The West Branch of the Susquehanna [River] was flooded by the afternoon of May 30, and the water continued to rise until Saturday, June 1.
The West Branch rises on the west side of the Alleghenies in northwestern Cambria County...The flood waters of the West Branch, Penn's Creek, and the Juniata drained the eastern slopes of the Alleghenies. In the west, the Clarion River, Red Bank Creek, and the Conemaugh rise highest in the Alleghenies and fall the fastest and steepest. A typical mountain stream, the Little Conemaugh, and its principal branch, the Stonycreek, wind through the mountains for twenty-five miles...At the confluence of the Little Conemaugh and the Stonycreek lies Johnstown, which in 1889 comprised a cluster of a dozen boroughs with a population of twenty-five thousand.
