The ruins at Johnstown, after the flood, May 31, 1889. View of the gorge and ruined city from the P.R.R. bridge / Rothengatter & Dillon, photo's., Phila. – Vintage Photo Print
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
A window into the past: The ruins at Johnstown, after the flood, May 31, 1889. View of the gorge and ruined city from the P.R.R. bridge / Rothengatter & Dillon, photo's., Phila., preserved in this historic photograph. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.
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The ruins at Johnstown, after the flood, May 31, 1889. View of the gorge and ruined city from the P.R.R. bridge / Rothengatter & Dillon, photo's., Phila.
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Seen from the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge, this view looks down into the narrow gorge where the Conemaugh River and Stony Creek meet, with the ruined city spread beyond it. The flood of May 31, 1889, followed the failure of a dam on the South Fork upstream, and it killed more than 2,000 people in the valley. Wreckage piled against the stone railroad bridge here became one of the disaster's most striking images. The print was made by Rothengatter & Dillon, a Philadelphia photography firm, in the years immediately after the flood, when the town still lay buried in debris.
| Created / published | c1889. |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 photographic print. |
| Genre | Photographic prints 1880-1890. |
| Notes | No. 11. |
| Subjects | Floods--Pennsylvania--Johnstown--1880-1890. |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 1,536 × 1,242 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-167231 |
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