The Austin Dam...A Dam Good Place to Visit

Take route 872 north out of Austin, Pennsylvania, and look to your left.  It’s hard to imagine that a century ago the deep valley once held a booming, paper mill town.  Even more amazing is that just one mile upstream there used to be a dam that stood some 50 feet high and spanned 530 feet across.  Today, 100 years later, only remnants of both the town and dam remain.

According to the Austin Dam Memorial Association, Austin was one of the boom towns of the 1890-1910 lumber era.  As old growth trees began to vanish, the Freeman Run valley still contained huge tracts of pulpwood.  Industrialist George Bayless arrived from Binghamton, NY, to build a paper mill.

Freeman Run alone wasn’t big enough to provide the steady flow of water needed to run the mill, so in May 1909 Bayless contracted for the construction of a huge concrete dam.  The town and paper mill then flourished. 

At the time it was the largest concrete dam in Pennsylvania, a feat of “modern” engineering.  Townsfolk had their trepidations, though.  What if the dam broke?  Engineers eased their worries only slightly by also building a wall consisting of 700,000 cords of wood directly downstream from the dam.  They claimed this would divert water around the town if the dam should ever fail.

On September 30, 1911, the dam did indeed fail.  After an extended period of torrential rains, stress on the dam grew too much until the concrete simply gave way and a rush of water swept downstream through the town of Austin killing at least 78 people.  The mass of water also wiped out the town of Costello almost three miles downstream.

The disaster inspired legislation in 1913 to regulate dams in Pennsylvania.  Decades later, the site of the Austin Dam has now become a popular destination in central Potter County.

The dam and the area surrounding it have been designated a park and improvements have been made throughout the years by the Austin Dam Memorial Association.  These folks have worked hard to turn it into a great family destination.  A well-maintained dirt road traverses the park.  There are plenty of primitive camping sites and strategically-placed information plaques throughout the park. 

There are miles of hiking trails available, some leading north through the park and some leading south.  There are 15 picnic tables as well set up in both public and private settings, not to mention a large pavilion at the site of the ruins.  Running water is available at several sites, and for those who can’t travel without internet, free wi-fi is also available throughout the park.

Also, the remnants of the dam still stand, with no gate or rope keeping out visitors.  Which is perhaps the neatest part of the whole thing – you can actually walk right up and touch the dam wall.  It gives you a perspective and an appreciation for what happened there.

Freeman Run flows through the park and was the stream they’d dammed in 1909.  In its own right, Freeman Run is a dang good trout stream, stocked heavily by the state and local sportsman’s clubs, and also home to a number of native brookies and wild browns. 

It’s an incredible experience to catch fish in the shadows of the ruins, to land a trout and then look up at the concrete wall towering overhead.  Imagine the moment when those walls burst.  Imagine the great wall of water that swept down through Austin, effectively wiping out the town.

The whole flood lasted barely 30 minutes, but the effects will last forever.  After the flood, as the town lay in ruins, many of the survivors completely left the area claiming that no town could ever be rebuilt after such devastation.  Well, the human spirit is strong. 

The town was rebuilt, though not as big or as booming as it was back then.  Today Austin is a quiet little mountain town with a giant history, good fishing, and a great family destination.