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(This is the fifteenth installment in a series of articles detailing the writer’s recent trip into the past.)
 The city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The flood waters barreled through the mountain pass to the left, through which flows the Little Conemaugh River.
The ground was already sodden from days of heavy rain (6-10 inches had fallen during a 24-hour period), which was trouble enough, but the calamity that some had been dreading had now become a terrible reality. The South Fork Dam, 14 miles upriver from the city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, had burst wide open, spewing 20 million tons of angry floodwater down the Little Conemaugh River.
The South Fork Dam, an earthen enclosure, was originally constructed between 1838-1853 for the Pennsylvania Canal system. A group of captains of industry, including Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon and Henry Clay Frick later bought the dam and the land surrounding it in order to create a private retreat, the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. They built cottages (actually, small mansions) where they stayed during their trips away from the hustle and bustle of Pittsburgh.
For eight years they enjoyed their Shangri-la. During that time, several leaks sprang from the dam, but nothing serious. The townspeople below had gotten sort of used to the lake up above them. Some referred to it as “the sword of Damocles hanging over Johnstown.”
 Sixteen year-old Victor Heiser clings desperately to the roof of his family’s barn as he rushes downriver during the Johnstown flood of 1889.
Down below the idyllic paradise of Lake Conemaugh, in the industrial city of Johnstown, lived some 30,000 mostly blue collar factory workers and their families. The iron company and a barbed wire factory employed many of them.
The club’s maintenance crew, alarmed by the heavy rainfall and signs of an impending break in the dam’s weakened earthwork, tried desperately in the rain to shore up the wall, but to no avail. At 3:10 on the afternoon of May 31, the inevitable happened. The citizens of Johnstown below had no idea of the apocalypse that was now barreling down upon them. More than 2,000 residents who woke up that morning would not survive to again lay their heads on their pillows that night.
Although several dozen people died in the small villages nestled along the hillsides along the river between the dam and Johnstown, the vast majority died in Johnstown, which lies in a natural bowl at the bottom of the surrounding mountains - where else was the mass of water and debris to go?
The people downriver recalled hearing a rumble, like thunder, as the ever-growing conglomeration of water and debris made its way inexorably to Johnstown, gathering houses, trains and boilers, as well as barbed wire from the destroyed barbed wire factory, as it proceeded at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. At times, the flood reached heights exceeding 60 feet. Witnesses told of a dark “death mist” that hovered over the mass of water and debris. The mist emanated from the smoke and steam coming from the burst boilers.
When the accumulation of debris reached downtown it became lodged against the stone railroad bridge (which still stands today). By this point it had grown to a size of 45 acres! Adding insult to injury, a fire broke, killing 80 people who had survived the initial ride down the river on makeshift rafts of debris. Many were caught in the tangle of barbed wire and couldn’t get free.
Although clean-up operations began the next day, it took several months to clear away all the debris from the area of the stone bridge. Four square miles of Johnstown were completely destroyed. Looters who were caught in the act of pilfering were either hanged or shot on the spot. Clara Barton and her Red Cross arrived within a week to help the relief efforts. Morticians came from out of town to carry out their grim but necessary tasks. Several days after the flood, boil-water advisories were issued as far away as Pittsburgh.
Several of the club’s members, as well as people from across the nation and 18 countries, contributed money. Although the club was subsequently sued for damages, they were exonerated and deemed not responsible for “an act of God.”
It took five years for the town to fully recover. Bodies were discovered months and even years later (one as late as 1911), and as far away as Cincinnati!. The official death toll was 2,209. Several of the dead were never positively identified. Few families survived unscathed. 99 whole families were completely swept from the face of the earth.
The classic novel, “Captains Courageous,” as well as other works of writing over the years, make mention of the flood. Johnstown has flooded several times since 1889. In recent years, 80 people lost their lives in one such flood.
The day that I visited the Johnstown Flood National Memorial was sunny and very warm. As I looked out over the shallow valley that once was covered by dam water, it was hard to imagine the rainy day in 1889 when the dam popped its cork. The opening in the earthen wall is plainly visible, as is the South Fork which now trickles through the valley.
Inside the visitor center is a very realistic display of what the scene must have been like that day. A life-size re-creation of a very large tree trunk is positioned horizontally in mid-air, appearing to be firmly wedged into the wall.
A very life-like, bare-footed depiction of Victor Heiser is seen clinging to the roof of his barn. The teenager survived the flood, although his parents did not. Several days later someone found his family Bible and returned it to him. Victor had been made an orphan, but he did not let that ruin his life. He became a doctor and went on to make advances in the treatment of leprosy, yellow fever and tuberculosis, mingling with heads of state along the way. He later wrote a book titled “An American Doctor’s Odyssey.”
Push a button in the exhibit area and you can hear an actual recording of an elderly Heiser recounting the horror of that day to historian David McCullough, who went on to write a book about the flood. If you Google Heiser’s name you will find a very dramatic first person account of his harrowing experience.
A large, glass-enclosed model of the terrain between the dam and the city invites the visitor to imagine the flow of water as the forces of gravity pushed it in the only direction in which it could go - Johnstown.
After I left the memorial I drove to the city itself. Rte. 56, which is the feeder highway to the city from US 219, goes for five or six miles in only one direction - down, sort of like the 6% grade on US 25 between the North Carolina line and Hendersonville.
There is another museum in Johnstown that I decided to visit. The handful of us who had arrived at around the same time were treated to a very dramatic film about the flood, after which we were invited to tour the museum. Artifacts that were found in the debris are on display. The thing that fascinated me the most about the artifacts in the museum is a glass bottle, about the size of a small Coke bottle. Inside the bottle is actual flood water gathered that day for the sake of posterity by a forward-thinking historical preservationist.
After I left the museum I drove over to the Johnstown Incline, which is like a giant outdoor elevator. It is big and sturdy enough to hold three or four cars and several dozen walk-on passengers.
I left my car at the bottom, paid the fee and walked on board. When we reached the top I was able to get some fantastic photos of Johnstown and the valley through which the flood emerged.
As I walked around the top of the hill, looking for an even better vantage point, I met and talked a few minutes with a couple from Minnesota. On the way back down, a boy about eight years old struck up a conversation with me. He was a precocious kid who apparently never met a stranger. I remembered seeing him and his family earlier at the visitors center. He showed me a small, stuffed gorilla that he had bought that day. He told me that buying the gorilla was the highlight of his day.
It was unfortunate that being exposed to his history and heritage was not the high point of his day, but I appreciated the fact that his mother had introduced him to that history, and I hoped that this visit would stick in his memory and that, in time, an interest in history would take root and blossom in his mind.
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(Next Installment - “Let’s Roll!”)
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