taking over the town. "These flood events happened with frequency, not the magnitude, obviously, of . Ten years after being finished, while under the possession of the railroad system, the dam suffered a major break. A few of the club members, most notably Robert Pitcairn, served on relief committees. When the water subsided, there was literally no sign that a town had ever existed. A: "Whatever happened to fanny packs?" B: "Oh, you'll start seeing them againthey're back in style apparently." The club renamed the reservoir, calling it Lake Conemaugh. After Johnstown was destroyed, it was found that 1,600 homes had been destroyed, 2, 209 people lost their lives, and there was over $17,000,000 in property damage. 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). People in the path of the rushing flood waters were often crushed as their homes and other structures were swept away. Newspapers all across the country denounced the sportsmens lake. It crashed into the barrier and went hurtling back toward Johnstown like a boomerang. It's accepted that the flood struck Johnstown proper at 4:07 PM. Clara Barton, after confirming the news, brought a team with her from near Washington D.C. and arrived on Wednesday, June 5, 1889. Many businessmen seemed more concerned with repairing their damaged property rather than aiding Johnstown. The Johnstown Flood resulted in the first expression of outrage at power of the great trusts and giant corporations that had formed in the post-Civil War period. Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood At 4:07 p.m., Johnstown inhabitants heard a low rumble that grew to a "roar like thunder." Some knew immediately what had happened: after a night of heavy rains, South Fork Dam had finally broken, sending 20 million tons of water crashing down the narrow valley. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Strayer, Harold. 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. Complications regarding liability arose after the flood because the club began renovations on the dam before they gained legal ownership. But there was one small blessing on the day: Because so many had already fled, only 16 people from Mineral Point died. People who managed to survive so far became trapped in the huge pile of debris, all wrapped in a tangle of barbed wire from destroyed Gautier Wire Works. after the occurrence. The Tribune-Democratreportsthat many people believe this spared communities downriver from Johnstown from a similarly horrifying fate. One of the most horrifying details of the Johnstown Flood is the fact that not all of the 2,209 people who perished that day died in the flood itself. Although Whitman loved music and books, he left school at the age of 14 to become a journeyman printer. Wasn't Clara Barton involved somehow? Writing for the masses, journalists exaggerated, repeated unfounded myths, and denounced the South Fork Club. A wrecked freight car next to twisted railroad tracks, after the Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood of 1889. However, the canal system became obsolete almost immediately after the reservoir was completed in 1852. The Flood Museum's film is available for purchase. after everything that has happened. It flattened a railroad bridge. 18 As soon as news of the disaster spread on what had happened to this town, reporters and illustrators from over 100 magazines and newspapers were sent to describe what happened. synonyms. Many members did contribute, but their offerings were minuscule compared to the overall contributions. 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. Frick was wounded in the neck and two stories exist about what happened next: 1.) As law professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman notes, in response, courts began adopting a legal precedent that held property owners liable even for "acts of God" if the changes they'd made to the property were directly linked to those acts. was unimaginable. 20 million tons of water rushed down the narrow Conemaugh Valley like At your site, do you show a film? Through the Johnstown Flood: By A Survivor by Rev. Doctors, nurses and Clara Barton and the American Red Cross arrived to provide medical assistance and emergency shelter and supplies. And they argued successfully that the flood was an act of God, and thus, they couldn't be held responsible. There was a census done in 1890, but little of it survivesnot enough to help us at all. Market data provided by Factset. How could future flood disasters be avoided? Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. Cambria County Transit Authority. The floating houses and barns caused a tide of debris to back up at a downtown stone bridge, creating a 30-acre pile. 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. How Americas Most Powerful Men Caused Americas Deadliest Flood, The Deadliest Natural Disasters in US History. Fourteen miles up the Conemaugh Valley, the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club's president Colonel Elias Unger saw that the Lake's water level had risen more than two feet overnight. Ruff was a chief stockholder and served, we believe, as president of the club until his death from cancer in March of 1887. homes as the rising water gradually flooded the valley. It's difficult to imagine just how much water slammed into Johnstown that day. This made it one of the largest reservoirs in the country at the time. 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. Many Mar. July 20 1977 July 20 Great great flood hits Johnstown A flash flood hits Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on July 20, 1977, killing 84 people and causing millions of dollars in damages. But as theJohnstown Area Historical Associationnotes, the survivors first focused on the living people who were trapped in collapsed buildings and other spaces spared by the water. These victims were buried in a mass grave called the Plot of the Unknown at Grandview Cemetery. Some people who had survived by floating on top of debris were burned to death in the fire. 99 entire families were wiped out, 396 of them, children. The operators of the dam tried to warn everyone The railroad lost two cases based on the loss of property. They installed fish screens across the spillway to keep the expensive game fish from escaping, which had the unfortunate effect of capturing debris and keeping the spillway from draining the lakes overflow. By the time it reached Johnstown the flood didn't even look like water A Photographic Story of the Johnstown Flood of 1889. On Wednesday, festival organizers announced Los Lobos and Keller Williams' Grateful Grass . Then the whole dam broke -- the lake full of water just pushed the dam out in front of it. 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.
