The Recent Fatal Floods at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

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The Johnstown flood of May 31, 1889, followed the failure of the South Fork Dam, an earthen structure that had once held water for a private fishing and recreation club upstream. The dam gave way after days of heavy rain, releasing a wall of water down the Little Conemaugh and Conemaugh valleys that swept through the mill town and killed more than 2,000 people. Printed views like this one were produced quickly for a national audience eager to see the damage, and they remain some of the earliest widely circulated images of a American disaster of this scale. Look closely at the wreckage, which shows how the flood piled debris against the stone arch of the railroad bridge, where fire later broke out among the wood and oil.

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