Existing comment:
May 31, 1889 -- "The dam is becoming dangerous"
Italian immigrant laborers with picks and shovels dug at the earth here in a desperate attempt to save the dam. If the dam were to collapse, they would be swept to their deaths. These men had been hired that spring to dig a sewer system for the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. They had been sleeping in tents in the nearby woods the night that the biggest storm of the century hit the mountains surrounding Lake Conemaugh. The next morning, the men were pressed into service digging a second spillway in a last, heroic effort to prevent one of the worst disasters in American history.
John G. Parke, Jr., had just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in civil engineering. His first job after graduation was to design a sewer system for a resort owned by rich Pittsburgh businessmen known as the South Fork Fishing & Hunting Club. On the morning of May 31, 1889, he found himself on horseback galloping back and forth across the dam to work where he thought they could do the most good. But he feared that a disaster of monstrous proportions was unfolding before them. |