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A flood of remembrances: Johnstown, Pa., floats new
attractions to lure tourists

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

By Diane Stoneback, The Morning Call (Allentown,
Pa.)

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. -- Row after row of unmarked graves in Johnstown's Grandview
Cemetery -- more than 700 -- are stark testimony to one of the most darkly
ironic moments in American history.

The unidentified people buried here, and the remainder of the 2,209 victims
who perished in the Johnstown Flood of May 31, 1889, spent their last full day
on Earth observing Memorial Day.

What happened in Johnstown 119 years ago still is the nation's worst dam
disaster and was the largest single day's loss of civilian life until the
tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001.

When news of the devastation caused by a 40-foot-high wall of water roaring
through the city first reached the outside world, the headlines captured
worldwide attention.

Today, the stories of that tragedy, told in-depth by the Johnstown Flood
National Memorial and the Johnstown Flood Museum, still are the "hooks" that
draw visitors to Johnstown, a town of 24,000 that's about 90 minutes southeast
of Pittsburgh.

They offer dramatic stories of havoc, human suffering and heroism caused by
the flood, of the greed and callousness that helped pave the way for the South
Fork Dam break and the careless development that would add to the speed of the
water thundering toward the city that day.

But there's much more to experience in Johnstown. Explore beyond the basic
"flood" attractions and you'll find both harsh and heartwarming stories about
the trials European immigrants faced when they flocked here to make new lives.
In fact, give it some thought and you'll realize visiting Johnstown is a
memorable way to learn more about this country's industrial revolution and the
people who fed its fires.

The American Red Cross' peacetime relief efforts in Johnstown really helped
launch it as a key provider of assistance for communities and their citizens.
Clara Barton, its 67-year-old founder, spent nearly five months in town
directing the work of caring for victims and housing them in shelters.

You'll also find that a trip to Johnstown has the makings of an affordable,
friendly and educational family vacation where an overnight stay won't break the
budget, parking the car for an hour costs a buck and admission costs for its key
attractions total $10 per adult and $4 or less for children, depending on their
ages.

Even when you add in the cost of a round-trip ride on the Inclined Plane (a
turn-of-the-century, elevator-style attraction that moves people and vehicles up
and down the very steep Yoder Hill), the adult total cost is $14 and the kid
price is $12.50 or less (depending on their age).

Part of Johnstown's comeback -- after the floods that earned it the moniker
of "The Flood City" and its other major disaster, which was the closing of the
Bethlehem Steel mills -- is based on tourism. New attractions are being added
and attractive hotel packages have been created to draw visitors to the city
that, admittedly, still shows ample reddish-brown traces of its rust-belt
heritage.

The city's Heritage Discovery Center provides a fascinating look at the lives
and backgrounds of the European immigrants who arrived at Johnstown's railroad
station in search of the American dream. It's opening two new attractions this
summer.

The first is the "Mystery of Steel" exhibit, which opens Saturday, with a
three-floor gallery of photos. They provide a detailed picture of the industry
that made and shaped Johnstown from the beginnings of the Cambria Iron Co. in
1852 through 1992 when Bethlehem Steel Corp. closed the Johnstown plants. By the
end of 2008, a theater also will open at the base of the three-story gallery,
enabling visitors to "feel the heat" and hear the sounds inside the steel
mills.

The second is the new Children's Museum, with many hands-on experiences for
children ages 3 to 10. Expected to open in late July or early August, the museum
will enable children to splash in water while learning how to build a dam and
get the sensations of venturing inside a steel mill and a coal mine like those
riddling the Johnstown area.

But understanding all that has happened in Johnstown must begin with the most
riveting segment of the town's history -- the worst of all its floods.

The May 31, 1889, flood tore through the Conemaugh Valley toward Johnstown
with such force that it ripped trees out by their roots, obliterated and carried
off entire villages and even lifted and carried massive train locomotives
(weighing 170,000 pounds each) nearly a mile before dropping them and raging
onward.

The logical starting point for a Johnstown visit is 14 miles upstream, at the
Johnstown Flood National Memorial.

Here, you can see the remains of the South Fork Dam and walk out on portions
of the earthen dam's north and south abutments, see traces of its spillway and
scan bottomland that once was submerged beneath Lake Conemaugh. While standing
next to the Elias Unger house on the memorial grounds, you can listen to a voice
reading Unger's account of trying to save the dam in its final hours. He was
then president of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which owned the
dam.

Inside the visitors' center, you'll see a mood-setting movie, "Black Friday,"
that's complete with the rumble of thunder and the sound of the torrential rains
like those that drenched both South Fork and Johnstown on May 30 and 31.

Don't miss listening to the recorded, first-hand account of 92-year-old Dr.
Victor Heiser. A sixteen-year-old when the flood struck, Heiser first saw the
flood waters engulf and sweep his home away with his parents still in it. Then,
he faced the waters himself as they smashed the barn sheltering him. Although he
lost his parents, he survived by clinging to a section of the barn's roof as the
waters roared onwards. The experience is all the more dramatic because you're
listening while looking at a life-sized display showing his figure clinging to
the roof section.

The streams and Lake Conemaugh (formed by the South Fork Dam) already were
swollen from 11 days of rain that made May 1889 the wettest on record for the
area. The lake's surface rose even more overnight. By morning, the lake's level
was nearly at the crest of the 72-foot high dam. Horrified, Unger and his crew
of workmen feverishly worked to keep the water behind the dam.

Their last-ditch efforts included plowing the earth on top of the dam to
raise its level, trying to dig another spillway to allow water to escape the dam
gradually and plugging leaks breaking out all over the surface of the dam. But
they could not compensate for past neglect and foolish changes made to the
dam.

The visitor's center details the reasons for the dam's failure, including
neglect by the fishing and hunting club, whose members included a rich
consortium of Pittsburgh industrialists from Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay
Frick to Andrew Mellon.

Included in the fateful list of mistakes also are: lowering the level of the
dam several feet so it was wide enough at the top to enable carriages of the
rich Pittsburghers to pass one another as they crossed the dam; failing to
repair an additional two-to-four-foot sag in the dam; building a fish trap
across the spillway that became so clogged with storm debris that it could not
function; never replacing the dam's original discharge pipes, which had been
sold for scrap metal, and failing to maintain the stone "riprap" that covered
the face of the dam.

In addition to the dam's basic problems, the area's hillsides had been
stripped of forests that could have helped absorb excess rainwater that instead
poured into the swollen lake, streams and rivers.

Finally, Johnstown's own industrialists unknowingly ensured that the force of
flood waters striking the city would be greater because they narrowed the
riverbeds leading into the city by using fill to create more room for buildings
along the riverbanks.

Before leaving the area near the national memorial, drive to nearby St.
Michael to see the massive three-story, 47-room clubhouse that housed members of
the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club members when they retreated from
Pittsburgh for rest, rejuvenation, sailing and fishing. Now owned by the
National Park Service, the clubhouse is undergoing renovations and will be open
sporadically during the summer, depending on the availability of park
rangers.

Enter the next chapter of the May 31, 1889, drama by driving to the heart of
downtown Johnstown for a walking tour of flood sites and to explore the
Johnstown Flood Museum.

Collect directions for your walking tour at either the Flood Museum or
Discovery Center and then take a look at buildings including: the First
Methodist Episcopal Church (now the Franklin Street United Methodist Church),
which withstood the flood and is credited with protecting several buildings near
it from the flood wave; the John Ludwig House where Clara Barton stayed while
directing Red Cross relief efforts; Alma Hall (then one of the city's tallest
buildings) which sheltered 264 people who spent the night praying the building
wouldn't collapse; and city hall, where an exterior wall shows the high water
mark for the 1889 flood (21 feet) as well as those for the 1936 flood (17 feet)
and the 1977 flood (8 feet).

Then, you can spend an afternoon in the Flood Museum, which occupies the
building that once was the city's second library. The first library was washed
away by the flood.

Devoted to telling the city's own stories of the disaster, the downtown flood
museum orients its visitors with its Academy Award-winning "Johnstown Flood"
film about the calamity. It also contains a fiber-optic relief map that
dramatically illustrates the path of the flood waters as they raced through the
Little Conemaugh River Valley toward Johnstown and then struck the city.

Lake Conemaugh's three miles of water first began pouring over the dam at
3:15 p.m. Within 40 minutes, the lake bed was completely drained. Twenty million
tons of water surged down the valley toward Johnstown, which was 14 miles and
450 feet below the dam's elevation. Sometimes, the wall of water was as high as
70 feet to 75 feet when it backed up before breaking through obstructions.

When the wall of water actually hit Johnstown shortly after 4 p.m., it was 35
feet to 40 feet high.

Although some flood waters followed the normal river channel, the rest left
the riverbanks and smashed into the heart of the city. That central wave also
crashed into the steep hillside above the Stony Creek River after its first
strike. It created a backwash that wiped out most of what hadn't been destroyed
by the waters' initial hit.

In all, four square miles in the city's center were nearly obliterated. The
arches and pilings of the Pennsylvania Railroad's Stone Bridge, which held when
struck by the flood waters, collected a 30-acre pileup of debris, including
remnants of buildings, trees and barbed wire (from another of Johnstown's
factories) as well as animals and flood victims, both dead and alive. An ensuing
fire at the bridge added to the terror by burning to death many victims who were
ensnared in the mass of barbed wire and other debris collected there.

The Flood Museum's display and collections humanize statistics like the fact
that 99 entire families were lost, 396 children under the age of 10 died, 568
children lost one or both parents and 124 women and 198 men were widowed.

Besides standing before the museum's massive re-creation of a debris wall
that's filled with a tangle of barbed wire, branches, doors, windows, tools,
people's possessions and bodies, you can read the headlines and read excerpts of
stories that ran in the nation's newspapers and magazines. You can also glimpse
sheet music, poetry and books chronicling the flood.

But the museum also showcases personal effects that tell the most moving
flood stories.

You'll see the jacket worn by 9-year-old Bertha Moyer, who was swept away by
flood waters but escaped death by freeing herself from the debris at the Stone
Bridge and climbing the hillside next to it. Her parents were killed after
helping Bertha and her siblings climb through the roof of their home.

You'll see the calico quilt John Burns used like a rope to pull people from
the flood waters.

You'll see the trousers worn by 5-year-old Charles Barley, the only child in
his family to survive the disaster. His mother and four sisters drowned.

The collection continues to grow, especially now that a "treasure chest" of
personal writings by one of the town's leading ministers has been found. They
will further enhance the human stories symbolized by such simple effects as the
ceramic pitcher that was all the Zimmerman family had left after losing their
home, the key ring of switchboard operator Hettie Ogle, who perished, and a
single bottle of harmless-looking 1889 floodwater.

FLOOD FACTS

The Johnstown flood of May 31, 1889, is remembered as the worst disaster by
dam failure in American history.

It caused the greatest single-day civilian loss of life in the United States
before Sept. 11, 2001.

2,209 people died in the Johnstown flood of 1889, including 99 entire
families and 396 children.

1,600 homes were destroyed.

Four square miles of downtown Johnstown were destroyed.

The distance between the dam that failed and Johnstown was 14 miles.

When the dam gave way, 20 million tons of water (about the same amount that
goes over Niagara Falls in 36 minutes) went roaring through a deep valley toward
Johnstown.

When it struck the city, the great wave was between 35 and 40 feet high and
was moving at 40 miles per hour.

The force of the flood swept several locomotives weighing 170,000 pounds as
far as 4,800 feet.

Johnstown has suffered two other significant floods (in 1936 and 1977) as
well as many other smaller ones.

(Source: Johnstown Area Heritage Association)

First published on June 10, 2008 at 12:00
am

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