History

2019

May 2019

U.S. Census Bureau History: 1889 Johnstown Flood

On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam on Pennsylvania's Little Conemaugh River broke
sending 16 million tons of water rushing towards Johnstown, PA. More than 2,200
people died when the wave of destruction shattered their homes and businesses.

Photo courtesy of the City of Boston, MA.

After a May 1889 storm dumped nearly 10 inches of rain on Pennsylvania, the South Fork Dam on the state's Little Conemaugh River could no longer hold the rain-swollen waters of Lake Conemaugh. Around 3:00 p.m., on May 31, the earthen barrier failed and sent a massive wave of destruction through the villages of the Conemaugh Valley, including Johnstown, PA. When the water subsided, 2,208 people were dead, making the "Johnstown Flood" the deadliest disaster in U.S. history until the 1900 Galveston Hurricane.

Pennsylvania began construction of the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River in the 1840s in order to supply additional water volume during droughts to the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal stretching from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, PA. After the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal went out of business in 1854, and canal traffic between Johnstown and Blairsville. PA, ended in 1863. No agency maintained the dam and damage from a partial failure in 1862 went unrepaired for years. Removal of flood control pipes in 1875 weakened the damaged dam even further and limited flood control options. In 1879, Benjamin Ruff purchased Lake Conemaugh and the surrounding property for the wealthy clientele of his South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club. Included in the purchase was the distressed South Fork Dam. Ruff hastily repaired and "improved" the neglected dam. In doing so, he compromised the dam's integrity by lowering its height to construct a road to his clubhouse and blocking the dam's spillways with screens to prevent Lake Conemaugh's fish from escaping.

In late May 1889, a low pressure system stalled over Pennsylvania, dumping an estimated 6 to 10 inches of rain on the Conemaugh River Valley. On the morning of May 31, Elias Unger—president of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club—awoke to discover that Lake Conemaugh's water level was rising rapidly. In the decade since Benjamin Ruff altered the dam, debris had clogged the fish screens installed across its spillways, preventing the release of excess water. Despite the best efforts of Unger and his employees to ease the stress on the dam, they were unable to divert the rising water or clear the dam's spillways. They warned the villages downstream as water began overtopping and eroding the dam by early afternoon. Lake Conemaugh finally breached the dam around 3:00 p.m., sending approximately 3.8 billion gallons of water racing down the valley towards South Fork, Mineral Point, and East Conemaugh. When the flood waters reached Johnstown, 14 miles downstream from the South Fork Dam, the wave surged through the city crushing terrified victims in a torrent of mud, broken trees, shattered homes and furniture, barbed wire, and debris.

That evening, the shocked residents of the Conemaugh Valley began assessing the damage and searching for missing family members and neighbors. The deadly wave left 2,208 people dead and destroyed approximately 1,600 homes. Damage to homes and businesses amounted to about $17 million dollars—more than $450 million in 2019 dollars. Within days, work crews and volunteers repaired the bridges and roads; the Pennsylvania Railroad restored service; and relief workers, supplies, and money from throughout the United States poured into the region. It would take decades for the region to recover from the disaster, during which Johnstown and the surrounding valley towns suffered significant floods, but none would be as severe or deadly as the 1889 disaster. Today, the 1889 Johnstown Flood remains the second deadliest dam failure, eclipsed only by the Banqiao Reservoir Dam failure in Zhumadian City, China, that killed an estimated 171,000 people in August 1975.

You can learn more about the Johnstown Flood, its victims, and the region's recovery using census data and records. For example:

• Johnstown, PA, is located on the banks of the Little Conemaugh River in southwestern Cambria County, PA. In 1880, the county was home to 46,811. One year after the Johnstown Flood, the county's population was 66,375. After peaking in 1940 with a population of 213,459, Cambria County had an estimated 133,054 residents in 2017.
• The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club owned Lake Conemaugh and the South Fork Dam that failed on May 31, 1889. Founded in 1879, the club served as a vacation retreat for Pennsylvania's elite businessmen, including the steel industry's Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, banker Andrew Mellon, and National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) Founder Sylvester S. Marvin. The club's quick response to assist flood victims and the efforts of attorneys and club members Philander Knox and James Hay Reed helped shield members from victims' lawsuits. Carnegie later funded construction of the Cambria Public Library in Johnstown, current home of the Johnstown Flood Museum .
• The wave unleashed on the Conemaugh Valley following the failure of the South Fork Dam carried victims' bodies miles down river, with one found nearly 500 miles away in Cincinnati, OH, in 1911. Searchers never found the bodies of many other victims. The flood swept away 99 entire families while hundreds more lost children or spouses. Lost lives included: Johnstown physician John G. Alexander and his wife Margaret; John Alt of Conemaugh and his 20-year-old daughter Theresa; William Bantley, his wife Ella, and their 6-month-old son George; Machinist William F. Beck, his wife Blanche, and their children Alfred and Roy; Jane Beecher and her daughter Mary. Others lost included Charles Boyle drowned holding two of his seven children above his head as the flood waters rose—only his wife and one child survived; Johnstown, PA, telegrapher Mathew Fagan, his wife Mary, and their children Monica, Daniel, Clara, and Thomas who burned to death when the flood debris caught fire; Anna Fenn Maxwell survived the flood, but was haunted by the loss of her husband and seven children who drowned by her side—John, Daisy, Genevieve, George, Virginia, Bismarck, and Esther; Christ and Margaret Fitzharris and their children, Mary, Sarah, Christ, John, Maggie, Gertie, and Katie; and the Pennsylvania Railroad's Day Express passengers John R. Day and daughter Grace and Victor Fenstermaker who were swept away when the wave toppled their passenger cars.
• Within days of the South Fork Dam's failure, the American Society of Civil Engineers appointed a committee to investigate the disaster. The engineers' report theorized that Benjamin Ruff's repairs and "improvements" to the dam after he purchased the property to establish the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club in 1879, led to the tragedy 10 years later. Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there are 303,500 civil engineers in the United States, earning a median pay of $84,770. Many work at one of the 32,619 Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction establishments participating in the 2012 Economic Census. Texas and California led the nation in the number of these establishments with 3,245 and 2,658, respectively.
• Clara Barton and the American Red Cross she founded in 1881 organized recovery efforts for the families affected by the Johnstown Flood. Eleven years later, she led volunteers to Galveston, TX, to assist its residents recovering from the devastating September 1900 Galveston Hurricane. Prior to founding the American Red Cross, Barton supported Susan B. Anthony and the Suffrage Movement, Frederick Douglass and the Civil Rights Movement, assisted families to find and recover missing soldiers of the Civil War, and tended to the war's sick and wounded at battlefield hospitals. Barton lived in Glen Echo, MD, until her death at age 90, on April 12, 1912.
• The toll of dead and missing from the Johnstown Flood was 2,209 until 1900, when Leroy Temple—missing and presumed dead following the flood—returned to Johnstown to visit friends. Flood waters swept Temple downriver, but he managed to extricate himself from debris, recover, and move to Beverly, MA, with his wife Viola. He worked as a teamster and furniture mover until his death in 1913.
• Elsie Schaffer Frum of Johnstown, PA, and Frank Shomo of Lockport (within Woodward Township, Clinton County, PA), were the last known surviving witnesses to the Johnstown Flood. Frum was 6 years old in 1889 when she and her family fled to a nearby hill just before flood waters devastated her hometown. She died at age 108 at her Johnstown home in 1991. Frank Shomo was an infant when the wave of water and debris swept through Lockport, PA. Shomo's family and home survived the disaster. After more than 50 years working for the Pennsylvania Railroad, Shomo retired to Black Lick, PA. He died in 1997 at age 108.
• Johnstown experienced significant flooding in 1936 and 1977. In 1936 , heavy rain and snow melt left some towns along the Conemaugh River under 14 feet of water and killed 24 people. Soon after, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to alter the river channel in order to prevent future flooding. On July 19–20, 1977, a severe thunderstorm dropped more than a foot of rain on the region. Six dams in the Conemaugh Valley failed, leaving towns like Johnstown under six feet of water and killing 85 people, including 41 people in Johnstown's Tanneryville neighborhood. President Jimmy Carter declared Cambria, Somerset, Indiana, Bedford, Westmoreland, Clearfield, Jefferson, and Blair counties federal disaster areas.
• The 1889 Johnstown Flood remains one of the continental United States' deadliest disasters. When categorized as a "natural disaster," only the 1900 Galveston Hurricane (which killed approximately 8,000 and left 30,000 Galvestonians homeless) and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake (which claimed 3,000 lives and destroyed the homes of as many as 225,000) surpass the Johnstown Flood's death toll.
• The Johnstown disaster was not the only dam failure in the United States to cause significant loss of life. On March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam failed killing approximately 600 around Santa Clarita, CA; the failure of South Dakota's Canyon Lake Dam on June 9, 1972, killed 238 in the Rapid City, SD area; the collapse of the 1874 Mill River Dam in Williamsburg, MA, killed 139; the Buffalo Creek Flood caused by a poorly designed coal mine dam killed 125 in Logan County, WV, on February 26, 1972; and 100 died when the Walnut Grove Dam in Wickenburg, AZ, collapsed in 1890.

Did you know?

Two Johnstown, PA, brothers earned the Medal of Honor during the American Civil War?

While commanding the 1st West Virginia Cavalry, Charles E. Capehart earned the Medal of Honor for capturing a Confederate wagon train retreating from the Battle of Gettysburg on July 4, 1863.

Charles' older brother (and 1st West Virginia Cavalryman) Henry Capehart received the Medal of Honor after saving the life of a drowning soldier in 1864. Capehart led a brigade of George Armstrong Custer's Third Cavalry Division during the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse and the Army of Northern Virginia's surrender on April 9, 1865.

Henry and Charles survived the war and died in 1895 and 1911, respectively. They are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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This Month in Census History

Cyrus Guernsey Pringle was born in Charlotte, VT, on May 6, 1838.

As a special agent during the 1880 Census, Pringle explored the forests in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the New England states. The Census Bureau published the data he collected in the 1884 Report of the Forests of North America.

Since his death on May 25, 1911, several plants have been named for Pringle, including the Mexican Cobaea pringlei, Pinus pringlei, and Pachycereus pringlei.

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Dam Safety

The United States commemorates the 1889 Johnstown Flood through the annual May 31 observance of National Dam Safety Awareness Day.

The awareness day promotes the inspection, maintenance, and safety of private and public dams. It also highlights steps dam owners can take to prevent catastrophic failures and lessen the impact of potential failures.

In 2018, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' National Inventory of Dams reported that there were more than 91,000 dams in the United States. In addition to providing reservoirs for drinking water, irrigation, recreation, and land reclamation, 7 percent of these dams—like the Hartwell Dam (above) on South Carolina's Savannah River—provide hydroelectric power.

In 2012, the economic census reported that there were 405 hydroelectric power generating establishments (NAICS 221111) in the United States that employed 3,464 and generated revenue of $2.45 billion. New York led the nation with 52 establishments, followed by Wisconsin (35) and California (31)