When great flood has hit johnstown pa ?”
Extra, extra. All across Pittsburgh, newsboys hawked their papers, spreading word of the catastrophic event that had taken place on May 31, 1889, less than 80 miles to the east. “Johnstown wiped out…Thousands of men, women, and children killed…” The horrifying news accounts on the Saturday after the great Johnstown flood were riddled with inaccuracies, but the overwhelming truth remained: the South Fork dam had broken, flooding the valley with an avalanche of water that destroyed the city of Johnstown, claimed more than 2,000 lives, and injured thousands of others. The South Fork dam was originally created for a reservoir on the western slope of Allegheny Mountain to supply extra water during the dry months for the Johnstown to Pittsburgh branch of the new canal system. The canal was part of a travel system called the “Main Line” canal, created to compete with New York’s Erie Canal. As part of the Allegheny Portage Railroad, the canal—along with a series of inclined planes and the
May 28, 1889. A storm supplied the worst downpour ever seen by the occupants of the Johnstown-South Fork area. It is estimated that between 6 – 10 inches of rain fell in the 24 hr period. May 31, 1889. The South Fork Dam burst, allowing 20 million tons of Lake Conemaugh to drain, and the first town to be hit by the flood was South Fork. Fortunately, South Fork was hilly and people literally ran to the hills when they saw the dam break. Many houses were destroyed, but incredibly only 4 people were killed. As the water traveled towards Johnstown, the debris began to build up, and gathered at a viaduct, which after 7 minutes of trapped, roaring water and debris, collapsed and, with a renewed impetus. the water carried on to Johnstown. First it was to hit a small town called Mineral Point, where it devastated the community and killed approx. 16 residents. Next the water hit East Conemaugh, followed by the Cambria Iron Works at the town of Woodvale, and finally Johnstown. Many people were l
There have been a few, but the biggest one is the one from May 31, 1889 The following narrative about the 1889 flood is by Edwin Hutcheson, excerpted from “Floods of Johnstown: 1889-1936 -1977 Johnstown had been built into a river valley on the Appalachian Plateau. The Little Conemaugh and the Stony Creek Rivers, which ran along the peripheral of the town and merged to form the Conemaugh River at the western end, drained a 657 square mile watershed which dropped in the rivers from mountains 500 feet above (Click here for a map of the area, published shortly after the flood). At least once a year, one or both of the rivers overflowed into the streets sending the town’s residents into a scurry to protect what they could of their homes and belongings. Some of these floods were caused when heavy snows melted too quickly in the spring. And others, at any season of the year, when a heavy rain fell over the area. Whichever, floods were a fact of life to the nineteenth century resident of this
