A Visit to Flood City, USA

Despite Hurricane Katrina, it isn't New Orleans

26 April 2010

This Harper's Weekly illustration, published shortly after the flood, was no exaggeration of the churning, watery wall of death that befell Johnstown.

One of the most famous small towns in America is Johnstown, Pennsylvania, population 24,000.

Unfortunately, it owes that fame to a tragedy.

In the late 19th Century, Johnstown was the nation's mightiest steel center - more prosperous than Pittsburgh - turning out steel rails and barbed wire. The air was yellow and black from the smoke, but the pay was good.

Library of CongressJohnstown, Pennsylvania after the Great Flood of 1889

The town lay on a flat plain at the base of an Allegheny Mountain valley so steep that the hillsides rose straight upward along the Little Connemaugh River.

It was a natural funnel, pointed directly downhill at Johnstown.

High in those mountains, behind a crude earthen dam, wealthy Pittsburgh industrialists and their friends sailed yachts on a pretty private lake.

Naysayers warned of a catastrophic flood should the dam break, but amid the prosperity, the warnings were ignored. Town leaders said any floodwaters coursing down the mountain would flatten out once they reached the valley.

Lost in Scotland, Flickr Creative CommonsThis monument to unknown victims - there were 777 unidentified - stands at a national park commemorating the Great Flood in Johnstown.