On
May 31st, 1889, a dam burst upstream from Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Although ample warnings were given, these were in general disregarded
by the people of Johnstown and other downstream towns. The result
was over 2,000 people killed within a few minutes. The following
is an account of that terrible day:
"Friday,
May 31st, 1889. The day before had been a solemn holiday. In
every village veterans of the War for the Union had gathered; in
every cemetery flowers had been strewn upon the gravemounds of the
heroic dead. Now the people were resuming the every-day toil. The
weather was rainy. It had been wet for some days. Stony Creek and
Conemaugh were turbid and noisy. The little South Fork, which ran
into the upper end of the lake, was swollen into a raging torrent.
The lake was higher than usual; higher than ever. But the valley
below lay in fancied security, and all the varied activities of
life pursued their wonted round.
"Friday,
May 31st, 1889. Record that awful date in characters of funereal
hue. It was a dark and stormy day, and amid the darkness and the
storm the angel of death spread his wings over the fated valley,
unseen, unknown. Midday comes. Disquieting rumors rush down the
valley. There is a roar of an approaching storm - approaching doom!
The water swiftly rises. A horseman thunders down the valley: "To
the hills, for God's sake! To the hills, for your lives!" They stare
at him as at a madman, and their hesitating feet linger in the valley
of the shadow of death, and the shadow swiftly darkens, and the
everlasting hills veil their faces with rain and mist before the
scene that greets them. "This is what happened: - "The heavy rainfall
raised the lake until its water began to pour over the top of the
dam. The dam itself - wretchedly built of mud and boulders - saturated
through and through, began to leak copiously here and there. Each
watery sapper and miner burrowed on, followers swiftly enlarging
the murderous tunnels. The whole mass became honeycombed. And still
the rain poured down, and still the South Fork and a hundred minor
streams sent in their swelling floods, until, with a roar like that
of the opening gates of the Inferno belching forth the legions of
the damned, the wall gave way, and with the rush of a famished tiger
into a sheepfold, the whirlwind of water swept down the valley on
its errand of destruction -
"And
like a horse unbroken,
When first he feels the rein,
The furious river struggled hard,
And tossed his tawny mane,
And burst the curb and bounded,
Rejoicing to be free,
And, whirling down in mad career,
Battlement and plank and pier, Rushed headlong to the sea!"
"According
to the statements of people who lived in Johnstown and other towns
on the line of the river, ample time was given to the inhabitants
of Johnstown by the railroad officials and by other gentlemen of
standing and reputation. In hundreds of cases this warning was utterly
disregarded, and those who heeded it early in the day were looked
upon as cowards, and many jeers were uttered by lips that now are
cold. The people of Johnstown also had a special warning in the
fact that the dam in Stony Creek, just above the town, broke about
noon, and thousands of feet of lumber passed down the river. Yet
they hesitated, and even when the wall of water, almost forty feet
high, was at their doors, one man is said by a survivor to have
told his family that the stream would not rise very high."
(In: "History of the Johnstown Flood" by Willis Fletcher Johnson.
Edgewood Publishing Company, 1889.)
