Austin Flood Disaster

On September thirtieth, nineteen eleven, a concrete dam owned by the Bayless Pulp and Paper Company gave way on Freeman Run just above here. The dam, built only two years earlier, stood nearly fifty feet tall and stretched five hundred forty feet across. When it failed, a wall of water and debris roared through the towns of Austin and Costello below, killing at least seventy-eight people and destroying much of both communities.

It was the second-worst single-dam disaster in Pennsylvania history. The tragedy exposed how little regulation existed over dam construction at the time. Two years later, in nineteen thirteen, Pennsylvania enacted legislation setting safety standards for dams, a direct response to the lives lost on Freeman Run.