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- The flood resulted from a dam bursting in the mountains above Johnstown. The dam had been somewhat hurriedly built to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort, and although known to be weak, calls for it to be reinforced were ignored. The disaster that ensued is a story of inequality, greed, and gross negligence.
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The Johnstown Flood: The Incredible Story Behind One of the Most Devastating Disasters America Has Ever Known is a 1968 book written by popular historian David McCullough about the Great Flood of 1889 which devastated the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
- David G. McCullough
- 1968
The Johnstown Flood (locally, the Great Flood of 1889) occurred on May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River 14 miles (23 km) upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The dam broke after several days of extremely heavy rainfall, releasing 14.55 million cubic meters of water.
- (23K)
- Hardcover
The stunning story of one of America’s great disasters, a preventable tragedy of Gilded Age America, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough. At the end of the nineteenth century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation’s burgeoning ...
- Paperback
- January 15, 1987
The Johnstown Flood, sometimes referred to locally as Great Flood of 1889, occurred on Friday, May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam, located on the south fork of the Little Conemaugh River, 14 miles (23 km) upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, United States.
The Johnstown Flood describes how on May 31, 1889, the earthen dam holding back Lake Conemaugh 15 miles upriver from Johnstown, PA, gives way in abnormally heavy spring rains, and a wall of water races down the valley, scraping away all trace of several small communities before destroying and drowning the populace of Johnstown in ten minutes.
It was a tragedy that became a national scandal. Graced by David McCullough's remarkable gift for writing richly textured, sympathetic social history, The Johnstown Flood is an absorbing, classic portrait of life in nineteenth-century America, of overweening confidence, of energy, and of tragedy.
