Our Most Horrific Day: The Johnstown Flood

Western Pennsylvania has seen its share of horrific events, from the battles between the British and French to control the upper Ohio River Valley, to the Great Railway Strike of 1877 and the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, to the crash of Flight 93 near Shanksville on 9/11. But nothing -- nothing -- compares to the great Johnstown Flood of May 31, 1889 for the sheer scope of its tragedy. It was scarcely a "natural" disaster. Some of the most powerful men in the America were co-conspirators in the calamity.

South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club

South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club

In the 1880’s, Pittsburgh industrialist Henry Clay Frick was the co-organizer of an exclusive club on private Conemaugh Lake in Cambria County for Pittsburgh’s industrialists and millionaires, including Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon, called the South Fork Fishing and Hunting club. The retreat was both secretive and secreted. The lake was perched 14 miles from the steel town of Johnstown up the Little Conemaugh River, some 450 feet above the town. Expensive fish were brought in to populate the lake. 

It was an idyllic setting for people pejoratively referred to as “robber barons.” But all was not well. At one end of the lake was a 72-foot high earthen dam, one of the largest in the world, which had never been properly maintained. The club installed fish screens across the spillway to keep the expensive game fish from escaping. The screens also kept the spillway from draining the lake's overflow. The club also lowered the dam by three feet to make it possible for two carriages to pass at the same time, so the dam was only about four feet higher than the spillway. 

May 31, 1889: The Dam Bursts

On May 31, 1889, tragedy stuck on a scale unprecedented not only to Western Pennsylvania but anywhere in the United States. It started to rain the day before, and it got worse during the night. By the next day, Conemaugh Lake was rising an inch every ten minutes. More than a few people wondered if the fragile dam could survive. Workmen frantically dug to create emergency spillways, but the dam couldn’t hold it.

Flood Water on display
at the Flood Museum

When the dam finally burst at 3:10 p.m., it unleashed a lake a little over two miles long, a little over a mile wide at its widest spot, and up to 60 feet deep. With the force of Niagara Falls, a 20 million ton wall of roiling water that reached heights of 75 feet and stretched half a mile across thundered downstream through the valley at speeds up to forty miles an hour with a bulls-eye on Johnstown. Along its 57-minute death march, the tsunami lifted boulders as if they were corks, snapped 75-foot tall trees, crushed houses like eggshells, and picked up giant locomotives like they were model trains. Before the wave struck hapless Johnstown, a death mist from burst boilers rolled into town. Then came a deafening roar. Then, the cataclysmic tide itself landed atop the old hamlet.

Frantic townsfolk ran for their back doors as the water cascaded through their front doors. The streets grew black with terrified people running for their lives. 

Death struck with a sardonic randomness. Daisie Heslop was spared, but her grandmother standing next to her was swept out a third story window into eternity. Countless buildings were destroyed, but one house was picked up by the waters and set down a mile and a half away atop a basement foundation that was an exact match for the building. When it was all over, the house's owner moved in and stayed there for 26 more years.

It took just ten minutes for the rampaging waters to wipe four square miles of downtown Johnstown from the face of the earth. But the most horrific was yet to come.

The Stone Bridge

Sixty acres of debris piled fifty feet deep -- the remnants of homes, factories, people and animals -- cascaded in a jumbled mass at the town's stone bridge which acted as a dam. In the cruelest twist of fate, forlorn citizens who had escaped our nation's worst flood by clinging to the debris were burned to death when the debris caught fire. A failed earthen dam had started the calamity, but a makeshift dam of stone made it worse.

The Aftermath

When the tide stopped rolling and the death mist lifted, an ominous wire message went out from Johnstown calling for "coffins of all sizes." Corpses were piled up in the morgue. The bodies of longtime friends Jennie Mills and Carrie Diehl happened to be laid side by side. For days after the flood, looters preyed on the bodies of victims, cutting off fingers and ears to take jewelry. Due process became just another casualty of the disaster when some of the looters were lynched.

Remains of the dam today

Bodies were still being found years after the calamity, even as late as 1911, and as far away as Cincinnati. All in all, 2,209 people were killed by the flood, hundreds more than the Titanic disaster, and not including those who succumbed to disease caused by it. It was the greatest loss of civilian life in American history to that time.

Frick, Carnegie and the other club members abandoned their now lake-less club, and the public held them responsible for the carnage. Lawsuits were filed, but none of the members of the club were ever held legally liable. The night of the flood, some club members met in private and decided they would never discuss it. Carnegie wrote to his partners from his European vacation, telling them that the "South Fork calamity has driven all else out of our thoughts for the past few days." He proceeded to tell them about his own problems: Paris had proved too hot and too crowded for him, so he had been forced to vacation in the Rhine region where he "enjoyed every day of our excursions."

Johnstown Flood Museum

For his part, Frick never spoke publicly about the calamity, but he developed an interest in art portraying scenes of violent, churning water.

The relief effort for the flood was legendary. It was the first major peacetime relief effort for Clara Barton's American Red Cross. Ms. Barton arrived in town on June 5th and stayed until October 24th. The town lauded her heroic service before she departed.

Today in Johnstown, visitors flock to the Johnstown Flood Museum, housed in the library building Andrew Carnegie built for the city after the flood destroyed the existing library, and to the Johnstown Flood National Memorial at the site of the remains of the dam. A National Park ranger at the Flood Memorial said that when he tells visitors about the disaster, he doesn't just recite history, he's preaching a funeral eulogy.

The Stone Bridge today

 The Incredible Stories

The flood has spawned incredible tales, both myths and actual stories. Here are some of the actual stories.

Anna Boyle: Anna Boyle lost a husband and seven of nine children to the raging waters. She, herself, survived by climbing atop a house and riding the crest of a wave for 17 miles. She would live to mourn her family for another 47 years, long enough to see her son, Hugh, ordained as Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Anna died in Johnstown at the age of 85 in 1936, not long after the second great Johnstown flood.

Lock of hair from woman
found hanging from tree

Moses "Flood" Williams:  A young Welsh couple was living in Johnstown when the waters rolled through town and the house they were in was swept away by the raging water. There, on the roof of that drifting structure, their son was born. They named him Moses "Flood" Williams.









Victor Heiser:  

Victor Heiser model, Johnstown Flood Memorial

Victor Heiser, 16, was in the family barn when he saw the flood crush and sweep away his parents' home with his parents in it. Victor clung to the roof of the barn and was taken on a wild ride atop flood waters. As he passed a two-story brick house, he leapt for the roof -- and made it. Victor survived, but he had lost his family, and there was nothing left for him in Johnstown. He moved away to college and eventually became a physician. Dr. Victor Heiser is credited with saving as many as two million lives. He developed the first effective treatment against leprosy.



Herbert Paget: Richard Paget and his son Herbert were sitting down for supper when the raging torrent came calling. It picked up their house and whirled it away. The two men climbed to the roof, but Richard lost his grip and fell into the deluge. Herbert survived, but the house collided with an obstruction, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up in a hospital in Altoona six weeks later. Herbert attempted in vain to locate his father's body but finally gave up and moved away. He got a job as an engineer, and carried on as best he could.

Johnstown Flood Museum

Fifteen years later, Herbert Paget was on the boardwalk in Atlantic City when he heard a carnival barker touting a "thrilling and spectacular" reproduction of the Johnstown Flood. Herbert naturally was drawn to it. But the performance had to be stopped because of a disturbance in the audience. The recreation proved too much for one elderly patron who wept aloud and pleaded to be taken from the theater. As the distraught old man was being escorted down the aisle, Herbert Paget could scarcely believe his eyes. "Father, oh, father, is it you?" he cried. The old man was Richard Paget, who promptly fainted in his son's arms. When Herbert tried to describe the joy of the reunion for a reporter, he could only say he couldn't. It turned out that after the flood, Richard had searched in vain for his son, then, heartbroken, moved back to his native Scotland. Over the next fifteen years, Richard went into business in Edinburgh and became wealthy. Now father and son asked the press for privacy, and would only say they were heading to St. Louis with friends of Richard. There were some happy endings in the Johnstown catastrophe.

Another Johnstown Flood Six Weeks Later

Just six weeks after the flood, another flood struck Johnstown, resulting in more tragedy. This was not Johnstown, Pennsylvania but Johnstown, New York along the Cayadutta Creek. Five men died. Four dams and seven bridges were destroyed. Factories and mills along the creek were severely damaged. The New York Times wrote on July 11th, “This city is slowly relieving itself of the terror which came down upon it with the flood yesterday, and…wonders at the strange coincidence of name and tragedy with that of the unhappy town in Pennsylvania.”

Henry Clay Frick

After the flood, Henry Clay Frick continued to run the Carnegie Steel Company in Pittsburgh. But he seemed to be drawn to disasters. He was at the center of the bloody Homestead Steel Strike of 1892 in which ten men died. Frick was never held responsible for that disaster, either. He survived an assassination attempt in July of 1892. And in 1912, he had a ticket to travel on the maiden voyage of a new ocean liner called Titanic, but Mrs. Frick sprained her ankle, and once again, Frick was spared from the consequences of calamity.

Unparalleled Legacy of the Paranormal

A paranormal expert once was asked, “what’s the one most haunted place in Johnstown?” He said there is no “one” most haunted place in Johnstown – the entire town is bursting with paranormal activity because of the unspeakable tragedy. 

At the Unknown Plot at Grandview Cemetery, the final resting place for 777 unidentified victims recovered from the flood, a ghost hunter led an investigation of the spiritual activity. Her finds? A photo depicting a floating orb in motion and an audio recording of a girl’s voice that pleaded, “Please save me.” 

At the old Stone Bridge, some claim they’ve heard screams of the people trapped in the horrific aftermath of the flood.

A few years ago, Haunted Pittsburgh took a medium around Johnstown. She was overcome with an overwhelming sense of panic -- not her own, and not just the panic of the poor souls who met death so unexpectedly on May 31, 1889. She said that much of the panic that still hangs over the place emanates from the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Like a broken record it keeps replaying itself, hoping in vain for a different outcome, and wishing it could undo something that never should have happened.