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History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.Johnson, Willis Fletcher

History

History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.

Name: History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.
Author: Johnson, Willis Fletcher

Johnson, Willis Fletcher

Floods -- Pennsylvania -- Johnstown (Cambria County)

Besides owning the flats, the Cambria Company owned the surrounding
hills. In one of the hills is limestone, in another coal, and there is
iron ore not far away. The company has narrow-gauge roads running from
its mines down to the works. The city was at the foot of these three
hills, which meet in a double V shape. Conemaugh creek flowing down one
and Stony creek flowing down the other. The hills are not so far distant
that a man with a rifle on any one could not shoot to either of the
others. They are several hundred feet high and so steep that roads run
up them by a series of zigzag grades. Few people live on these hills
except on a small rise of ground across the river from Johnstown. In
some places the company has leased the land for dwelling houses, but it
retains the ownership of the land and of the coal, iron and limestone in
it. The flats having all been occupied, the company in recent years had
put up some tenements of a better class on the north bank of the river,
higher up than the flood reached. The business part of the town also was
higher up than the works and the tenements of the company.

In normal times the river is but a few hundred feet wide. The bottom is
stony. The current is so fast that there is little deposit along the
bank. It is navigable at no time, though in the spring a good canoeist
might go down it if he could steer clear of the rocks. In the summer the
volume of water diminishes so much that a boy with a pair of rubber
boots on can wade across without getting his feet wet, and there have
been times when a good jumper could cross the river on the dry stones.
Below Johnstown, after Stony creek has joined the Conemaugh creek, the
volume of water increases, but the Conemaugh throughout its whole length
is nothing but a mountain stream, dry in the summer and roaring in the
spring. It runs down into the Kiskiminitas river and into the Allegheny
river, and then on to Pittsburgh. It is over 100 miles from Johnstown to
Pittsburgh following the windings of the river, twice as far as the
straight line.

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