Where Johnstown had once been, was a lake.
-John Bach McMaster, "The Johnstown Flood," in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 57:211 (1933).
Thus we find that from three unnatural causes we have suffered. First, and seriously enough, though only slight in comparison, from the narrowing of the streams; second from the building of the big stone bridge, with its ponderous arches taking up room that should have been free for the rush of water; and third from the Reservoir which dealt the final blow...The Cause
How much was SFFHC at fault?
The Western Reservoir, aka South Fork Dam, had been there since like 1853. The Club made it more dangerous, no doubt. But so the question has to be restated:
Would that earthen dam, up 404 feet and 14 miles as the fish swims from Johnstown, have broken with similar catastrophic results under this incredible storm had SFFHC never touched it? Well, it did break before Lake Conemaugh was even a mirage in the Pittsburgh peoples’ eyes. In 1862. Badd break too. But then South Fork Dam had lain in neglect for a decade and was only half full. And it broke at the BASE where the culvert with the cast irin drain pipes were. It DID NOT break from water running over the top.
Had it been full 💯? Would the Great Storm of May 1889 have caused the 1862 dammed water to rise from half to full capacity and run over the top and burst the dam and loose 20,000,000 tons of water on the Conemaugh Valley?
Wouldn’t you think that if a much less severe storm had caused a half-filled dam to break in 1862 that the greatest storm in Pennsylvania history would have caused the water to rise to full capacity and beyond and to break with comparable violence to 1889?
Or, were some improvements made between 1862 and 1889 that prevented the dam from collapsing again at half capacity? A half-full dam would have been a damned sight better to break at any time than a full-and-beyond dam!
Was John Parke correct to think about a cut that would result in a “controlled break”?
I have had impressed upon me as never before the uniqueness of the Great Storm. It was biblical. Otherwordly. More like the Great Storm on Jupiter than anything on Earth. I hadn’t realized. The description of it in Kansas on May 28 is the same description as in Johnstown the night of May 30. Those WERE tornadoes that ripped up the fields in Johnstown! Just as that was a tornado that killed a family and tore a man’s and a woman’s limbs off in Kansas.
Not knowing anything I would answer my own questions just from common sense as,
1) No. What SFFHC did made the dam infinitely more dangerous. They removed the only way to get water out of the dam (without a full break). They raised the volume of water; they reduced the height of the breast relative to the water level
and made it lower at the center, its weakest point, than at the ends.
A decent storm, not necessarily the Great Storm would have caused the water to run over the top and the dam to fail.
2) No! When SFFHC took control in 1879 they removed the drain pipes, stuffed the hole of the culvert and quickly brought the lake level up way beyond half-full to four feet from the top of the dam. It didn’t burst for ten years at near full capacity!
3) Yes, with the confidence that the Great Storm did cause water to run over the top, bursting the dam when no storm between 1862-1889 caused water to run over the top, even when from 1879-1889 the dam was at close to full capacity.
4) I don’t know but manifestly the dam didn’t break when beyond half capacity, nor when at near full capacity. Stands to reason that Ruff did a helluva job patching that hole at the base. Which caused the lake to fill without bursting and run over the top and destroy Johnstown. Good job Ruff, bad result.
5) No! Parke’s fleeting thought of a controlled break came to him when the water was level with the top of the dam. The dam was full already. Too late, Parkey! If he had had the thought and acted on it first thing in the morning of May 31, mebbe. The controlled break then would not have been as bad but the water level was still way over where it was in 1862.
Tom Swank is wrong that Johnstown had got through the heavy weather. The Great Storm continued through June 2. If there had not been an earthen dam up there, yes, of course, they wouldn’t have become Lake Johnstown. But there was.
The “warnings.” Deary me, those were dreary warnings, notifications, tips, whatever. Not clear, not unambiguous, not timely. Where was the local government? The mayor? I think I remember mention of the mayor’s name once in McCullough, not in connection with spearheading lookout of the dam situation. Tom Swank seems to have been the de facto mayor. There was no coordination of intel reconnaisance, no official advisement, no means of desseminating intel to the populace. It was a company town, I guess is the reason. All of the “warnings” were composed by men of the companies who had a financial interests in town or lake: Pitcairn’s men, Parke, Unger, Swank but less so. Swank was as close as it got to an Official Johnstown.
Ad hoc, no responsibility. Ergo no accountability after. Club members “simply moved away” and never came back, were never held liable, never made to give testimony.
This is mystifying to me: What is it with the Commonwealth and Cambria County building goddamned earthen dams on mountains above cities? Are you fucking stupid?! Pennsylvania is a verdant, well-watered body of land transected southwest-to-northeast by a mountain range with corresponding valleys. It is also in a west-to-east storm corridor, much like the east coast of Florida is in an east-to-west hurricane alley from the coast of Africa. Great storms from the west regularly visit the former as hurricanes regularly visit the latter. Why with this topographical and meteorological profile would it ever occur to intelligent beings to construct dams on mountains? And folks, this is not quarterbacking 131 years of Mondays afterwards. The. Same. Thing. Happened. In. 1977. Laurel Dam. Earthen. Watchtower abandoned. “Storm of the Century”. Say goodbye, Tanneryville. I was there after the 1977 flood. Went as part of a relief convoy from Pittsburgh, told the story many times. Johnstown looked like a whole mountain of shit had been thrown against a gigantic ceiling fan. (And by the by I was also in Boston for the Blizzard of ‘78). “Mud Arround” on the theater marquee, in place of “Surround Sound”. Mud turning to dust right before our eyes and noses and throats, blowing in the gentlest breeze. whisp whisp Rasp, rasp, rasp. THAT much dust will kill your ass. You didn’t know where to start to help out. And you know what? The people of Johnstown didn’t know where to start either. So they didn’t. They moved out, presumably to a place that didn’t build earthen dams on mountains. Most of those living in Johnstown at the time of the 1977 flood had been around for the 1936 flood. A few had been there for the 1889 flood. That was it, 1977 was the straw that broke the dam’s back for Johnstown. It has never recovered.
Anyway, no earthen Western Reservoir, no South Fork Dam, no catastrophic floods in 1889 and 1977; no opportunity for Lewis Clarke to practice his photography on Lake Conemaugh with the other rich and famous, no Lewis Clarke—who was at the Lake on May 31!—to escape to New York City and tell the New York Herald that “there was great doubt among the engineers” that it was his Lake Conemaugh that had burst its seams. Perhaps it was a dam in Lily which broke? Clarke disinformed.
They "simply moved away" and never went back.
