The Johnstown Flood

Life in Johnstown was simple. Johnstown was a steel town; “ever since the war, with the west opening up, the Cambria Iron Company had had its giant three-ton converters going night and day” (23). Johnstown was at the heart of the nation’s steel era, right alongside larger cities like its neighbor Pittsburgh.

 Most of the men who called Johnstown their home were “strapping steelworkers” (22) who worked long hours—10- and 12-hour shifts in the steel mills—and were working class through and through. They worked hard to create better lives for their families, and their hard work built America in many ways, creating the means for the industrial age to flourish and building the infrastructure that still exists in most parts of the country. While many people were poor by modern standards, it didn’t create a community of desolation or desperation; in fact, most people said that “there was an energy, a vitality to life” (26) in Johnstown that would be hard to come by in the years after the flood.

However, the experience of those who did not call Johnstown their permanent home was often quite different. The town was large enough to be considered a smaller tourist destination, and those visiting the town had two things that many residents lacked: leisure time and money for travel and lodging. This meant that these visitors, while not wealthy, were more prosperous than the steel mill workers and their families, who comprised so much of the town’s population. During the flood, there were many visitors in town due to the popularity of the Memorial Day parade that had occurred the previous day (this was also one of the reasons that made identifying many of the dead so difficult since there were so many people staying overnight in town that had not yet returned home). However, the greater disparity in experience lay between the town’s working-class residents and those who called Johnstown home in only a partial sense: those who maintained vacation homes at the South Fork club up in the mountain.

People visiting the club up on the mountains said it was like “a picture of a life so removed from Johnstown that it seemed almost like a fantasy […] and wholly untouchable” (47). With sailboats careening across the lake and steam-yachts and canoes idly carrying passengers enjoying nothing but leisure, it was a sight unlike anyone in town had ever seen. The major problem, however, was that the flood would leave the club and the homes on the lake untouched as tens of millions of gallons of water rushed down the mountain away from them. In the aftermath and devastation of the flood, all the wealthy residents disappeared, seemingly without a care in the world.