Johnstown Flood

On the afternoon of May 31, 1889, an earthen dam failed in the hills above Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and a wall of water came down the valley of the Little Conemaugh River. In about an hour, much of the city was gone. More than 2,200 people died.

The dam was the South Fork Dam, about 14 miles upstream. It held back a lake used by the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, a private retreat for wealthy Pittsburgh men, including Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. The club had owned the dam for years, and repairs had been poor. After days of heavy rain, the water topped the dam and cut through it.

The flood swept up houses, rail cars, trees, livestock and people, and piled the wreckage against the stone railroad bridge below the city. The pile caught fire, and many who had survived the water were trapped in the burning debris. The bridge itself held. It is still standing.

The disaster became a national event almost overnight. Newspapers sent reporters and artists, and photographers came in on the first trains. Their pictures of houses on their sides, streets buried under timber and wrecked mills were sold widely as prints and stereo cards. Sightseers came too, so many that they got in the way. Help came from across the country and overseas. Clara Barton brought the young American Red Cross to Johnstown and stayed for months. It was the organization's first great disaster relief effort, and it made its name. Lawsuits against the club's members went nowhere.

When you look at the photographs, notice how much of the wreckage is lumber. Johnstown was a steel town, but its houses were frame houses, and they broke apart and floated. Look also for the people standing in the ruins. Many of them are residents looking for what they had lost, and some are posing for the camera because they had nothing else to do.