![]() ![]() Some isolated crime, specifically looting, occurred.īut many individuals and organizations responded with kindness and support. ![]() Then the water came, causing more than $40 million in damages, which would equate to about $750 million in today’s money. “I would say it was a little bit more difficult during the Depression for Johnstowners than it was in other places around the country because of that failure to diversify,” Farabaugh said. That singular focus on steel-making and coal-mining hurt the city during down times, according to Farabaugh. The economy was dominated by Bethlehem Steel. “It was an insecure period, but generally people were making do,” Burkert said. There were theaters, bars, pool halls, streetcars and diners in a bustling downtown.īut Johnstown, like the rest of the nation, was struggling through the Great Depression. Devastation, then responseĪbout 66,000 people lived in Johnstown in 1936. The only time the rivers have flooded the downtown since then was in July 1977, when 11 inches of rain fell over two days, causing six dams to fail. “It was a godsend for a town that got nailed twice by some of the worst floods in the United States,” Burkert said. Army Corps of Engineers constructed the city’s flood prevention river walls, which were dedicated in November 1943. Under Roosevelt’s administration, the U.S. I believe I can render better service after getting a firsthand view than if I just stayed in Washington,” according to an account in The Johnstown Democrat. 13, 1936, telling 20,000 people gathered there, “I came here to see conditions with my own eyes. Roosevelt made a campaign stop at Roxbury Park on Aug. March 1936 floods caused damage throughout the mid-Atlantic in countless small towns – for instance, Everett, where rushing water wiped out a bridge President George Washington crossed on his way to quell the Whiskey Rebellion – and in major metropolitan areas, including Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.īut, given its history of flooding, Johnstown received special attention. “I think that Johnstowners maybe became a little bit more – ‘jaded’ is not the right word, but I think there was a degree of, maybe, less trust after they experienced this flood a second time after some measures had been taken to try to protect the city,” Farabaugh said. Several steps, including construction of the Hinckston Run Reservoir and the Quemahoning Dam, were taken after 1889 to help reduce flooding. That was just a real shock to people because they had forgotten how disruptive a major flood could be.” Roosevelt’s reaction “But the ’36 flood peaked at 17 feet deep in the downtown. And there had been bad floods frequently between 1889 and ’36. “Every several years there’d be water in the streets. “They were used to flooding,” Johnstown Area Heritage Association President and Chief Executive Officer Richard Burkert said. So even a notice in the local newspaper about possible flooding in the commonwealth might not have garnered a lot of attention. But it’s not going to be anything like they ended up getting on March 17, 1936.” “I think people did think snow’s going to melt. “These flood events happened with frequency, not the magnitude, obviously, of when the South Fork Dam broke (in 1889), but there was a sense of, ‘OK, we’re going to get this flooding, and we’re going to survive it,’ ” said Farabaugh, an associate professor of communications at St. The floods ranged from minor inconveniences to serious property-damaging incidents, with some of the most severe occurring in 1891, 1894, 19, according to Pat Farabaugh, author of an upcoming book, tentatively titled “A History of Water and Steel in Johnstown,” about the city’s major floods of 1889, 19. Rushing waters often overflowed the banks of the Little Conemaugh River, Conemaugh River and Stonycreek River and filled the streets of the low-lying city of Johnstown. ![]() There was not another edition of the Tribune until March 20, when the grim banner headline “25 DIE IN FLOOD” told the news of the Saint Patrick’s Day Flood of March 17-18. By the end of the day, water reached 17 feet high at City Hall.
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