-Penna. Hist. & Museum Commission

Austin was a bustling community when this photograph was taken around 1906. In the view can be seen the mill, Standard Wood Company's kindling wood factory (at the far right), the roundhouse, shops, and depot of the B. & S. R. R. The station is the second one as the first had evidently been destroyed in a fire or merely torn down. The finished lumber stacks stretch for close to a half mile. Beyond, but out of the photo, was the smaller Goodyear mill and the hardwood mill of Emporium Lumber Company, two miles downstream. 

-Penna. Hist. & Museum Commission

Three years after the 1911 flood, Austin shows signs of having it's business district rebuilt, but there is no trace of the big mill, it's log pond, or the railroad shops.  A new passenger depot was built.  Close comparison of this photograph with an earlier Austin view reveals that several brick buildings along Main Street survived the flood, but everything else is new.

-Penna. Hist. & Museum Commission

Freeman Run trickles through the remains of the Bayless dam.  Downstream, the paper mill can barely be seen.  Although photographed in 1912 this scene has changed.  A small road sign tells of the disaster, which was the worst concrete dam failure ever to occur in the United States.  The forty three foot high dam was built in 1909 to replace a smaller earthen dam to give a more adequate year round water supply.  In January, 1910 a sudden thaw filled it and caused it to blow out.  Repairs were made, but on the fateful day, water seeping under the dam caused it to let go.

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