
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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