Posted: March 16, 2026 10:45 am
March 17, 1936 is the second of Johnstown’s three major floods. Unlike the floods of 1889 and 1977, a dam failure was not involved — instead, it was caused by a massive snowmelt and three days of rain. Heritage Johnstown’s Nikki Bosley has researched and written this account to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the disaster.
“Nobody in this district can forget the events on this date and those immediately following – caused by the elements on a wild rampage. Those who were not actual flood sufferers were made to suffer fear and shock by being victims of vicious rumors of bursting dams and a flood that would bring complete destruction. These people were dam frightened in more ways than one, and will always couple the word “Flood” with the wearing of the ‘Green’ ” – Robert Boyle of Johnstown describing the St. Patrick’s Day Flood of 1936.
Life was good in Johnstown in the late summer of 1929. Ten acres of Bethlehem Steel’s rolling mills and blast furnaces were operating close to full capacity, and the men who made that production possible were enjoying wages comparable to industrial workers elsewhere. Parks and other civic improvements were happening throughout the community, and the Roaring 20s seemed to be in full swing.
When the stock market crashed in October, the United States was propelled into economic chaos. Bethlehem Steel employed 90 percent of the city’s wage earners, and all of them bore the brunt of declining production and uncertainty through shortened hours and wage cuts. Bethlehem Steel enjoyed occasional mild recoveries between 1929 and 1932, the height of the Great Depression years in Cambria County, but production never fully recovered until World War II. Johnstown’s working-class families, most who moved to the city with the promise of steady employment in the mills and mines, learned to make do on much less.
The winter of 1935-1936 would end up being one of the worst on record for Cambria County with back-to-back snowstorms and persistent sub-zero temperatures lingering for weeks. Although periods of rainy, warmer temperatures in between the deep freeze allowed for snow to melt on the streets, snowdrifts in the higher elevations that surrounded the city barely had a chance to thaw before another period of snow or cold hit the area.
The constant warming spells and refreezing created the perfect conditions for flooding, but few feared a major disaster. Almost half a century had passed since the Great Flood of 1889 when the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 people. Periodic floods and high water plagued the city throughout the decades that followed, but a few minor ordinances had been put in place to avert disaster, and Hinckston Run Reservoir and Quemahoning Dam were constructed, giving Johnstowners a sense of apathy.
The depression still cast a pall over Johnstown in early 1936, but things were looking up enough to anticipate Spring Opening Days, a yearly shopping tradition planned for March 18-20.
“(Stores) were loaded with Spring Merchandise and the town never looked better,” remembered one Joseph Johns Junior High School (JJJHS) student identified only as Agnes. “On the morrow the festival was to begin.”
Hope seemed to be on the horizon.
“About every day for 8 days it had been raining off and on but on (Tuesday) morning it began to pour,” remembered Agnes. “I hated to go to school in the awful downpour. All morning I felt uneasy while watching the water pour off the (mountain) side near our school (building) Which is located near the (Stonycreek) River in the downtown section.”
On that day, Tuesday, March 17, 1936, business owner Robert Tross started measuring rainfall. Tross had been talking to neighbors and other merchants about the dangers of the persistent, sometimes heavy, rain and how it could affect the snow packs high in the surrounding hills above the city. If heavy rain continued falling, those snowpacks would begin to melt, causing an enormous amount of water to flow downhill towards the city and its two main rivers – the Little Conemaugh and the Stonycreek.
Tross, who worked a side job as a government weather observer, noticed at 8:00 am that 1.25 inches of rain had fallen in 12 hours. By 9:00 am he recorded that the Stonycreek was up more than eight feet from its base stage. The storm didn’t seem to be slowing, and at noon he saw that another 1.29 inches of rain had fallen.
Downtown Johnstown basements started flooding and sewers began backing up. By 1:00 pm water began overflowing the riverbeds at a low point along Stonycreek Street. It had been business as usual for the schools, banks, offices and stores that morning, but by 2:00 pm, students were sent home and city merchants started to move all of their spring stock to higher spots so that it would be safe from the quickly-rising water.
“The river began to over flow its banks and people living near the river began to leave their homes,” remembered Charles Muransky, a JJJHS student who had been released from school. “We moved all our furniture to the second floor and then the family went over to my uncle’s home on Woodvale (Avenue) high on the hillside above the water. The water rose gradually until we had 18 inches of water in our yard and four and a half feet in our cellar.”
Tross and other observers noted around 3:00 pm that a large current of water reached Central Park, leaving it under several feet of water which was still slowly rising. Things were no better in the Moxham section of Johnstown, where Robert Boyle, a moulder at Lorain Steel Company, was helping coworkers move shop patterns and moulds to higher spots.
“Before we could gather our tools from the floor, the first water, in a six inch wave, swept over our floor,” remembered Boyle. “In five minutes the water rushed in up to our knees. It was coming in through three open gangways with a speed of about fifteen miles per hour…The rush of water reached the open pit of molten metal that had just before been emptied into it. This meeting of fire and water caused a spectacle well worth seeing, as large clouds of steam rose from instantly boiling water, with a hissing sound as from the throat of a giant cat with murderous intent.”
Jack Gard, a JJJHS student, went home when school was let out and and watched the rivers slowly rise.
“As I measured the water coming up the staircase, I didn’t think of death or dying,” remembered Gard. “I don’t know what I thought of, except for a while I devised a plan for getting out of the house. But the rest of the time, I only stared – I was numbed…when water swiftly, silently, then gently, creeps up at you, you merely face it in a drugged condition, in a stupor of fear, not only for your own well being, but for everything in general.”
The fast-moving floodwaters kept rising into the late afternoon as the last telephone connection out of Johnstown failed with electric light and power following soon after, plunging everyone into darkness and further uncertainty. By 8:00 p.m. more than 12 feet of water was measured in the streets. The water neared a crest of 14 to 15 feet soon after. Ferndale Bridge was the first bridge in the city to collapse with others following throughout the night.
Operators of the The Inclined Plane, who typically transported people between the hilltop community of Westmont and downtown Johnstown, worked throughout the night transporting almost 4,000 people to higher ground.
The rain didn’t stop until 10:15 p.m., but waters continued to rise until after midnight.
“The day after the flood I was surprised to see that the town was completely ruined,” wrote Joe Pagano. “I saw cars upside down up against telephone poles and some up to the door of stores. Some stores had two-feet of mud in it. Everything in the stores was ruined.”
Water began to recede slightly throughout the night and into the next day, but the prior day’s fast-moving Stonycreek had already weakened the Franklin Street Bridge, and it collapsed on the morning of Wednesday, March 18, 1936.
Receding continued. Once the water reached a manageable level, trucks began transporting stranded citizens to safety on higher ground. Travel on foot was possible by the afternoon in some places, but hazardous because of the silt and mud that caked city streets.
People were just beginning to breathe a sigh of relief and started searching for loved-ones and assessing the damage when a rumor began to circulate that the Quemahoning Dam had broken. Sam Ciraulo, a JJJHS student, was downtown when he heard a man yelling, “Run for your life, the water is coming!”
“My heart skipped a few beats and I looked in each direction to see which way the water was coming,” wrote Ciraulo. “When I didn’t see any water, I ran as fast as I could up the alley over wreckage, through water, mud and anything else that got in my way…There was confusion all around me, cars rushing past with horns blowing, men running, ladies screaming, and children crying all dashing madly for the hills…I then arrived at the railroad bridge and I lost no time getting across an up the bluff to Prospect. It was a mad scene, people climbing the bluff breathless and hopeless. I hope this is never repeated.”
“To add to the fright and disorder, fire sirens…began to screech a shrill warning that disaster was on its way,” wrote Boyle. “Some (people) were carrying small children, others were lugging bundles of food, small tents and blankets for an indefinite stay out on the hills in the open. Hundreds of people went by in a short time. This end of the city was cleared of its thousands of people in a short period of about twenty-five minutes.”
“No one could be seen on the streets that were once so busy with people and traffic,” remembered Carl Rother, a JJJHS student. “It put fear into lot of people when they thought would happen if the water did come.”
It was never proven as to who started the rumor, but thankfully it was untrue.
When it was all said and done, The 1936 St. Patrick’s Day flood in Johnstown peaked at just over 17 feet, leaving 25 people dead and destroying 77 buildings. The damage to sidewalks, bridges, streets, commercial structures, industrial facilities and residences was estimated at $50 million.
Within a week of the flood, Bethlehem Steel management, aware of the emotional distress of the community, announced that the Cambria plant would “resume operations as soon as possible’.
Local and national Red Cross volunteers soon arrived, setting up temporary shelters, providing meals and distributing essentials to over 9,000 people left homeless and others who were displaced. One week after the flood the Red Cross commissaries were feeding 60,000 daily. The Red Cross, which made its name as a humanitarian relief organization during the Great Flood of 1889, spent nearly $2 million on relief for Cambria County.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program to provide unemployed Americans with jobs on public works projects to help the country fight its way out of the Great Depression. Over 7,000 of these laborers from nearby counties brought 350 trucks to help with the daunting tasks of digging out businesses, shoveling mud and debris from streets and cellars, removing refuse, and disposing of spoiled food and dead animals. Five hundred WPA nurses joined forces with the Red Cross and relief medical women in caring for and aiding flood refugees. WPA women also sewed clothes and worked for weeks after the flood’s end helping the people of Johnstown who needed clothing.
Over 700 junior and veteran members of the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), another product of Roosevelt’s New Deal, cleaned up over 500 residences.
“State Militia seemed to be on every street doing guard duty along with the regular City Police, State Police, Special Police, Volunteer Firemen and Boy Scouts and Motor Patrolmen to see that order prevailed and to prevent looting,” wrote Boyle.
Trucks, trains and planes from near and far brought food, and Somerset County potato farmers contributed parts of their harvest from the previous fall. Tons of clothing, bedding and medical supplies arrived courtesy of the Altoona American Legion Post 228 and the Altoona Boosters Association. Milk dealers in Blair County and the Barnsboro community gave bread, milk, butter, eggs and coffee.
“People from outside have been very good in sending supplies of food and clothing,” wrote Agnes. “Coal was dumped on the (streets) during the cold period last week to relieve suffering. Refugees are seen everywhere. W.P.A. men are speeding the work of cleaning out the worse dirt.”
Volunteer fire companies assisted in pumping out flooded cellars, answered alarms and furnished emergency lighting units where needed, and Safety Inspection Crews from local mines worked without pay to inspect cellars for leaking gas lines. The Johnstown American Legion allowed use of its headquarters so that cooks could feed volunteer firemen, crews and refugees.
The Omnibus Flood Act of 1936 was already being considered by Congress, but was thrown to the forefront after the Flood. Johnstown was not the only city affected by the storm, and people across the state soon began writing letters to government representatives, asking for help. This got the attention of President Roosevelt who toured Johnstown in August and signed the bill into law. The U.S Army Corp of Engineers would complete a study focusing on improving the river channels through the city. As a result, channels of the Conemaugh, Little Conemaugh and Stonycreek Rivers were deepened and widened with concrete slopes. There would be floodwall improvements where the channels could not be widened. Other flood prevention and mitigation projects took place.
The Pennsylvania government did its part to help Johnstown by passing a “temporary” 10% tax on all alcoholic beverages (many states were reinstating taxes on alcohol in the immediate post-Prohibition era). The revenues collected were initially used to benefit flood victims and rebuild the town, but since the 1940s the money has gone into general funds. The tax, which was made permanent in 1951, was raised to 18% in the 1960s. Although the “1936 Johnstown flood tax” seems to come up frequently, to date no proposed changes to its structure have become law, so the somewhat misleading name persists.
Resources Cited:
HeritageJohnstown.org
Disastrous Floods and the Demise of Steel In Johnstown by Pat Farabaugh
Johnstown Pennsylvania A History, Part One: 1895-1936 by Randy Whittle
Forging A New Deal: Johnstown PA and the Great Depression 1929-1941 by Dr. Curtis Miner
Flood, Mud, Misery: A Pictorial Record of the Second Johnstown Flood, March 17-18, 1936 by John Hughes Boyd
“Hell and High Water” The Saga of the Second Johnstown Flood by William Rodgers and Penn G. Dively
The Johnstown Flood Story by George Gore
The Flood and the Future: The Story of A Year in City Government by Ramon Cooper
