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Updated: May 2, 2025
The night was an awful one for the committee in charge. The roads were badly washed and all but impassible. The hours dragged on. At last, Sunday morning, the wagons drove into desolate Conemaugh. There were no cheers to greet them, no cries of pleasure. The wretched sufferers were too wretched, too dazed for that.
The route to the Ohio River followed the Schuylkill for some thirty or forty miles, turned up one of its tributaries to its source, then crossed the watershed to the head of a stream flowing into the Susquehanna, thence to the Juniata, at the head of which the trail led over a short divide to the head of the Conemaugh, which flowed into the Allegheny, and the Allegheny into the Ohio.
At what is known as the point where Stony Creek and the Little Conemaugh form the Conemaugh the mountains followed by Stony Creek take an abrupt turn northward, and the waters of the Little Conemaugh flow into the Conemaugh at right angles with these mountains. A few hundred feet below this point the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge crosses the Conemaugh River. The bridge is a massive stone structure.
When the great wave of death swept through Johnstown the people who had any chance of escape ran hither and thither in every direction. They did not have any definite idea where they were going, only that a crest of foaming waters as high as the housetops was roaring down upon them through the Conemaugh and that they must get out of the way of that.
This leaves a territory between the two rivers of about four hundred acres. This was covered by costly buildings, factories and other important manufactories. When the waters of South Fork and Little Conemaugh broke over their banks into that portion of the city known as the "flats," the business community turned its attention to putting endangered merchandise in a place of safety. First Alarm.
Part of a set of dinner plates told one man where in the intangible mass his house was. In one place was a photograph album with one picture recognizable. From this the body of a child near by was identified. A man who had spent a day and all night looking for the body of his wife, was directed to her remains by part of a trunk lid. Dead Bodies Caressed. Poor old John Jordan, of Conemaugh!
The channels through to the bridge are almost clear of débris, and each charge of dynamite has loosened large quantities of the wreckage. This is the eighth day since the demon of destruction swept down the valley of the Conemaugh, but the desolation that marks its angry flight is still visible in all its intensity and horror.
With the waters standing several inches deep in the streets of the "flats" of the city the deluge from South Fork Lake, burst the dam and rushed full upon Johnstown shortly after five o'clock on Friday afternoon the last day of May. First it swept the houses from Mineral Point down into East Conemaugh. When the flood reached East Conemaugh the town was wiped out.
Beneath the conglomeration of timber which filled the cavity of the arch to a distance of twenty-five feet from the top the waters of the Conemaugh flowed swiftly. There was a network of telegraph wires, iron rods and metal work of Pullman cars stretched across from stone work to stone work on either side.
Nature is so framed at the fated point for such a disaster that man was called upon for unceasing vigilance. The Conemaugh makes its channel through a narrow valley between high ranges. Numerous streams drain the surrounding mountains into its current. Along its course swarm frequent hamlets busy with the wealth dug from the seams of the earth.
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