By Willis Fletcher Johnson
The summer of
1889 will ever be memorable for its appalling disasters by flood and
flame. In that period fell the heaviest blow of the nineteenth century --
a blow scarcely paralleled in the histories of civilized lands. Central
Pennsylvania, a centre of industry, thrift and comfort, was desolated by
floods unprecedented in the records of the great waters. On both sides of
the Alleghenies these ravages were felt in terrific power, but on the
western slope their terrors were infinitely multiplied by the bursting of
the South Fork Reservoir, letting out millions of tons of water, which,
rushing madly down the rapid descent of the Conemaugh Valley, washed out
all its busy villages and hurled itself in a deadly torrent on the happy
borough of Johnstown. The frightful aggravations which followed the coming
of this torrent have waked the deepest sympathies of this nation and of
the world, and the history is demanded in permanent form, for those of the
present day, and for the generation to come.
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