Johnstown, PA Flood, May 1889

(Transcriber's Note: You can find page after page and article after article on this most famous of disasters. This is just one article example along with several photos. You may find a list of the flood victims at www.nps.gov Flood Victims Johnstown Flood 1889 also very informative site is www.jaha.org the Johnstown Heritage Association site.)

TEN THOUSAND DEAD.

THE JOHNSTOWN DISASTER THE GREATEST ON RECORD.

ALMOST BEYOND BELIEF.

OVER A THOUSAND BODIES RECOVERED AT JOHNSTOWN.

A THOUSAND MORE BURNED IN THE DEBRIS.

Vivid Description of the Scenes of Desolation and Death -- First Accounts Not Exaggerated, the Difficulty Being to Tell the Whole of the Truth -- Hungarians Caught Robbing Bodies and Two are Hanged --Another Shot and Several Driven Into the River and Drowned. Order Restored and Food and Other Necessaries Being Given Out.

Sang Hollow, Pa., June 3 -- The first accounts sent out of the Johnstown disaster are far below the wildest estimates placed upon the extent of the calamity, and instead of 2,000 or 3,000 it is probable that the death list will reach 8,000 or 10,000. It is now known that two passengers trains, two sections of the day express on the Pennsylvania railroad, have been thrown into the maddened torrent and the passengers drowned. The trains were held at Johnstown from Friday at 11 a.m., and were lying on a siding between Johnstown and Conemaugh stations.
The awful torrent came down the narrow defile between the mountains, a distance of nine miles, and with a fall of 300 feet in that distance, sweeping away the villages of South Fork, Mineral Point, Woodvale and Conemaugh, leaving but one building standing, a wooden mill, where but an hour before had stood hundreds, and dashing on with the roar of a cataract and the speed of the wind upon the fair city at the foot of the hills.

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