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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)

"It was only too evident to us, long before we reached Harrisburg, that
we would not get to the West out of that city. The Susquehanna had risen
far over its banks, and for miles our train ran slowly with the water
close to the fire-box of the locomotive and over the lower steps of the
car platform. At last we reached the station. Several energetic
Philadelphia reporters had come on with us from that lively city,
expecting to go straight to Johnstown. As they left the train one cried:
'Hurrah, boys, there's White. He'll know all about it.' White stood
placidly on the steps, and knew nothing more than that he and several
other Philadelphia reporters, who had started Friday night, had got no
further than the Harrisburg station, and were in a state of wonderment,
leaving them to think our party caught.

"As the Cumberland Valley train was pulling out of the station, its
conductor, a big, genial fellow, who seemed to know everybody in the
valley, was loth to express an opinion as to whether we would get to
Martinsburg. He would take us as far as he could, and then leave us to
work out our own salvation. He could give us no information about the
Baltimore and Ohio Road. Hope and fear chased one another in our midst;
hope that trains were running on that road, and fear that it, too, had
been stopped by wash-outs. In the latter case it seemed to us that we
should be compelled to return to Harrisburg and sit down to think with
our Philadelphia brethren.

"The Cumberland Valley train took us to Hagerstown, and there the big and
genial conductor told us it would stay, as it could not cross the
Potomac to reach Martinsburg. We were twelve miles from the Potomac and
twenty from Martinsburg. Fortunately, a construction train was going to
the river to repair some small wash-outs, and Major Ives, the engineer
of the Cumberland Valley Road, took us upon it, but he smiled pitifully
when we told him we were going across the bridge.

"'Why, man,' he said to the _Times's_ correspondent, 'the Potomac is
higher than it was in 1877, and there's no telling when the bridge will
go.'

"At the bridge was a throng of country people waiting to see it go down,
and wondering how many more blows it would stand from foundering
canal-boats, washed out of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, whose lines
had already disappeared under the flood. A quick survey of the bridge
showed that its second section was weakening, and had already bent
several inches, making a slight concavity on the upper side.

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