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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)

Johnstown was one of the busiest towns of its size in the State. Its
tonnage over the Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio roads was larger
than the tonnage of many cities three times its size. The Iron and Steel
Company is one of the largest iron and steel corporations in the world.
It had its main rolling mills, Bessemer steel works, and wire works at
Johnstown, though it also has works in other places, and owns ore and
coal mines and leases in the South, in Michigan, and in Spain, besides
its Pennsylvania works. It had in Johnstown and the surrounding villages
4000 or 5000 men usually at work. In flush times it has employed more
than 6000. So important was the town from a railroad point of view that
the Baltimore and Ohio ran a branch from Rockwood, on its main line to
Pittsburgh, up to Johnstown, forty-five miles. It was one of the main
freight stations on the Pennsylvania road, though the passenger business
was so small in proportion that some express trains do not stop there.
The Pennsylvania road recently put up a large brick station, which was
one of the few brick buildings on the flats. Some of the Cambria
Company's offices were also of brick, and there was a brick lodging
house for young men in the employ of the company. The Pennsylvania road
had repair shops there, which employed a few hundred men, and the
Baltimore and Ohio branch had some smaller shops. Johnstown had several
Catholic and Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Lutheran churches. It
had several daily and weekly papers. The chief were the _Tribune_, the
_Democrat_, and the _Freie Presse_.

The Cambria Iron Works, the great industry of Johnstown, originated in a
few widely separated charcoal furnaces built by pioneer iron workers in
the early years of the century. As early as 1803 General Arthur St.
Clair engaged in the iron business, and erected the Hermitage furnace
about sixteen miles from the present site of Johnstown. In 1809 the
working of ores was begun near Johnstown. These were primitive furnaces,
where charcoal was the only fuel employed, and the raw material and
product were transported entirely on wagons, but they marked the
beginning of the manufacture of iron in this country.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

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