Johnstown Flood Ironworks Operating Again Weeks

Massive overflowing of Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1889

Johnstown Alluvion

Debris in a higher place the Pennsylvania Railroad span
Date	May 31, 1889[ane]
Location	S Fork, East Conemaugh, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Deaths	2,209[1] or 2,208[ii]
Property damage	$17 meg (about $490 million today[three])

The Johnstown Overflowing (locally, the Great Alluvion of 1889) occurred on Fri, May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam, located on the due south fork of the Lilliputian Conemaugh River, 14 miles (23 km) upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The dam ruptured afterward several days of extremely heavy rainfall, releasing 14.55 million cubic meters of h2o.^[4] With a volumetric flow charge per unit that temporarily equaled the average menstruum rate of the Mississippi River,^[5] the alluvion killed 2,209 people^[6] and accounted for $17 million of impairment (about $490 million in 2020 dollars^[three]).

The American Ruddy Cross, led by Clara Barton and with 50 volunteers, undertook a major disaster relief effort.^[7] Back up for victims came from all over the United States and eighteen foreign countries. Afterwards the flood, survivors suffered a series of legal defeats in their attempts to recover damages from the dam's owners. Public indignation at that failure prompted the development in American constabulary changing a mistake-based regime to 1 of strict liability.

History [edit]

The village of Johnstown was founded in 1800 past the Swiss immigrant Joseph Johns (anglicized from "Schantz") where the Stonycreek and Fiddling Conemaugh rivers joined to form the Conemaugh River. It began to prosper with the building of the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal in 1836 and the structure in the 1850s of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Cambria Fe Works. By 1889, Johnstown's industries had attracted numerous Welsh and German immigrants. With a population of thirty,000, it was a growing industrial community known for the quality of its steel.^[viii]

The remaining abutment of the Southward Fork Dam with the US-219 highway bridge downstream in the groundwork.

The high, steep hills of the narrow Conemaugh Valley and the Allegheny Mountains range to the east kept development close to the riverfront areas. The valley had big amounts of runoff from pelting and snowfall. The area surrounding Johnstown is prone to flooding due to its location on the rivers, whose upstream watersheds include an extensive drainage basin of the Allegheny plateau. Adding to these factors, slag from the iron furnaces of the steel mills was dumped forth the river to create more land for edifice.^[nine] Developers' artificial narrowing of the riverbed to maximize early industries left the city even more than flood-decumbent.^[8] The Conemaugh River, immediately downstream of Johnstown, is hemmed in by steep mountainsides for about ten miles (sixteen km). A roadside plaque alongside Route 56, which follows this river, proclaims that this stretch of valley is the deepest river gorge in North America eastward of the Rocky Mountains.

Remains of the South Fork Dam abutment with US-219 downstream in the background, every bit information technology appeared in 1980

South Fork Dam and Lake Conemaugh [edit]

High to a higher place the metropolis, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania built the Due south Fork Dam between 1838 and 1853, as part of a cantankerous-land canal system, the Main Line of Public Works. Johnstown was the eastern terminus of the Western Segmentation Canal, supplied with water by Lake Conemaugh, the reservoir behind the dam. As railroads superseded canal clomp transport, the Commonwealth abandoned the culvert and sold it to the Pennsylvania Railroad. The dam and lake were function of the buy, and the railroad sold them to private interests.^[10]

Remains of South Fork Dam showing construction details of the dam, as it appeared in 1980

Henry Clay Frick led a group of speculators, including Benjamin Ruff, from Pittsburgh to purchase the abandoned reservoir, modify it, and convert it into a private resort lake for their wealthy associates. Many were connected through business organization and social links to Carnegie Steel. Evolution included lowering the dam to make its top broad plenty to hold a road, and putting a fish screen in the spillway (the screen besides trapped debris). These alterations are idea to have increased the vulnerability of the dam. Moreover, a organisation of relief pipes and valves, a feature of the original dam, and previously sold off for flake, was not replaced, so the club had no way of lowering the water level in the lake in case of an emergency. The members built cottages and a clubhouse to create the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, an sectional and private mountain retreat. Membership grew to include more than than 50 wealthy Pittsburgh steel, coal, and railroad industrialists.^[11]

Lake Conemaugh at the guild'south site was 450 feet (140 yard) in superlative above Johnstown. The lake was about ii miles (3.two km) long, about 1 mile (1.6 km) wide, and 60 feet (eighteen thou) deep near the dam.

The dam was 72 feet (22 m) high and 931 anxiety (284 m) long. After 1881, when the society opened, the dam frequently sprang leaks. Information technology was patched, mostly with mud and straw.^{[ citation needed ]} There had been some speculation as to the dam's integrity, and concerns had been raised by the head of the Cambria Atomic number 26 Works downstream in Johnstown.

Events of the flood [edit]

On May 28, 1889, a low-force per unit area area formed over Nebraska and Kansas. By the time this atmospheric condition pattern reached western Pennsylvania two days later, it had developed into what would exist termed the heaviest rainfall event that had ever been recorded in that office of the United States. The U.Southward. Army Signal Corps estimated that vi to 10 inches (150 to 250 mm) of rain brutal in 24 hours over the region.^[ten] During the night, small creeks became roaring torrents, ripping out copse and debris. Telegraph lines were downed and rail lines were done away. Before daybreak, the Conemaugh River that ran through Johnstown was nearly to overwhelm its banks.

The northward finish of the dam abutment and the farm of Elias Unger; now the company centre of the Johnstown Flood Museum

View of the lake bed from top of the dam

May 1889 view of the Broken dam from the roadway

May five, 2013 view of the center department of the dam that gave way

On the forenoon of May 31, in a farmhouse on a hill just above the South Fork Dam, Elias Unger, president of the South Fork Angling and Hunting Club, awoke to the sight of Lake Conemaugh swollen after a night-long heavy rainfall. Unger ran outside in the all the same-pouring rain to assess the situation and saw that the water was near cresting the dam. He quickly assembled a group of men to relieve the confront of the dam by trying to unclog the spillway; it was blocked by the broken fish trap and droppings acquired past the swollen waterline. Other men tried digging a ditch at the other end of the dam, on the western abutment which was lower than the dam crest. The thought was to let more than water out of the lake to effort to foreclose overtopping of the crest, but without success. Most remained on tiptop of the dam, some plowing earth to raise it, while others tried to pile mud and rock on the face up to save the eroding wall.

John Parke, an engineer for the Southward Fork Society, briefly considered cut through the dam'south end, where the force per unit area would be less to create another spillway, but eventually decided confronting it equally that would accept rapidly ensured the failure of the dam. Twice, nether orders from Unger, Parke rode on horseback to the nearby boondocks of S Fork to the telegraph function to send warnings to Johnstown explaining the critical nature of the eroding dam. Unfortunately, Parke did non personally accept a warning message to the telegraph tower – he sent a man instead.^[12] Merely the warnings were not passed to the authorities in town, as in that location had been many false alarms in the past of the S Fork Dam not holding against flooding.^[10] Unger, Parke, and the residual of the men connected working until exhausted to salvage the face up of the dam; they abandoned their efforts at around 1:xxx p.m., fearing that their efforts were futile and the dam was at take chances of imminent collapse. Unger ordered all of his men to autumn back to high ground on both sides of the dam where they could do null just watch and expect. During the day in Johnstown, the situation worsened as water rose to as high equally 10 anxiety (3.0 m)^[13] in the streets, trapping some people in their houses.

Lake Conemaugh spillway as it appeared in 1980.

Between two:fifty and 2:55 p.thousand. the Southward Fork Dam breached.^[xiv] A LiDAR assay of the Conemaugh Lake bowl reveals that information technology contained 14.55 1000000 cubic meters (three.843 billion gallons) of water at the moment the dam complanate.^[4] Modernistic dam-breach computer modeling reveals that it took approximately 65 minutes for most of the lake to empty after the dam began to fail.^[4] The first town to be hit by the flood was Southward Fork. The town was on loftier ground, and most of the people escaped past running upwardly the nearby hills when they saw the dam spill over. Some 20 to 30 houses were destroyed or washed abroad, and 4 people were killed.

Continuing on its way downstream to Johnstown, 14 miles (23 km) west, the water picked upwards debris, such as trees, houses, and animals. At the Conemaugh Viaduct, a 78-foot (24 m) high railroad span, the flood was momentarily stemmed when this debris jammed against the stone span's curvation. Simply within seven minutes, the viaduct collapsed, allowing the inundation to resume its course. Yet, owing to the delay at the stone curvation, the flood waters gained renewed hydraulic head, resulting in a stronger, more than abrupt moving ridge of water hitting places downstream than otherwise would have been expected. The pocket-sized boondocks of Mineral Point, one mile (1.half-dozen km) beneath the Conemaugh Viaduct, was the offset populated identify to exist hit with this renewed force. About 30 families lived on the hamlet'southward single street. After the flood, there were no structures, no topsoil, no sub-soil – only the boulder was left. The death cost here was approximately 16 people. In 2009, studies showed that the inundation's flow rate through the narrow valley exceeded 420,000 cubic feet per second (12,000 mⁱⁱⁱ/due south), comparable to the catamenia rate of the Mississippi River at its delta, which varies between 250,000 and 710,000 cu ft/due south (7,000 and 20,000 mⁱⁱⁱ/south).^[5]

Wreck of Pullman cars and engines at Conemaugh

The village of East Conemaugh was adjacent. 1 witness on high basis near the town described the water as virtually obscured by debris, resembling "a huge hill rolling over and over".^[xv] From his idle locomotive in the town's railyard, the engineer John Hess heard and felt the rumbling of the approaching alluvion. Throwing his locomotive into contrary, Hess raced astern toward East Conemaugh, the whistle blowing constantly. His warning saved many people who reached high ground. When the inundation hit, it picked upwardly the yet-moving locomotive off the tracks and floated information technology aside; Hess himself survived, but at least l people died, including about 25 passengers stranded on trains in the boondocks.

Before hitting the main part of Johnstown, the inundation surge hit the Cambria Iron Works at the town of Woodvale, sweeping upwards railroad cars and barbed wire. Of Woodvale's i,100 residents, 314 died in the overflowing. Boilers exploded when the flood hitting the Gautier Wire Works, causing blackness smoke seen past the Johnstown residents. Miles of its barbed wire became entangled in the debris in the overflowing waters.

57 minutes after the Due south Fork Dam complanate, the alluvion hit Johnstown. The residents were caught past surprise as the wall of water and debris bore down, traveling at speeds of xl miles per hour (64 km/h) and reaching a height of 60 feet (xviii m) in places. Some people, realizing the danger, tried to escape by running towards loftier ground but well-nigh people were hit past the surging floodwater. Many people were crushed past pieces of debris, and others became caught in barbed wire from the wire factory upstream and/or drowned. Those who reached attics or roofs or managed to stay afloat on pieces of floating debris waited hours for assist to arrive.

1889 view of debris field; the Stone Span is at left center

At Johnstown, the Stone Bridge, which was a substantial arched structure, carried the Pennsylvania Railroad across the Conemaugh River. The droppings carried past the overflowing formed a temporary dam at the bridge, resulting in the inundation surge rolling upstream forth the Stoney Creek River. Eventually, gravity caused the surge to render to the dam, causing a second wave to striking the city, but from a different direction.^[16] Some people who had been done downstream became trapped in an inferno as the debris piled upwards against the Rock Bridge caught fire; at least fourscore people died there. The fire at the Rock Span burned for iii days. After floodwaters receded, the pile of debris at the bridge was seen to cover 30 acres (12 ha), and reached 70 feet (21 one thousand) in height. It took workers three months to remove the mass of debris, the delay owing in role to the huge quantity of steel spinous wire from the ironworks entangled with the wreckage. Dynamite was eventually used.^[17] Still standing and in utilise as a railroad bridge, the Rock Bridge is a landmark associated with survival and recovery from the flood. In 2008, it was restored in a project including new lighting equally function of commemorative activities related to the flood.

Victims [edit]

A contemporary rendition of the Johnstown Flood scene at the Stone Bridge by Kurz and Allison (1890)

The full death price was calculated originally every bit two,209 people,^[one] making the disaster the largest loss of noncombatant life in the United States at the time. This number of deaths was later surpassed past fatalities in the 1900 Galveston hurricane and the September xi, 2001 terrorist attacks. Even so, as pointed out by David McCullough in 1968 (pages 266 and 278),^[ii] a human reported as presumed dead (not known to have been found) had survived. In 1900, Leroy Temple showed up in Johnstown to reveal he had not died but had extricated himself from the flood debris at the stone span below Johnstown and walked out of the valley. Until 1900 Temple had been living in Beverly, Massachusetts. Therefore, the official expiry cost should be 2,208.^[2]

According to records compiled past The Johnstown Expanse Heritage Association, bodies were establish as far away as Cincinnati, and as late every bit 1911; 99 entire families died in the flood, including 396 children; 124 women and 198 men were widowed; 98 children were orphaned; and one 3rd of the dead, 777 people, were never identified; their remains were buried in the "Plot of the Unknown" in Grandview Cemetery in Westmont.^{[18] [1]}

Investigation [edit]

On June 5, 1889, five days later the dam breach flood, the American Society of Ceremonious Engineers (ASCE) appointed a committee of iv prominent engineers to investigate the cause of the disaster. This committee was led by the esteemed James B. Francis, a hydraulic engineer best known for his piece of work related to canals, flood control, turbine design, dam construction, and hydraulic calculations. Francis was a founding fellow member of the ASCE and served equally its president from November 1880 to January 1882. The ASCE committee visited the South Fork dam, reviewed the original engineering blueprint of the dam and modifications made during repairs, interviewed eyewitnesses, commissioned a topographic survey of the dam remnants, and performed hydrologic calculations. In their terminal report^[xix] they concluded the Due south Fork dam would accept failed even if it had been maintained inside the original pattern specifications, i.e., with a higher embankment crest and with five large belch pipes at the dam's base. This merits by the ASCE committee has at present been challenged.^[four]

Due south Fork Dam legend showing construction details of the dam

The ASCE committee completed their investigation written report on January 15, 1890, but the report was sealed and not shared with other ASCE members or the public.^[20] At ASCE'due south annual convention in June 1890, committee fellow member Max Becker was quoted every bit proverb "We volition hardly [publish our investigation] report this session, unless pressed to practice so, as we do not want to become involved in any litigation".^[20] Although many ASCE members clamored for the report, it was non published in the society's transactions until ii years after the disaster, in June 1891.^[xix] William Shinn, a former managing partner with Andrew Carnegie, became the new President of ASCE in January, 1890. He gave the investigation report to outgoing President Becker to decide when to release information technology to the public. Becker kept information technology nether wraps until the time of ASCE's convention in Chattanooga, TN, in 1891.^[21] The long-awaited report was presented at that meeting by James Francis. The other 3 investigators, William Worthen, Alphonse Fteley, and Max Becker, did not nourish.

A hydraulic analysis published in 2016 confirms what had long been suspected, that the changes made to the dam by the Southward Fork Line-fishing and Hunting Club severely reduced the ability of the dam to withstand major storms.^[4] Lowering the dam by as much as 3 feet (0.91 yard) and failing to replace the discharge pipes at the base of the dam cut in half the safety discharge capacity of the dam.^[4] This fatal lowering of the dam profoundly reduced the capacity of the main spillway and virtually eliminated the action of an emergency spillway on the western abutment. Walter Frank first documented the presence of that emergency spillway in a 1988 ASCE publication.^[10] The existence of the emergency spillway is supported by topographic data from 1889^[xix] which shows the western abutment to be about one foot lower than the crest of the dam remnants, even after the dam had previously been lowered as much as 3 feet by the S Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.^[iv] Adding the width of the emergency spillway to that of the main spillway yields the total width of spillway (wasteway) chapters that had been specified in the 1847 design of William Morris, a State Engineer.

Legal [edit]

In the years following the disaster, some people blamed the members of the Southward Fork Fishing and Hunting Club for their modifications to the dam and failure to maintain it properly. The order had bought and redesigned the dam to turn the area into a vacation retreat in the mountains. They were defendant of failing to maintain the dam properly, and then that information technology was unable to incorporate the boosted water of the unusually heavy rainfall.

The club was successfully defended past the business firm of Knox and Reed (later on Reed Smith LLP), whose partners Philander Knox and James Hay Reed were both Club members. The Club was never held legally responsible for the disaster. Knox and Reed successfully argued that the dam's failure was a natural disaster which was an Act of God, and no legal compensation was paid to the survivors of the flood.^[22] The perceived injustice aided the acceptance, in later on cases, of "strict, joint, and several liability," and so that even a "not-negligent defendant could exist held liable for damage caused by the unnatural utilise of land."^[23]

Nonetheless, individual members of the club, millionaires in their twenty-four hours, contributed to the recovery. Along with about half of the club members, co-founder Henry Clay Frick donated thousands of dollars to the relief effort in Johnstown. Afterwards the flood, Andrew Carnegie, so known as an industrialist and philanthropist, built the boondocks a new library. ^[24]

Popular feeling ran high, as is reflected in Isaac Reed's poem:

Many thou human lives-
Butchered husbands, slaughtered wives
Mangled daughters, bleeding sons,
Hosts of martyred little ones,
(Worse than Herod'due south atrocious crime)
Sent to heaven before their time;
Lovers burnt and sweethearts drowned,
Darlings lost but never found!
All the horrors that hell could wish,
Such was the price that was paid for— fish!^{[25] [26]}

Aftermath [edit]

Immediately afterward [edit]

1889 view of Johnstown, taken several months after the Dandy Flood

It was the worst flood to hitting the U.S. in the 19th century. 1600 homes were destroyed, $17 million in property harm levied (approx. $497 one thousand thousand in 2016), and 4 square miles (10 km²) of downtown Johnstown were completely destroyed. Debris at the stone span covered 30 acres,^[xviii] and make clean-up operations were to continue for years. Cambria Fe and Steel's facilities were heavily damaged; they returned to total production inside 18 months.^[1]

Working 7 days and nights, workmen built a wooden trestle bridge to temporarily supervene upon the huge stone railroad viaduct, which had been destroyed by the inundation. The Pennsylvania Railroad restored service to Pittsburgh, 55 miles (89 km) abroad, by June ii. Nutrient, vesture, medicine, and other provisions began arriving by runway. Morticians traveled by railroad. Johnstown's offset telephone call for assist requested coffins and undertakers. The demolition expert "Dynamite Bill" Flinn and his 900-man coiffure cleared the wreckage at the Stone Bridge. They carted off debris, distributed nutrient, and erected temporary housing. At its peak, the army of relief workers totaled about 7,000.

One of the offset outsiders to get in was Clara Barton, nurse, founder and president of the American Cherry Cross.^[1] Barton arrived on June 5, 1889, to lead the group's start major disaster relief effort; she did not leave for more than v months. Donations for the relief effort came from all over the United States and overseas. $3,742,818.78 was nerveless for the Johnstown relief effort from within the U.S. and eighteen foreign countries, including Russia, Turkey, France, Swell Uk, Australia, and Deutschland.

Frank Shomo, the last known survivor of the 1889 flood, died March 20, 1997, at the age of 108.^[27]

• 

  The authorities averting annexation on Principal Street, as fatigued in Harper's Weekly, June 15, 1889

• 

  A house that was almost completely destroyed in the inundation.

• 

  The John Schultz house at Johnstown, Pennsylvania after the alluvion. Skewered by a huge tree uprooted past the alluvion, the house floated downward from its location on Union Street to the end of Primary. Six people, including the owner Mr. Schultz, were inside the firm when the flood striking. All survived.

• 

  View of lower Johnstown three days later on the flood

• 

  Principal Street afterward flood

• 

  Ruins from the site of the Hulbert House

• 

  Copy of the preceding motion-picture show was resold 11 years after as part of the Galveston Texas storm of 1900

Subsequent floods [edit]

Floods take continued to be a business organisation for Johnstown, which had major flooding in 1894, 1907, 1924, 1936, and 1977. The biggest flood of the first half of the 20th century was the St. Patrick'southward Twenty-four hour period Flood of March 1936. It also reached Pittsburgh, where it was known as the Great Pittsburgh Flood of 1936. Following the 1936 flood, the U.S. Ground forces Corps of Engineers dredged the river within the city and built concrete river walls, creating a channel about twenty anxiety deep. Upon completion, the Corps proclaimed Johnstown "overflowing complimentary."

The new river walls withstood Hurricane Agnes in 1972, only on the night of July 19, 1977, a severe thunderstorm dropped 11 inches of rain in eight hours on the watershed above the metropolis and the rivers began to rise. By dawn, the urban center was nether water that reached every bit high equally 8 feet (2.4 m). Seven counties were declared a disaster area, suffering $200 meg in holding damage, and 78 people died. Forty were killed by the Laurel Run Dam failure. Another 50,000 were rendered homeless equally a result of this "100-year alluvion". Markers on a corner of City Hall at 401 Main Street show the elevation of the crests of the 1889, 1936, and 1977 floods.

Legacy [edit]

At Betoken Park in Johnstown, at the confluence of the Stonycreek and Little Conemaugh rivers, an eternal flame burns in retentivity of the flood victims.

The Carnegie Library in Johnstown is now operated past the Johnstown Area Heritage Association,^[28] which has adjusted information technology for utilise as the Johnstown Inundation Museum.

Portions of the Stone Bridge have been fabricated function of the Johnstown Flood National Memorial, established in 1969 and managed by the National Park Service.

Effect on the evolution of American law [edit]

Survivors were unable to recover amercement in court because of the guild's ample resources. First, the wealthy club owners had designed the club'south financial construction to proceed their personal assets separated from it and, secondly, it was hard for whatsoever suit to prove that any particular owner had behaved negligently. Though the former reason was probably more than central to the failure of survivors' suits against the club, the latter received coverage and extensive criticism in the national printing.

As a event of this criticism, in the 1890s, state courts around the state adopted Rylands five. Fletcher, a British common-constabulary precedent which had formerly been largely ignored in the U.s.. State courts' adoption of Rylands, which held that a non-negligent accused could be held liable for damage caused by the unnatural utilize of land, foreshadowed the legal system'due south 20th-century acceptance of strict liability.^[29]

Depiction in media [edit]

The flood has been the subject or setting for numerous histories, novels, and other works too. Variations on story of an elderly man lived through the Johnstown Flood (or in Johnstown PA) and bored endless of his contemporaries with his narratives about the Johnstown Flood. When he died, he went to Heaven and was greeted by St. Peter, whom he told that he wanted to tell the gripping story one more time. He'southward permitted to retell the story but warned that Noah will be in the crowd or audience.^[30]

Moving-picture show and tv [edit]

• The Johnstown Flood (1926 film) is a 1926 American silent epic film directed by Irving Cummings. A print is held at George Eastman House.^[31]
• The Johnstown Flood (1946 film), a 1946 animated motion-picture show. Mighty Mouse uses time-reversal power to undo the alluvion and forbid the dam from breaking in the commencement place. One of a series of cartoons where he stops disasters that actually happened.
• Slap Shot (1977 film) was filmed in Johnstown. Renamed to the fictitious "Charlestown" for the film, there are several references to an too-fictitious "1938 flood," when the character Reg Dunlop (Paul Newman) refers to a statue of a dog that had warned the town of the coming flood. Radio announcer Jim Carr also refers to Charlestown'due south nickname "Overflowing Urban center."
• The Johnstown Alluvion (1989 picture show), a 1989 short documentary movie which won the Best Documentary Academy Award in 1990.
• "Bloody Battles" episode of The Men Who Built America
• In the 1987–1996 blithe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, when New York Metropolis is flooded in the episode "20 000 Leaks Under the City", Burne Thompson says it is the biggest story since the Johnstown Alluvion.^[32]
• The Star Expedition: The Original Series novel Rough Trails (2006) (third part of the Star Expedition: New Earth mini-series) by L.A. Graf recreates the Johnstown Flood prepare on another planet.^[33]

Theater [edit]

• "A True History of the Johnstown Alluvion" by Rebecca Gilman^[34]
• Past the early twentieth century, entertainers developed an exhibition portraying the flood, using moving scenery, low-cal effects, and a live narrator. Information technology was featured equally a primary attraction at the Stockholm Exhibition of 1909, where it was seen past 100,000 and presented every bit "our time's greatest electromechanical spectacle",^[35] and was probably the Johnstown Flood attraction at the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition at Shepherd's Bush, London, which was seen past 715,000 people.^[36] The stage was 82 anxiety (25 grand) wide, and the show employed a full of 13 stagehands.^{[35] [37]}

Music [edit]

• "Mother Land", written by singer-songwriter John Stewart in 1969, contains the lyrics "What always happened to those faces in the one-time photographs / I mean, the piffling boys....... / Boys? . . . . . Hell they were men / Who stood knee deep in the Johnstown mud / In the fourth dimension of that terrible flood / And they listened to the water, that awful noise / And then they put away the dreams that belonged to little boys."
• "Highway Patrolman", a track from Bruce Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska, mentions a fictional song titled "Night of the Johnstown Flood."

Literature [edit]

Poems [edit]

• "The Pennsylvania Disaster", a poem by William McGonagall^[38]
• "By the Conemaugh", a poem by Florence Earle Coates

Short stories [edit]

• Brian Booker's "A Drowning Accident", in One Story (Result #57, May 30, 2005), was largely based on the Johnstown Alluvion of 1889.^[39]
• Caitlín R. Kiernan featured the alluvion in her "To This Water (Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 1889)", in her nerveless Tales of Pain and Wonder (1994).
• Donald Keith's science fiction serial Mutiny in the Fourth dimension Machine was published in Boys' Life magazine get-go in Dec 1962. It involved a Boy Scout troop discovering a time machine and travelling to Johnstown just prior to the alluvion.^[forty]

Historical novels [edit]

• Willis Fletcher Johnson wrote in 1889 a volume called History of the Johnstown Inundation (published by Edgewood Publishing Co.), likely the first book account of the flood.
• James Herbert Walker wrote the 1889 The Johnstown Horror or Valley of Death, published by National Publishing Company.
• Gertrude Quinn Slattery, who survived the flood as a 6-year-onetime daughter, published a memoir entitled Johnstown and Its Alluvion (1936).
• Historian and author David McCullough's first book was The Johnstown Alluvion (1968), published by Simon & Schuster.
• Weatherman and author Al Roker: Ruthless Tide. The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America'due south Amazing Gilded Age Disaster. Audiobook released in 2018 by Harper Audio.

Fictional novels [edit]

• Rudyard Kipling noted the flood in his novel, Captains Courageous (1897), as the disaster that destroyed the family unit of the minor graphic symbol "Pennsylvania Pratt."
• Marden A. Dahlstedt wrote the young adult novel, The Terrible Moving ridge (1972), featuring a immature girl as the main character, the volume is inspired by the memoir of Gertrude Quinn (Slattery) who was half-dozen years old at the time of the flood.
• John Jakes featured the inundation in his novel, The Americans (1979), gear up in 1890 and the final book in the series of The Kent Family Chronicles.
• Rosalyn Alsobrook wrote Emerald Storm (1985), a mass market place historical romance set in Johnstown. The characters Patricia and Cole try to reunite with each other and loved ones after the flood.
• Kathleen Cambor wrote the historical novel In Sunlight, In a Beautiful Garden (2001), based on events of the inundation. The book was a New York Times Notable Volume of the Year.
• Peg Kehret'south fantasy novel, The Overflowing Disaster, features ii students assigned a project on the inundation who travel back in fourth dimension.
• Murray Leinster'south fantasy novel The Fourth dimension Tunnel (1967) features two fourth dimension travelers who were unable to warn the Johnstown population of the coming disaster.
• Catherine Marshall's novel Julie features a teenage girl living in a pocket-size Pennsylvania boondocks beneath an earthen dam in the 1930s; its events parallel the Johnstown Flood.
• Paul Marking Tag's science fiction novel Prophecy features the flood.
• Richard A. Gregory wrote The Bosses Lodge, The conspiracy that caused the Johnstown Overflowing, destroying the atomic number 26 and steel majuscule of America (2011), a historical novel that proposes a theory of the involvement of Andrew Carnegie and other wealthy American industrialists in the Johnstown Flood, told through the lives of 2 survivors.
• Judith Redline Coopey wrote Waterproof: A Novel of the Johnstown Inundation (2012), a story of Pamela Gwynedd McCrae from 1889–1939 through flashbacks.
• Kathleen Danielczyk wrote "Summertime of Gold and Water" (2013) which tells story of life at the lake, the flood and a coming together of the classes.
• Colleen Coble wrote "The Wedding Quilt Bride" (2001) which tells the story of a romance between a member of the club's granddaughter and a homo brought in to run into if the dam was really in problem. It follows him trying to convince the people of the danger and then the inundation.
• Michael Stephan Oates wrote the historical fiction novel "Wade in the H2o" (2014), a coming of historic period tale prepare against the properties of the Johnstown flood.
• Jeanette Watts'south "Wealth and Privilege" (2014) portrays the Fishing and Hunting Club at its heyday, and so the main characters scramble for their lives in the Flood at the novel's climax.
• Mary Hogan'southward "The Woman In the Photo" (2016) writes about two immature women in present-twenty-four hours and Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1889.
• Jane Claypool Miner wrote "Jennie" (1989). An historical fiction romance written about a young daughter who rides the flood from South Fork to Johnstown and survives. She then works as a telegraph operator for the reporters flooding the town while advocating for the people living at that place.

Meet too [edit]

• Austin, Pennsylvania Dam Failure
• St. Francis Dam disaster
• Vajont Dam disaster

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b c d east f} "Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 1904". Library of Congress. World Digital Library. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
2. ^ ^{a b c} McCullough, David (1968). The Johnstown Flood. ISBN978-0-671-20714-4.
3. ^ ^{a b} 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Alphabetize for Utilize equally a Deflator of Money Values in the Economic system of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Gild. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use equally a Deflator of Money Values in the Economic system of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Toll Index (approximate) 1800–". Retrieved January 1, 2020.
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Coleman, Neil Chiliad.; Kaktins, Uldis; Wojno, Stephanie (2016). "Dam-Alienation hydrology of the Johnstown flood of 1889–challenging the findings of the 1891 investigation written report". Heliyon. two (half-dozen): e00120. doi:x.1016/j.heliyon.2016.e00120. PMC4946313. PMID 27441292.
5. ^ ^{a b} Sid Perkins, "Johnstown Flood matched volume of Mississippi River", Science News, Vol.176 #11, 21 November 2009, accessed 14 October 2012
6. ^ Fork, Mailing Address: 733 Lake Road South; Us, PA 15956 Phone:886-6171 Contact. "Johnstown Flood National Memorial (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov . Retrieved 2021-05-28 .
7. ^ "Founder Clara Barton". The American National Cherry Cross. Retrieved 25 Jan 2015.
8. ^ ^{a b} "Johnstown Flood of 1889 – Celebrated". Retrieved fifteen Feb 2017.
9. ^ "The Johnstown Flood Of 1889", The Weather Channel Archived 2013-12-26 at the Wayback Machine
10. ^ ^{a b c d} Frank, Walter Smoter (2004). "The Cause of the Johnstown Flood". Walter Smoter Frank. Civil Engineering science, pp. 63–66, May 1988
11. ^ "The Due south Fork Fishing & Hunting Social club and the South Fork Dam", Johnstown Flood Museum Archived 2013-eleven-04 at the Wayback Machine
12. ^ Coleman, Neil (2018). Johnstown's Alluvion of 1889 - Power over Truth and the Science Backside the Disaster. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG. p. 65. ISBN978-3-319-95215-iv.
13. ^ Lane, F.W. The Elements Rage (David & Charles 1966), p.129
14. ^ Kaktins, Uldis, Davis Todd, C., Wojno, S., Coleman, North.M. (2013). Revisiting the timing and events leading to and causing the Johnstown Flood of 1889. Pennsylvania History, v. 80, no. three, 335–363.
15. ^ JAHA "Johnstown Flood Museum: Pennsylvania Railroad Interview Transcripts" Archived 2013-03-29 at the Wayback Automobile
16. ^ History of the Johnstown Flood, Willis Fletcher Johnson (1889), pp 61–64. Available on CD-ROM from "Johnstown" Archived 2006-x-20 at the Wayback Motorcar, Between the Lakes
17. ^ Lane, F.W. The Elements Rage (David & Charles 1966), p.131
18. ^ ^{a b} "Statistics almost the slap-up disaster", Johnstown Flood Museum,The Johnstown Expanse Heritage Association. Retrieved June 3, 2019.
19. ^ ^{a b c} Francis, J.B.; Worthen, Westward.East.; Becker, Thousand.J.; Fteley, A. (1891). "Study of the Committee on the Crusade of the Failure of the South Fork Dam". Transactions of the American Social club of Ceremonious Engineers. v. XXIV: 431–469.
20. ^ ^{a b} Coleman, Neil Grand.; Wojno, Stephanie; Kaktins, Uldis (2017). "The Johnstown Flood of 1889 – Challenging the Findings of the ASCE Investigation Report". Geological Order of America Abstracts with Programs. 49 (ii). Newspaper No. 29-10. doi:10.1130/abs/2017NE-290358.
21. ^ Coleman, Neil (2018). Johnstown'due south Overflowing of 1889 - Power Over Truth and the Science Behind the Disaster. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG. p. 89. ISBN978-3-319-95215-iv.
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24. ^ McCullough, David (1968). The Johnstown Flood. ISBN 978-0-671-20714-four. folio 264.
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26. ^ https://archive.org/stream/StillCastingShadowsASharedMosaicOfU.southward.HistoryVol.I1620-1914/StillCastingShadows1_djvu.txt (in which, text-search for text "Mining a similar vein")
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29. ^ Shugerman, Jed Handelsman (2000). "Note: The Floodgates of Strict Liability: Bursting Reservoirs and the Adoption of Fletcher v. Rylands in the Aureate Age". Yale Law Journal. 110 (2): 333–377. doi:ten.2307/797576. JSTOR 797576.
30. ^ Wescott, David (6 Dec 2013). "Instruction alluvion preparedness to Noah". It'due south Not a Lecture.
31. ^ "Silent Era : Progressive Silent Film Listing". Retrieved 15 February 2017.
32. ^ "20 000 Leaks Nether the Urban center". Allreadable. 1989. Retrieved 20 May 2017.
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34. ^ "Theater Loop – Chicago Theater News & Reviews – Chicago Tribune". Retrieved fifteen Feb 2017.
35. ^ ^{a b} Shelley Johansson of the Johnstown Flood Museum, "First Person: The Swedish Johnstown flood", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 30 July 2011
36. ^ thelondonphile. "Franco-British Exhibition". thelondonphile . Retrieved 2021-06-08 .
37. ^ "Johnstowns undergång", Hvar 8 dag, result 41, 11 July 1909, at Runeberg website
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40. ^ Inc, Male child Scouts of America (1 December 1962). "Boys' Life". Male child Scouts of America, Inc.

Bibliography [edit]

Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Johnstown". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. fifteen (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 475.

• Coleman, Neil M. Johnstown's Alluvion of 1889 - Ability Over Truth and the Scientific discipline Behind the Disaster (2018). Springer International Publishing AG. 256 pp. 978-3-319-95215-4 978-3-319-95216-1 (eBook)
• Coleman, Neil M., Wojno, Stephanie, and Kaktins, Uldis. (2017). The Johnstown Flood of 1889 – Challenging the Findings of the ASCE Investigation Report. Paper No. 29-10. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 49, No. two. https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2017NE/webprogram/Paper290358.html. doi: 10.1130/abs/2017NE-290358.
• Coleman, Neil M., Kaktins, Uldis, and Wojno, Stephanie (2016). Dam-Breach hydrology of the Johnstown flood of 1889 – challenging the findings of the 1891 investigation report, Heliyon, https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2016.e00120.
• Coleman, Neil One thousand., Wojno, Stephanie, and Kaktins, Uldis. (2016). Dam-breach hydrology of the Johnstown Overflowing of 1889 – Challenging the findings of the 1891 investigation report. Paper No. 178-five. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 48, No. 7. https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2016AM/webprogram/Paper283665.html. doi: ten.1130/abs/2016AM-283665.
• Coleman, Neil Thousand., Davis Todd, C., Myers, Reed A., Kaktins, Uldis (2009). "Johnstown overflowing of 1889 – devastation and rebirth" (Presentation 76-9). Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 41, No. 7, p. 216.
• Davis T., C., Coleman, Neil M., Meyers, Reed A., and Kaktins, Uldis (2009). A determination of peak belch charge per unit and water volume from the 1889 Johnstown Flood (Presentation 76-x). Geological Lodge of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 41, No. seven, p. 216.
• Kaktins, Uldis, Davis Todd, C., Wojno, S., Coleman, N.Chiliad. (2013). Revisiting the timing and events leading to and causing the Johnstown Flood of 1889. Pennsylvania History, five. 80, no. 3, 335–363.
• Johnson, Willis Fletcher. History of the Johnstown Alluvion (1889).
• McCullough, David. The Johnstown Alluvion (1968); ISBN 0-671-20714-8
• O'Connor, R. Johnstown – The Day The Dam Broke (1957).

External links [edit]

• "Johnstown Flood Memorial", National Park Service
• Johnstown Flood Museum – Johnstown Expanse Heritage Association
• A Valley of Death Three Rivers Tribune (Three Rivers Michigan) #45 Vol. Xi June vii, 1889
• Benefit event for Johnstown Flood Sufferers held on June xiv, 1889
• "The Johnstown Flood", Greater Johnstown/Cambria County Convention & Visitors Bureau
• Ernest Zebrowski (1999). Perils of a Restless Planet: Scientific Perspectives on Natural Disasters. Cambridge University Printing. ISBN978-0-521-65488-3.
• Google Earth view showing Johnstown and the S Fork Dam site
• "Johnstown Flood', by Jeffrey J. Kitsko, Pennsylvania Highways, January 27, 2015.
• "'It's still controversial': Contend rages over culpability of wealthy club members" by David Hurst The Tribune-Democrat, May 25, 2014. Retrieved July 22, 2019.

Coordinates: xl°20′25″Due north 78°46′15″Due west  /  40.34028°N 78.77083°W  / 40.34028; -78.77083

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood

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