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"Send Coffins"

© Meg Greene Malvasi

The rain began falling late in the winter and continued in torrents throughout the spring. By May, annual rainfall measured more than fifty inches, making 1889 the rainiest year in the history of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a factory town nestled in the Conemaugh Valley between the Little Conemaugh and Stoneycreek rivers. The dull, leaden clouds that gathered with ominous monotony day after day promised even more rain to come.

South Fork Dam was situated in the Allegheny Mountains fourteen miles east of Johnstown. When finished in 1852, South Fork, at 931 feet long and 72 feet high, was the largest earthen dam in the world. It had been built to create a small lake that would provide water for the Johnstown canal during the dry summer months. Two years after completion of the dam, however, railroads began to replace canals as the principal means of transportation. The dam fell gradually into disrepair.

In 1879, a group of wealthy businessmen from Pittsburgh bought the South Fork Dam and the land surrounding it. They transformed the area into a resort, forming the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Club members authorized only minimal repairs to the dam, which now held back twenty million tons of water!

When Colonel Elias Unger, the president of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, awoke on the morning of Friday, May 31, 1889 and peered out of his bedroom window what he saw filled him with fear. It had poured down rain all night long. Water levels in Lake Conemaugh were higher than Unger had ever seen them. Unger dressed hurriedly and, dashing through the rain, crossed the wooden bridge that led to the top of the dam. His measurements confirmed his suspicions: water levels had risen two feet in less than twenty-four hours. Worse, they were still rising at a rate of an inch every five minutes.

There was a channel, called a spillway, built to divert runoff from the lake into South Fork Creek. Large metal screens blocked this channel to prevent fish from swimming out of the lake. Branches, leaves, and sediment clogged these screens, interrupting the steady flow of water. Unger knew that he ought to remove them, but he did nothing. He was afraid doing so would allow the fish to escape. As a result, water levels in Lake Conemaugh continued to rise with no effort being made to stop them. By the time Unger at last ordered the fish screens removed, it was too late. Water was rushing over the top of the dam.

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