Home to Ravenna, OH
August 23 - September 5, 2021
We left home on Monday, August 23 and spent the night at the Natural Bridge/Lexington KOA. It was a nice park and we would return. My dad was traveling in his own car with us.
Tuesday, August 24 we arrived in Lititz, PA. We visited a long time friend of my parents and us in Mt. Joy. It was good to see her again. Of course we also had lunch at the Bird-in-Hand Restaurant for their buffet. I also visited a quilt store but (gasp!) didn't buy anything. Since I had sprained both ankles two weeks before I was trying to keep them up so the swelling would go down and that didn't include long visits to quilt stores. We stayed at a Boondockers Welcome location. The hosts were super nice people and the site was roomy. I didn't get a picture but here's one from the website.
On Friday we drove to Fayetteville, PA to the Chinquapin Campground in Caledonia State Park. Site #8 had full hookups and was paved (narrowly) but not very level. The sites were spaced nicely apart and were wooded. Highway 30 was nearby but we really didn't notice it. We would return.
We went to spend some time with John's sister's husband (John's sister has gone to be with the Lord). We had dinner at Mazatlan Mexican restaurant Friday night and it was very good! On Saturday we took the driving tour of Gettysburg. Other than the Visitor Center and lunch we didn't get out of the truck because of my ankles, although I did find a quilt shop near the campground and made some purchases in a quick 20 minutes.
On Sunday we went to breakfast and church with our brother-in-law and then back to the 5th wheel for some Sunday afternoon rest.
Monday, August 30 we drove to South Fork, PA, near Johnstown. We stayed at the 1889 Park Campground, which was very nice (full hookups) for $25 nite). It was located at the bottom of where the lake used to be (see story below).
On Tuesday we visited the cemetery where my uncle and dad's grandparents and great-grandparents were buried. Then we went to the top of the Incline for views of Johnstown. The Incline was built to evacuate people to higher ground in case of another flood. There were several more floods and the Incline was used, but nothing on the scale of the flood in 1889. Unfortunately they are doing maintenance on the Incline until next year so while I have ridden it in the past we weren't able to ride it this time.
My dad, John and I went to the Johnstown Flood National Memorial and the Visitor Center.
Hunting and Fishing Club
Johnstown is located in a deep valley where the Stoneycreek and Little Conemaugh rivers join to form the Conemaugh River. Between 1838 and 1853 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania built the South Fork Dam as part of a cross-state canal system. Eventually canal systems were abandoned in favor of railroads. The lake and dam were sold to private parties. Henry Clay Frick led a group of speculators, including Benjamin Ruff, from Pittsburgh to purchase the abandoned reservoir, modify it, and convert it into a private resort lake for their wealthy associates. Many were connected through business and social links to Carnegie Steel. Development included lowering the dam to make its top wide enough to hold a road, and putting a fish screen in the spillway (the screen also trapped debris). These alterations are thought to have increased the vulnerability of the dam. Moreover, a system of relief pipes and valves, a feature of the original dam, and previously sold off for scrap, was not replaced, so the club had no way of lowering the water level in the lake in case of an emergency. The members built cottages and a clubhouse to create the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, an exclusive and private mountain retreat. Membership grew to include more than 50 wealthy Pittsburgh steel, coal, and railroad industrialists. In May of 1889 it rained 11 days out of the month. On May 31, after 3 days of rain, the dam started to bulge. Despite efforts to safely release water, between 2:50 and 2:55 p.m. the South Fork Dam breached. A LiDAR analysis of the Conemaugh Lake basin reveals that it contained 3.843 billion gallons of water at the moment the dam collapsed. Modern dam-breach computer modeling reveals that it took approximately 65 minutes for most of the lake to empty after the dam began to fail. The water raced down the Conemaugh River and headed for Johnstown, 14 miles away. On the way whole towns were erased. The flood surge hit the Cambria Iron Works at the town of Woodvale, sweeping up railroad cars and barbed wire. Of Woodvale's 1,100 residents, 314 died in the flood. Boilers exploded when the flood hit the Gautier Wire Works, causing black smoke seen by the Johnstown residents. Miles of its barbed wire became entangled in the debris in the flood waters. It took 57 minutes for the 40' high wall of water to reach Johnstown. At Johnstown, the Stone Bridge, which was a substantial arched structure, carried the Pennsylvania Railroad across the Conemaugh River. The debris carried by the flood formed a temporary dam at the bridge, resulting in the flood surge rolling upstream along the Stoney Creek River. Eventually, gravity caused the surge to return to the dam, causing a second wave to hit the city, but from a different direction. Some people who had been washed downstream became trapped in an inferno as the debris piled up against the Stone Bridge caught fire; at least 80 people died there. The fire at the Stone Bridge burned for three days. After floodwaters receded, the pile of debris at the bridge was seen to cover 30 acres, and reached 70 feet in height. It took workers three months to remove the mass of debris, the delay owing in part to the huge quantity of steel barbed wire from the ironworks entangled with the wreckage. Dynamite was eventually used. Still standing and in use as a railroad bridge, the Stone Bridge is a landmark associated with survival and recovery from the flood. The official death toll was 2,208. According to records compiled by The Johnstown Area Heritage Association, bodies were found as far away as Cincinnati, and as late as 1911; 99 entire families died in the flood, including 396 children; 124 women and 198 men were widowed; 98 children were orphaned; and one third of the dead, 777 people, were never identified; their remains were buried in the "Plot of the Unknown" in Grandview Cemetery in Westmont. In the years following the disaster, some people blamed the members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club for their modifications to the dam and failure to maintain it properly. The club had bought and redesigned the dam to turn the area into a vacation retreat in the mountains. They were accused of failing to maintain the dam properly, so that it was unable to contain the additional water of the unusually heavy rainfall. The club was successfully defended by the firm of Knox and Reed (later Reed Smith LLP), whose partners Philander Knox and James Hay Reed were both Club members. The Club was never held legally responsible for the disaster. Knox and Reed successfully argued that the dam's failure was a natural disaster which was an Act of God, and no legal compensation was paid to the survivors of the flood. Nonetheless, individual members of the club, millionaires in their day, contributed to the recovery. Along with about half of the club members, co-founder Henry Clay Frick donated thousands of dollars to the relief effort in Johnstown. After the flood, Andrew Carnegie, then known as an industrialist and philanthropist, built the town a new library.
You can still see the sides of the dam. While we were in the visitor center it started raining so we didn't get pictures.
On Wednesday we went to my uncle's favorite Chinese buffet restaurant to celebrate his 96th birthday.
It had been raining all night and day and I got a picture of the Conemaugh River on our way back to the campground. It was high here but almost overflowing its banks in St. Michael.
On Thursday, September 2 we drove to Ravenna, OH to the Country Acres Campground. We didn't want to travel on the Labor Day weekend. Being a holiday weekend it's crowded but we are thankful to find this because it was the only thing available when I made reservations on June 22. It's a good place to camp if you have children as they have lots of activities here.
The swelling is going down in my ankles so I can see them again. Saturday we went to get groceries, we've done laundry and changed the bed, and tomorrow we clean. Life isn't always rainbows and unicorns when you're on the road but I'll take it any day!
Roving on...
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth".
Genesis 1:1
Enjoyed the blog. Bill and I are from Hancock and Brooke county in WV. It's the two northern counties of West Virginia in the panhandle near Pittsburgh. We've traveled that areas extensively. Steel was king in the days. Don't miss Wrather's museum in Dover.
ReplyDeleteI am glad you are blogging again. By the way, I DID get an email update so I guess you are grandfathered in to that. Those of us who are new do not get the feed burner service, I guess.
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