Sat., July 26
Once a thriving steel/iron mill center, Johnstown is now a sleepy little town with a Holiday Inn and museum where the library used to be.
Johnstown gained its fame after the great flood of 1889, the largest natural disaster in the U.S. up to that point. The dam had broken a decade before but that time the water had only risen some three inches. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Society, an elite group of millionaires from Pittsburgh, purchased the land (and dam) for recreational purposes and didn’t maintain the dam properly. They filled the lake in with more water so that it would be navigable by steamboats. They lowered the center of the dam wall so their cars could pass through two at a time. And in order to keep in the fish that they imported into the lake, they set up a net system making it impossible for fish (or other debris) to pass through the dam. Heavy rains came and, just as residents had predicted for a long time, the dam went letting loose one of the largest man-made lakes at the time. Two-thousand two-hundred people were killed with another 900 “missing”. The event made headlines nationally and internationally. And although it looks like many were well aware of the irony that poor people had died for the recreation of the rich, no one at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Society was ever held liable for any of the deaths of damage.
The Johnstown Museum had the best exhibit with surviving relics from the flood and a superior video. The area where the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Society used to be is now a National Park, the rinky dinkiest national park I have ever been to. Being able to see the surrounding area where lake used to be was interesting though.
Once a thriving steel/iron mill center, Johnstown is now a sleepy little town with a Holiday Inn and museum where the library used to be.
Johnstown gained its fame after the great flood of 1889, the largest natural disaster in the U.S. up to that point. The dam had broken a decade before but that time the water had only risen some three inches. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Society, an elite group of millionaires from Pittsburgh, purchased the land (and dam) for recreational purposes and didn’t maintain the dam properly. They filled the lake in with more water so that it would be navigable by steamboats. They lowered the center of the dam wall so their cars could pass through two at a time. And in order to keep in the fish that they imported into the lake, they set up a net system making it impossible for fish (or other debris) to pass through the dam. Heavy rains came and, just as residents had predicted for a long time, the dam went letting loose one of the largest man-made lakes at the time. Two-thousand two-hundred people were killed with another 900 “missing”. The event made headlines nationally and internationally. And although it looks like many were well aware of the irony that poor people had died for the recreation of the rich, no one at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Society was ever held liable for any of the deaths of damage.
The Johnstown Museum had the best exhibit with surviving relics from the flood and a superior video. The area where the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Society used to be is now a National Park, the rinky dinkiest national park I have ever been to. Being able to see the surrounding area where lake used to be was interesting though.
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