Austin Dam Burst Site

In 1900, Bayless Paper chose to construct a paper mill in the Freeman Run Valley. By 1909, the company realized that occasional dry seasons required a more reliable water source. After finding a small earthen dam to be inadequate, the T. Chalkey Hatton firm built a large concrete dam across the valley. The dam was 50 feet high, 540 feet long and cost $86,000 to construct. It was designed to be thirty feet thick, but was built only twenty feet thick. Within only a few months of its completion, problems were detected. The dam bowed more than 36 feet (11 m) under the pressure of the water it was holding and the concrete started cracking. The bowing was alleviated by using dynamite to blast a 13-foot (4.0 m) space for the excess water to spill over. The cracking was claimed to be normal because of the drying cement. On September 30, 1911, the dam failed and destroyed the Bayless Pulp & Paper Mill as well as much of the town of Austin. The damage was approximately $10 million. It also resulted in the deaths of 78 people. The paper mill and dam were subsequently rebuilt, but the mill was lost in a fire in 1933. The new dam failed in 1942 with no loss of life. The dam was not replaced after the second failure. The ruins consist of a series of broken sections extending east to west across the Freeman Run Valley. There are five upright sections and two large and several smaller topped sections. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. A documentary about the dam disaster, featuring narration by Willie Nelson, was created by Mansfield University of Pennsylvania professor Gale Largey in 1999. It includes interviews with five survivors along with original newsreel footage. In 2011 Largey produced a book based upon over 150 news accounts from as far away as Hong Kong and Japan. Unique stories from the respective newspapers are featured as well as hundreds of original photos along with nine editorial cartoons that appeared in various newspapers.