The Johnstown Horror!!! Part 16

In the fall of 1886 natural gas was introduced into the works.

Building up Johnstown.

Anxious to secure employment for the daughters and widows of the employees of the company who were willing to work, its management erected a woolen mill which now employs about 300 persons. Amus.e.m.e.nts were not neglected, and the people of Johnstown are indebted to the company for the erection of an opera house, where dramatic entertainments are given.

The company owns 700 houses, which are rented exclusively to employees.

The handsome library erected by the company and presented to the town was stocked with nearly 7000 volumes. The Cambria Hospital is also under the control of the beneficial a.s.sociation of the works. The Cambria Clubhouse is a very neat pressed brick building on the corner of Main and Federal streets. It was first operated in 1881, and is used exclusively for the entertainment of the guests of the company and such of their employees as can be accommodated. The store building occupied by Wood, Morrell & Co., limited, is a four-story brick structure on Was.h.i.+ngton street, with three large store rooms on the first floor, the remainder of the building being used for various forms of merchandise.

Including the surrounding boroughs, Kernville, Morrellville and Cambria City, all of which are built up solidly to Johnstown proper, the population is about 30,000. The Cambria Iron Company employs, in Johnstown, about 7500 people, which would certainly indicate a population of not less than 20,000 depending upon the company for a livelihood.

A large proportion of the population of Johnstown are citizens of foreign birth, or their immediate descendants. Those of German, Irish, Welsh and English birth or extraction predominate, with a few Swedes and Frenchmen. As a rule the working people and their families are well dressed and orderly; in this they are above the average. Most of the older workmen of the company, owing largely to its liberal policy, own their houses, and many of them have houses for rent.

CHAPTER IX.

View of the Wreck.

Each visitor to the scene of the great disaster witnessed sights and received impressions different from all others. The following graphic account will thrill every reader:

The most exaggerative imagination cannot too strongly picture the awful harvest of death, the wreck which accompanied that terrible deluge last Friday afternoon. I succeeded in crossing from the north side of the Little Conemaugh, a short distance above the point, to the sandy muddy desert strewn with remnants of the buildings and personal property of those who know not their loss.

It is almost an impossibility to gain access to the region, and it was accomplished only after much difficulty in crossing the swiftly running stream.

Standing at a point in this abode of thousands of dead the work of the great flood can be more adequately measured than from any one place in the devastated region. Here I first realized the appalling loss of life and the terrible destruction of property.

It was about ten o'clock when the waters of Stony Creek rose, overflowed their banks and what is known as the "flats," which includes the entire business portion of the city of Johnstown. The Little Conemaugh was running high at the same time, and it had also overreached the limit of its banks. The water of both streams soon submerged the lower portion of the town. Up to this time there was no intimation that a terrible disaster was imminent. The water poured into the cellars of the houses in the lower districts and rose several inches in the streets, but as that had occurred before the people took no alarm.

Shortly after twelve o'clock the first drowning occurred. This was not because of the deluge, it was simply the carelessness of the victim, who was a driver for the Cambria Iron Company, in stepping into a cellar which had been filled with water. The water continued to rise, and at twelve o'clock had reached that part of the city about a block from the point between Stony Creek and the Little Conemaugh.

Topography of the Place.

The topography of Johnstown is almost precisely like that of Pittsburgh, only in a diminished degree. Stony Creek comes in from the mountains on the northeast, and the Little Conemaugh comes in from the northwest, forming the Conemaugh at Johnstown, precisely as the Allegheny and Monongahela form the Ohio at Pittsburgh. On the west side of Stony Creek are mountains rising to a great height, and almost perpendicularly from the water. On the north side of the Conemaugh River mountains equally as high as those on Stony Creek confine that river to its course. The hills in Johnstown start nearly a half mile from the business section of the city. 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.

In the homes of the people the women began gathering household articles of any kind that may have been in the cellar. Little attention was paid to the water beyond this.

Looking from the "flats" at Johnstown toward and following the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, which wind along the Little Conemaugh, the village of Woodville stands, or did stand, within sight of the "flats,"

and is really a continuation of the city at this point.

The mountains on the south side of the Little Conemaugh rise here and form a narrow valley where Woodville was located. Next joining this, without any perceptible break in the houses, was the town of East Conemaugh. The extreme eastern limit of East Conemaugh is about a mile and a half from Johnstown "flats."

A Narrow Chasm.

The valley narrows as it reaches eastward, and in a narrow chasm three miles from Johnstown "flats" is the little settlement of Mineral Point.

A few of the houses have found a place on the mountain side out of harm's way, and so they still stand.

At East Conemaugh there is located a roundhouse of the Pennsylvania Railroad, for the housing of locomotives used to a.s.sist trains over the mountains. The inhabitants of this place were all employees of the Pennsylvania and the Gautier Steel Works, of the Cambria Iron Company.

The inhabitants numbered about 1,500 people. Like East Conemaugh, 2,000 or 2,500 people, who lived at Woodville, were employees of the same corporation and the woolen mills located there.

Just below Woodville the mountains upon the south bank of the Conemaugh disappear and form the commencement of the Johnstown "flats." The Gautier Steel Works of the Cambria Iron Company are located at this point, on the south bank. The Pennsylvania Railroad traverses the opposite bank, and makes a long curve from this point up to East Conemaugh.

Timely Warning to Escape.

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 ma.s.sive stone structure.

From the east end of the bridge there is a heavy fill of from thirty to forty feet high to Johnstown Station, a distance of a quarter of a mile.

Within a few feet of the station a wagon bridge crosses the Little Conemaugh, five hundred feet above the point connecting the "flats" and the country upon the north side of the river.

The Cambria Iron Company's Bessemer department lies along the north bank of the Conemaugh, commencing at the fill, and extends for over two miles down the Conemaugh River upon its northern bank.

Below the Cambria Iron Company's property is Millville Borough, and on the hill back of Millville Borough is Minersville properly--the Second ward of Millville Borough.

The First ward of Millville was washed away completely.

While the damage from a pecuniary sense was large, the loss of life was quite small, inasmuch as the people had timely warning to escape.

Below the Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge at Johnstown, upon the south bank of the Conemaugh, was the large settlement of Cambria. It had a population of some five thousand people. At Cambria the mountain retreats for several hundred feet, leaving a level of two or three hundred acres in extent. Just below the bridge the Conemaugh River makes a wide curve around this level. About eight or nine hundred houses stood upon this level.

Below Cambria stands Morrellville, a place about equal in size to Cambria.

From this description of the location of Johnstown and neighboring settlements the course of the waters may be better understood when described. It was about ten minutes to three o'clock Friday afternoon when Mr. West, of the local office of the Pennsylvania Railroad at Johnstown, received a dispatch from the South Fork station, advising him to notify the inhabitants that the big dam in the South Fork, above the city, was about to break. He at once despatched couriers to various parts of the city, and a small section was notified of the impending danger. The messenger was answered with,

"We will wait until we see the water."

Others called "Chestnuts!" and not one in fifty of the people who received the warning gave heed to it.

The Debris of Three Towns.

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. This ma.s.s of debris was borne on to Johnstown, reinforced by the material of three towns.

The Gautier steel department of the Cambria Iron Company was the first property attacked in the city proper. Huge rolls, furnaces and all the machinery in the great mills, costing $6,000,000, were swept away in a moment, and to-day there is not the slightest evidence that the mill ever stood there.