The Johnstown Flood of 1889

Today is the last day of May though, lately, here in upstate New York it's been feeling more like October. May was a busy month, the highlight of which was a visit to Johnstown, Pennsylvania for a three day meet and greet with hundreds of students from Johnstown and neighboring areas. Together we celebrated their annual One Book, One Community Event. 

Johnstown, Pennsylvania is the setting for my 2020 Novel-in-Verse, Flooded, Requiem for Johnstown. Flooded is the story of the Johnstown flood of 1889, which until September 11, 2001, was the largest loss of American life in one day. 2,209 people died including 99 entire families and 396 children. While little remembered outside of Pennsylvania,  the flood should be a memorable event for everyone. People from around the world sent money and supplies. It was the first time Clara Barton and the American Red Cross was used for peace-time relief. 

Facts about  the 1889 Johnstown Flood are easily researched— On May 31, after a day of furious rains, the South Fork Dam, 14 miles above Johnstown, was breached.  20 billion tons of water hurtled down the mountain, destroying the city of Johnstown in about ten minutes. 

What is most interesting about this catastrophic event is that so few people (including me) ever heard of it. The more I researched, however, the more I understood that history is written by those in power. And ugly history is often erased. 

The South Fork Dam was originally constructed for the Pennsylvania Canal System. When railroads roared into town, the dam was abandoned. While the dam changed hands a few times, the body of water created by the dam was eventually repurposed as Lake Conemaugh, a peaceful respite for the wealthiest men of the Gilded Age, the Captains of Industry also known as Robber-Barons.

When I originally researched this book, I thought of these Captains of Industry as  I did in High School— historical figures removed from my life and my experience.  This time, when I returned to Johnstown,  the similarities between life in 1889 and 2026  were painfully obvious. Technology has changed quite a bit since the Industrial Age, but as I tell kids in classrooms wherever I visit, technology may change, but the human heart doesn't. 

The Gilded Age with its wealthy movers and shakers is not much different than our AI Age. Today a handful of innovators  and investors secure  personal wealth on the backs of the working class. The distance between the haves and the have-nots has widened enough to swallow civilization itself.  

Johnstown was a factory town, inhabited by immigrants working through soot and grime to achieve the American Dream. Meanwhile, the beneficiaries of their hard work were wealthy industrialists who themselves escaped  summer in the cool the waters of Lake Conemaugh. Though warned that the dam was in danger of failing, no measures were taken by any of them to fortify it. 2,209 people perished but no one was held responsible. 

After the flood, members of the club continued their upward climb while survivors did their best to rebuild their broken town. It seems it is always left to the survivors to rebuild. Not surprisingly, the Gilded Age was followed by the Progressive era, a time of political reform and anti-monopoly legislation. 

 Technology changes. But maybe I was wrong about the human heart. Zelda Fitzgerald said, Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold. As technology opens to new worlds and new ways of understanding, my hope is that this time, our hearts stretch wide enough to embrace all humanity.