Why it was so Torrential...

There was only one, small drawback to living in the prosperous Johnstown City. Johnstown had been built on a flood plain at the fork of the Little Conemaugh and Stony Creek Rivers.

With the city growing, the river banks had been narrowed to gain extra building space. With the smaller river banks, the heavy annual rains increased the flooding in the past years.

Fourteen miles up on the Little Conemaugh, was a man made lake. 3-mile long Lake Conemaugh was held on the side of a mountain-450 feet higher than Johnstown- by the old South Fork Dam.
The dam had been very poorly maintained, and every spring there was talk that the dam might not hold. But the dam always held, and so the supposed threat became something of a standing joke around town.

The City of Johnstown nestled in the infamous flood plain (photo 2000, NYT Photo Archive)

After the heavy rains, the South Fork Dam broke, sending the water into the downward sloping, narrow valley. The water rushed at a tremendous speed, which gave it an impact that would pull trees from their rooted positions and yank buildings from their property. Flowing with huge chunks of debris, the water would reach up to 60 or 70 feet high at times, tearing downhill at 40 miles per hour, leveling everything in it's path.

When the water reached Johnstown, the large industrial city transformed the water from a torrential wave into a giant whirl pool, which lasted 10 mintues. Thousands of people tried to escape the waves, but most were caught, swept up into a torrent of muddy, oily water, surrounded by tons of grinding debris. Some people were crushed by the debris, while others were able to use debris as flotation rafts. Many became helplessly entangled in the barbed wire from destroyed wire works.

Grandview Cemetery, plot of the unknown victims of the Johnstown Flood( NYT Photo Archive)