History of the Johnstown Flood Part 23

"I don't believe any crew ever beat our time."

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

There was terrible destruction to life and property throughout the entire Juniata Valley by the unprecedented flood. Between Tyrone and Lewistown the greatest devastation was seen and especially below Huntingdon at the confluence of the Raystown branch and the Juniata River. During the preceding days of the week the rain-filled clouds swept around the southeast, and on Friday evening met an opposing strata of storm clouds, which resulted in an indescribable down-pour of rain of twelve hours' duration.

The surging, angry waters swept down the river, every rivulet and tributary adding its raging flood to the stream, until there was a sea of water between the parallel hills of the valley. Night only added to the terror and confusion. In Huntingdon City, and especially in the southern and eastern suburbs, the inhabitants were forced to flee for their lives at midnight on Thursday, and by daybreak the chimneys of their houses were visible above the rushing waters. Opposite the city the people of Smithfield found safety within the walls of the State Reformatory, and for two days they were detained under great privations.

Some conception of the volume of water in the river may be had from the fact that it was thirty-five feet above low-water mark, being eight feet higher than the great flood of 1847. Many of the inhabitants in the low sections of Huntingdon, who hesitated about leaving their homes, were rescued, before the waters submerged their houses, with great difficulty.

Huntingdon, around which the most destruction is to be seen of any of the towns in the Juniata Valley, was practically cut off from all communication with the outside world, as all the river bridges crossing the stream at that point were washed away. There was but one bridge standing in the county, and that was the Huntingdon and Broad Top Railroad bridge, which stood isolated in the river, the trestle on the other end being destroyed. Not a county bridge was left, and this loss alone approximated $200,000.

The gas works were wrecked on Thursday night and the town was left in darkness.

Just below where the Juniata and Raystown branch meet, lived John Dean and wife, aged seventy-seven each, and both blind. With them resided John Swaner and wife. Near by lived John Rupert, wife and three small children. When the seething current struck these houses they were carried a half mile down the course of the stream and lodged on the ends amid stream.

The Ruperts were soon driven to the attic, and finally, when it became evident that they must perish, the frantic mother caught up two bureau drawers, and placed her little children in them upon the angry waves, hoping that they might be saved; but all in vain.

The loss of life by the flood in Clinton County, in which Lock Haven is situated, was heavy. Twenty of those lost were in the Nittany Valley, and seven in Wayne Township. Lock Haven was very fortunate, as the inhabitants there dwelling in the midst of logs on the rivers are accustomed to overflows. There were many sagacious inhabitants who, remembering the flood of 1865, on Sat.u.r.day began to prepare by removing their furniture and other possessions to higher ground for safety. It was this full and realizing sense of the danger that gave Lock Haven such immunity from loss of life.

The only case of drowning in Lock Haven was of James Guilford, a young man who, though warned not to do so, attempted to wade across the main street, where six feet of the overflowed river was running, and was carried off by the swift current. The other dead include William Confur and his wife and three children, all carried off and drowned in their little home as it floated away, and the two children of Jacob Kashne.

Robert Armstrong and his sister perished at Clintondale under peculiarly dreadful circ.u.mstances. At Mackeyville, John Harley, Andrew R. Stine, wife and two daughters, were drowned, while the two boys were saved. At Salona, Alexander M. Uting and wife, Mrs. Henry Snyder were drowned. At Cedar Springs, Mrs. Luther S. Eyler and three children were drowned. The husband was found alive in a tree, while his wife was dead in a drift-pile a few rods away. At Rote, Mrs. Charles Cole and her two children were drowned, while he was saved. Mrs. Charles Barner and her children were also drowned, while the husband and father was saved. This is a queer coincidence found all through this section, that the men are survivors, while the wives and children are victims.

The scenes that have been witnessed in Tyrone City during the time from Friday evening, May 31st, to Monday evening, June 3d, are almost indescribable. On Friday afternoon, May 31st, telephone messages from Clearfield gave warning of a terrible flood at that place, and preparations were commenced by everybody for high water, although no one antic.i.p.ated that it would equal in height that of 1885, which had always in the past served as high-water mark in Lock Haven.

All of that Friday rain descended heavily, and when at eight o'clock in the evening the water commenced rising, the rain was falling in torrents. The river rose rapidly, and before midnight was over the top of the bank. Its rapid rising was the signal for hasty preparations for higher water than ever before witnessed in the city. As the water continued rising, both the river and Bald Eagle Creek, the vast scope of land from mountain to mountain was soon a sea of foaming water.

The boom gave away about two o'clock Sat.u.r.day morning, and millions of feet of logs were taken away. Along Water Street, logs, trees, and every conceivable kind of driftwood went rushing by the houses at a fearful rate of swiftness. The night was one to fill the stoutest heart with dread, and the dawn of day on Sat.u.r.day morning was anxiously awaited by thousands of people.

In the meantime men in boats were busy during the night taking people from their houses in the lower portions of the city, and conveying them to places of imagined security.

When day dawned on June 1st, the water was still rising at a rapid rate.

The city was then completely inundated, or at least all that portion lying east of the high lands in the Third and Fourth Wards. It was nearly three o'clock Sat.u.r.day afternoon before the water reached the highest mark. It then was about three feet above the high-water mark of 1885.

At four o'clock Sat.u.r.day evening the flood began to subside, slowly at first, and it was nearly night on Sunday before the river was again within its banks. Six persons are reported missing at Salona, and the dead bodies of Mrs. Alexander Whiting and Mrs. William Emenheisen were recovered at Mill Hall and that of a six-year old child near by. The loss there is terrible, and the community is in mourning over the loss of life.

G. W. Dunkle and wife had a miraculous escape from drowning early Sat.u.r.day A. M. They were both carried away on the top of their house from Salona to Mill Hall, where they were both rescued in a remarkable manner. A window in the house of John Stearn was kicked out, and Mr. and Mrs. Dunkle taken in the aperture, both thus being rescued from a watery grave.

Near by a baby was saved, tied in a cradle. It was a pretty, light-haired light cherub, and seemed all unconscious of the peril through which it pa.s.sed on its way down the stream. The town of Mill Hall was completely gutted by the flood, entailing heavy loss upon the inhabitants.

The town of Renovo was completely wrecked. Two spans of the river bridge and the opera-house were swept away. Houses and business places were carried off or damaged and there was some loss of life. At Hamburg seven persons were drowned by the flood, which carried away almost everything in its path.

Bellefonte escaped the flood's ravages, and lies high and dry. Some parts of Centre County were not so fortunate, however, especially in Coburn and Miles Townships, where great destruction is reported. Several persons were drowned at Coburn, Mrs. Roust and three children among the number. The bodies of the mother and one child were recovered.

James Corss, a well-known resident of Lock Haven, and Miss Emma Pollock, a daughter of ex-Governor Pollock of Philadelphia, were married at the fashionable Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, at noon of Wednesday, June 5th. The cards were sent out three weeks before, but when it was learned that the freshet had cut off Lock Haven from communication with the rest of the world, and several telegrams to the groom had failed to bring any response, it was purposed to postpone the wedding. The question of postponement was being considered on Tuesday evening, when a dispatch was brought in saying that the groom was on his way overland. Nothing further was heard from him, and the bride was dressed and the bridal party waiting when the groom dashed up to the door in a carriage at almost noon.

After an interchange of joyful greetings all around, the bride and groom set out at once for the church, determined that they should not be late.

On the way to the church the bride fainted. As the church came into view she fainted again, and she was driven leisurely around Rittenhouse Square to give her a chance to recover. She got better promptly. The groom stepped out of the carriage and went into the church by the vestry way. The carriage then drove round to the main entrance, and the bride alighted with her father and her maids, and, taking her proper place in the procession, marched bravely up the aisle, while the organ rang out the well-remembered notes of Mendelssohn's march. The groom met her at the chancel, the minister came out, and they were married. A reception followed.

The bride and groom left on their wedding-journey in the evening. Before they went the groom told of his journey from Lock Haven. He said that the little lumber town had been shut out from the rest of the world on Friday night. He is a widower, and, accompanied by his grown daughter, he started on his journey on Monday at two o'clock. They drove to Bellefonte, a distance of twenty-five miles, and rested there on Monday night. They drove to Leedsville on Tuesday morning. There, by hiring relays of horses and engaging men to carry their baggage and row them across streams, they succeeded in reaching Lewistown, a distance of sixty-five miles, by Tuesday night. At Lewistown they found a direct train for Philadelphia, and arrived there on Wednesday forenoon.

CHAPTER XL.

The opening of the month of June will long be remembered with sadness and dismay by thousands of people in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and the two Virginias. In the District of Columbia, too, it was a time of losses and of terror. The northwestern and more fashionable part of Washington, D. C., never looked more lovely than it did on Sunday, but along a good part of the princ.i.p.al business thoroughfare, Pennsylvania avenue, and in the adjacent streets to the southward, there was a dreary waste of turbid, muddy water, that washed five and six feet deep the sides of the houses, filling cellars and bas.e.m.e.nts and causing great inconvenience and considerable loss of property. Boats plied along the avenue near the Pennsylvania Railroad station and through the streets of South Washington. A carp two feet long was caught in the ladies'

waiting-room at the Baltimore and Potomac station, and several others were caught in the streets by boys. These fish came from the Government Fish Pond, the waters of the Potomac having covered the pond and allowed them to escape.

Along the river front the usually calm Potomac was a wide, roaring, turbulent stream of dirty water, rushing madly onward, and bearing on its swift-moving surface logs, telegraph poles, portions of houses and all kinds of rubbish. The stream was nearly twice its normal width, and flowed six feet and more deep through the streets along the river front, submerging wharves, small manufacturing establishments, and lapping the second stories of mills, boat-houses and fertilizing works in Georgetown. It completely flooded the Potomac Flats, which the Government had raised at great expense to a height in most part of four and five feet, and inundated the abodes of poor negro squatters, who had built their frame shanties along the river's edge. The rising of the waters has eclipsed the high-water mark of 1877. The loss was enormous.

The river began rising early on Sat.u.r.day morning, and from that time continued to rise steadily until five o'clock Sunday afternoon, when the flood began to abate, having reached a higher mark than ever before known. The flood grew worse and worse on Sat.u.r.day, and before noon the river had become so high and strong that it overflowed the banks just above the Washington Monument, and backing the water into the sewer which empties itself at this point, began to flow along the streets on the lower levels.

By nightfall the water in the streets had increased to such an extent as to make them impa.s.sable by foot pa.s.sengers, and boats were ferrying people from the business part of the town to the high grounds in South Washington. The street cars also continued running and did a thriving business conveying pleasure-seekers, who sat in the windows and bantered one another as the deepening waters hid the floor. On Louisiana avenue the produce and commission houses are located, and the proprietors bustled eagerly about securing their more perishable property, and wading knee-deep outside after floating chicken-coops. The grocery merchants, hotel men and others hastily cleared out their cellars and worked until the water was waist-deep removing their effects to higher floors.

Meanwhile the Potomac, at the Point of Rocks, had overflowed into the Chesapeake and Ohio Ca.n.a.l, and the two became one. It broke open the ca.n.a.l in a great many places, and lifting the barges up, shot them down stream at a rapid rate. Trunks of trees and small houses were torn from their places and swept onward.

The water continued rising throughout the night, and about noon of Sunday reached its maximum, three feet six inches above high-water mark of 1877, which was the highest on record. At that time the city presented a strange spectacle. Pennsylvania avenue, from the Peace monument, at the foot of the Capitol, to Ninth street, was flooded with water, and in some places it was up to the thighs of horses. The cellars of stores along the avenue were flooded, and so were some of the main floors. In the side streets south of the avenue there was six to eight feet of water, and yawls, skiffs and canoes were everywhere to be seen.

Communication except by boat was totally interrupted between North and South Washington. At the Pennsylvania Railroad station the water was up to the waiting-room.

Through the Smithsonian and Agricultural Department grounds a deep stream was running, and the Washington Monument was surrounded on all sides by water.

A dozen lives lost, a hundred poor families homeless, and over $2,000,000 worth of property destroyed, is the brief but terrible record of the havoc caused by the floods in Maryland. Every river and mountain stream in the western half of the State has overflowed its banks, inundating villages and manufactories and laying waste thousands of acres of farm lands. The losses by wrecked bridges, washed-out roadbeds and land-slides along the western division of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, from Baltimore to Johnstown, reach half a million dollars or more. The Chesapeake and Ohio Ca.n.a.l, that political bone of contention and burden to Maryland, which has cost the State many millions, is a total wreck. The Potomac river, by the side of which the ca.n.a.l runs, from Williamsport, Md., to Georgetown, D. C., has swept away the locks, towpaths, bridges, and, in fact, everything connected with the ca.n.a.l.

The probability is that the ca.n.a.l will not be restored, but that the ca.n.a.l bed will be sold to one of the railroads that have been trying to secure it for several years. The concern has never paid, and annually has increased its enormous debt to the State.

The Western Maryland Railroad Company and the connecting lines, the Baltimore and Harrisburg, and the c.u.mberland Valley roads, lose heavily.

On the mountain grades of the Blue Ridge there are tremendous washouts, and in some sections the tracks are torn up and the road-bed destroyed.

Several bridges were washed away. Dispatches from Shippensburg, Hagerstown and points in the c.u.mberland Valley state that the damage to that fertile farming region is incalculable. Miles of farm lands were submerged by the torrents that rushed down from the mountains. Several lives were lost and many head of cattle drowned. At the mountain town of Frederick, Md., the Monocacy river, Carroll creek and other streams combined in the work of destruction.

Friday night was one of terror to the people of that section. The Monocacy river rose rapidly from the time the rain ceased until last night, when the waters began to fall. The back-water of the river extended to the eastern limit of the city, flooding everything in its path and riding over the fields with a fierce current that meant destruction to crops, fences and everything in its path. At the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge the river rose thirty feet above low-water mark. It submerged the floor of the bridge and at one time threatened it with destruction, but the breaking away of 300 feet of embankment on the north side of the bridge saved the structure. With the 300 feet of embankment went 300 feet of track. The heavy steel rails were twisted by the waters as if they had been wrenched in the jaws of a mammoth vise.

The river at this point and for many miles along its course overflowed its banks to the width of a thousand feet, submerging the corn and wheat fields on either side and carrying everything before it. Just below the railroad bridge a large wooden turnpike bridge was snapped in two and carried down the tide. In this way a half-dozen turnpike bridges at various points along the river were carried away. The loss to the counties through the destruction of these bridges will foot up many thousand dollars.

Mrs. Charles McFadden and Miss Maggie Moore, of Taneytown, were drowned in their carriage while attempting to cross a swollen stream. The horse and vehicle were swept down the stream, and when found were lodged against a tree. Miss Moore was lying half-way out of the carriage, as though she had died in trying to extricate herself. Mrs. McFadden's body was found near the carriage. At Knoxville considerable damage was done, and at Point of Rocks people were compelled to seek the roofs of their houses and other places of safety. A family living on an island in the middle of the river, opposite the Point, fired off a gun as a signal of distress. They were with difficulty rescued. In Frederick county, Md., the losses aggregate $300,000.

The heaviest damage in Maryland was in the vicinity of Williamsport, Washington county. The railroads at Hagerstown and Williamsport were washed out. The greatest loser is the c.u.mberland Valley Railroad. Its new iron bridge across the Potomac river went down, nothing being left of the structure except the span across the ca.n.a.l. The original cost of the bridge was $70,000. All along the Potomac the destruction was great.

At and near Williamsport, where the Conococheague empties into the Potomac, the loss was very heavy.

At Falling Waters, where only a few days before a cyclone caused death and destruction, two houses went down in the angry water, and the little town was almost entirely submerged. In Carroll County, Md., the losses reached several hundred thousand dollars. George Derrick was drowned at Trevanion Mills, on Pipe creek. Along the Patapsco river in Howard county great damage was done to mills and private property. Near Sykesville the water undermined the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad track and a freight train was turned over an embankment. William Hudson was standing on the Suspension Bridge, at Orange Grove, when the structure was swept away, and he was never seen again.

Port Deposit, near the mouth of the Susquehanna river, went under water.

Residents along the river front left their homes and took refuge on the hills back of the town. The river was filled with thousands of logs from the broken booms up in the timber regions. From the eastern and southern sections of the State came reports of entire fruit farms swept away. Two men were drowned in the storm by the capsizing of a sloop near Salisbury.

A number of houses on the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers near Harper's Ferry were destroyed by the raging waters which came thundering down from the mountains, thirty to forty feet higher than low-water mark.

John Brown's fort was nearly swept away. The old building has withstood a number of floods. There is only a rickety portion of it standing, anyhow, and that is now covered with mud and rubbish. While the crowds on the heights near Harper's Ferry were watching the terrible work of destruction, a house was seen coming down the Potomac. Upon its roof were three men wildly shouting to the people on the hills to save them.