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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)

The summer of 1889 will ever be memorable for its appalling disasters by
flood and flame. In that period fell the heaviest blow of the nineteenth
century--a blow scarcely paralleled in the histories of civilized lands.
Central Pennsylvania, a centre of industry, thrift and comfort, was
desolated by floods unprecedented in the records of the great waters. On
both sides of the Alleghenies these ravages were felt in terrific power,
but on the western slope their terrors were infinitely multiplied by the
bursting of the South Fork Reservoir, letting out millions of tons of
water, which, rushing madly down the rapid descent of the Conemaugh
Valley, washed out all its busy villages and hurled itself in a deadly
torrent on the happy borough of Johnstown. The frightful aggravations
which followed the coming of this torrent have waked the deepest
sympathies of this nation and of the world, and the history is demanded
in permanent form, for those of the present day, and for the generation
to come.




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER I.

  The Conemaugh Valley in Springtime--Johnstown and its
    Suburbs--Founded a Hundred Years ago--The Cambria Iron
    Works--History of a Famous Industry--American Manufacturing
    Enterprise Exemplified--Making Bessemer Steel--Social and
    Educational Features--The Busiest City of its Size in the
    State,                                                         15

  CHAPTER II.

  Conemaugh Lake--Remains of an Old-time Canal System--Used for
    the Pleasure of Sportsmen--The Hunting and Fishing
    Club--Popular Distrust Growing into Indifference--The Old
    Cry of "Wolf!"--Building a Dam of Straw and Mud--Neglect
    Ripening into Fitness for a Catastrophe,                       31

   CHAPTER III.

   Dawning of the Fatal Day--Darkness and Rain--Rumors of
     Evil--The Warning Voice Unheeded--A Whirlwind of Watery
     Death--Fate of a Faithful Telegrapher--What an Eye-Witness
     Saw--A Solid Wall of Water Rushing Down the Valley,          42

   CHAPTER IV.

   The Pathway of the Torrent--Human Beings Swept away like
     Chaff--The Twilight of Terror--The Wreck of East
     Conemaugh--Annihilation of Woodvale--Locomotives Tossed
     about like Cockle-shells by the mighty Maelstrom,            51

   CHAPTER V.

   "Johnstown is Annihilated"--Appearance of the Wreck--An Awful
     Sabbath Spectacle--A Sea of Mud and Corpses--The City in a
     Gigantic Whirlpool--Strange Tokens of the Fury of the
     Flood--Scene from the Bridge--Sixty Acres of Débris--A
     Carnival of Slaughter,                                       66

   CHAPTER VI.

   Pictures of the Flood Drawn by Eye-witnesses--A Score of
     Locomotives Swallowed up--Railroad Cars Swept
     away--Engineers who would not Abandon their Posts--Awful
     Scenes from a Car Window--A Race for Life--Victims of the
     Flood,                                                       81

   CHAPTER VII.

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