Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Pennsylvania (20 page)

Pennsylvania has 33 . . .
counties (out of 67) that sit atop bituminous coal beds. The coal beds comprise more than one-fourth of the state's entire area.

Pennsylvania has 2,567 . . .
municipalities. That includes all incorporated cities, towns, townships, and boroughs.

Pennsylvania has 44,645 . . .
steps (on 712 stairways) in Pittsburgh alone. That's the most of any city in the United States, and more than San Francisco and Cincinnati (which rank second and third) combined. Because of the large number of steps, Ernie Pyle, a famous war correspondent, once joked that Pittsburgh “must have been laid out by a mountain goat.”

The Johnstown flood was one of the greatest disasters in American history, but it made heroes of ordinary Pennsylvanians and was the Red Cross's first attempt at peacetime relief
.

J
ohnstown, Pennsylvania, in the western Appalachian Mountains not far from Pittsburgh, was a thriving steel town in the 1880s. The city had a population of about 30,000 and sat in a narrow valley at the fork of the Little Conemaugh and Stony Creek rivers. The townspeople knew that they lived in a flood-plain; it was obvious every spring when heavy rains poured down the mountain, overran the rivers' banks, and seeped into nearby buildings and homes. Fourteen miles upriver—and 450 feet higher in elevation—was the manmade Lake Conemaugh. Situated on the side of a mountain and held in place by the South Fork Dam, the lake was two miles long and home to the exclusive South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, where successful Pittsburgh businessmen vacationed. No one in Johnstown gave much thought to the lake's old, earthen dam—except to joke about it collapsing someday.

During the night of May 30, 1889, one of the worst rainstorms in American history dumped 10 inches of rain on Johnstown. By noon the next day, the South Fork club's engineer took a nervous look at the rising lake waters and sent a messenger to telegraph a warning of possible flooding to the Johnstown authorities. He and the club's president also gathered a work group and desperately tried to bolster the dam.

They lost the battle. By the afternoon, the lake started to seep over the dam; then, with a roar, the entire dam collapsed. Within 45 minutes, the lake was completely empty, its contents on a disastrous journey downhill. Twenty million tons of water gushed through the narrow valley toward Johnstown at 40 miles an hour, tearing up, crushing, and carrying along everything in its path.

The whistles at Johnstown's steel mill sounded just after 4:00 p.m., but people didn't know why (though most historians believe it wouldn't have done any good if they had because it all happened so fast). The first sign of disaster was a deafening roar that grew louder with each second. Some said it sounded like hail, a cyclone, or thunder. One man remembered the crunching sounds of houses torn apart by the water.

At 4:07 p.m., a 60-foot-high wall of water slammed into Johnstown. People on the streets were swept away. Some residents climbed to their rooftops only to be carried off when their houses splintered beneath them. Others floated on rafts of debris and were dashed into buildings or bridges or sucked underwater by whirlpools.

The water moved through the city as one mass until it came to a railroad bridge, where most of the debris started piling up. That slowed the wave down a bit, but the water continued to move through the valley. Survivors who'd been swept toward the bridge clung there or became trapped in the wreckage, which was piled 40 feet high. As night fell, the huge pile of rubble caught fire, and 80 Johnstowners died in the fire.

Amazingly, many Johnstown residents survived the disaster. One was 16-year-old Victor Heiser, who climbed onto the roof of his family's stable. As he watched the wall of water rush toward him, he saw it splinter other structures and expected the same. But instead, the stable was lifted off its foundation and began to roll like a barrel in the water, crashing into other houses in its path. Victor jumped from one piece of house to another, finally landing on a barn roof. He rode it, eventually jumping onto the roof of a brick building. Heiser had looked at his watch when the wild ride began and remembered that it had said 4:20; it wasn't quite 4:30 when it ended. He lost his family in the flood but eventually went on to medical school and developed the first drugs to effectively treat leprosy.

Gertrude Quinn Slattery was just six years old when the flood hit Johnstown. She later told of riding the rolling water atop a mattress and crying out for help. Maxwell McAchren, safe on a rooftop, noticed as she passed by and dove into the water to help. He went under and came up . . . and went under and came up . . . several times before finally reaching the little girl. The two floated along together until they saw a group of men safe on top of another building. McAchren threw Gertrude to them, and both survived.

In all, 2,209 people—almost 10 percent of Johnstown's population—died in the flood. Four square miles of the town were obliterated, and 1,600 homes were destroyed. Hundreds of missing people were never found, and the last victim wasn't identified until 22 years later.

Donations of money, food, and clothing poured into Johnstown. The citizens of Cincinnati sent 20,000 hams; prisoners in Pittsburgh baked and sent bread. Standard Oil donated a carload of kerosene for light and heat. Emergency shelters, tents, and prefab houses were erected. More than $3 million in donations poured in from around the world. And the American Red Cross, led by Clara Barton herself, carried out its first major peacetime relief operation.

Thanks to the outside help and the resilience of the surviving residents, one of the town's iron companies reopened on June 6, and by July 1, most of the stores on Main Street were open for business as usual. Within just five years, Johnstown's manufacturing centers had recovered.

The South Fork Dam was never replaced, and today, the Johnstown Flood National Memorial preserves the ruins of the dam, part of the old lake bed, and some of the buildings of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. The visitor center regularly shows a film that re-creates the flood. Every May 31, a ceremony is held in remembrance of the victims of the Johns-town flood, and people light 2,209 candles on the remains of the South Fork Dam.

 

Happy reading . . . er, redding, er
. . .

Town:
Reading

Location:
Berks County

Founding:
1748

Population (2008):
81,000

Size:
10.1 square miles

County seat:
Yes

The town was mapped out in 1743 by Richard and Thomas Penn, sons of Pennsylvania's founder, William Penn. The Penn brothers named it Reading after their hometown of Reading, England.

 

 

On
page 111
, we introduced Carl Stotz and Little League baseball. Here's the rest of the story
.

In 1946, there were still only 12 local Little Leagues in the United States—all in Pennsylvania. But big changes came in 1947. Two years after the end of World War II, America's fighting men were back home, settled into their new lives, and finally had time to participate with their sons in Little League.

That year, Little League included 17 independent leagues, and it held its first “World Series.” (The Williamsport team took the first title.) The Associated Press and other wire services covered the event, and when stories and photographs of the game appeared in newspapers, Little League's headquarters was deluged with letters from all over the country. People wanted to know how to set up their own leagues.

With Little League's growth came a problem: adults were taking the competition more seriously than the children did. In 1947, parents and other spectators began to routinely boo players and officials during games. Stotz wrote:

Some of them seemed unable to see the games as simply little boys having fun in a structured . . . athletic program. After all, many of the eight- to twelve-year-old boys had played baseball less than a year. There was certainly no valid excuse for such adult criticism. And it was becoming quite discouraging to some of the boys.

Stotz and other Little League officials complained, and
newspaper editorials condemned the conduct. Within a year, the booing faded.

By the late 1940s, Little League had grown to more than 300 local leagues all over the United States. By 1951, it had more than doubled in size to 776 leagues; there were even leagues in Panama, the first outside the United States. The organization had grown so much that it could no longer be managed effectively by part-time volunteers. So in 1951, Little League incorporated and hired a paid, full-time staff. Carl Stotz was appointed president and commissioner of the league, but his Little League days were numbered.

In 1948, the U.S. Rubber Corporation became Little League's first national sponsor. In return, the company wanted to help determine the direction of the organization—so U.S. Rubber executives approached Stotz to discuss it. “Essentially,” Stotz wrote, U.S. Rubber “proposed a national body that would have total control of the leagues that evolved from it. That body would own every Little League playing field and every Little Leaguer would be a paying member.”