A harrowing account of the infamous Johnstown Flood of 1889, when an earthen dam broke and wiped out a Pennsylvania town. 2209 people were killed, countless others injured and lives were devastated. Much blame is cast on a wealthy and exclusive resort club, The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which earlier had taken ownership of the dam (which had been built by the state) but didn’t maintain it properly.

The first couple of chapters give some background to the region and the people who lived there. A lot of information is presented about the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, the powerful men who ran it and how they acquired the dam. Although necessary, these chapters are a bit dry. Once the book gets into the start of the unprecedented storm that caused the disaster, the book becomes a compelling read. The details of what happened during the flood are horrific and difficult to read. There are a couple of maps in the front of the book which, although a bit crude, are very helpful. There are also photos which really show the devastation. (Of course there are more photos to be found on Google.)

As usual, David McCullough writes a powerful account of history. The book is a mere 268 pages, with a listing at the end of all the deceased and where they are buried.

5* - Nonfiction history about the 1889 flood that devastated Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Thorough, fair, and well-written. Some parts are hard on the heart.

n  "It was nearly morning when the strange quiet began. Until then there had been almost no letup from the hideous sounds from below. Few people had been able to sleep, and several of the war veterans were saying it was the worst night they had ever been through.
"But in the last chill hour before light, the valley seemed to hang suspended in an unearthly stillness, almost as unnerving in its way as everything else that had happened. And it was then, for the first time, that people began to realize that all those harsh, incessant noises which had been such a part of their lives--mill whistles screeching, wagons clattering over cobblestones, coal trains rumbling past day and night--had stopped, absolutely, every one of them."n

This was a very good book. I learned a lot about the Johnstown flood. It is unbelievable how tragic this was.

I did not know it, but over 2,200 people died as a result of this flood.

The only improvement I would add to the book would be to write an Epilogue through today.

I do not know if they built a new dam there or not.

I do not know what they did in order to be sure that the problem does not happen again.

Since I live in Pennsylvania, I would like to visit Johnstown someday.

I finished my reread of this book on 8/23/24 as part of the McCullough Readalong I'm hosting on Booktube. We are reading all the history books of David McCullough in the order in which they were published. This was his first.

It is a great tragedy that so many people died or suffered due to a earthen dam failure. There was so much incompetence on the part of the dam owners over the years.

My original review, from 2023:

This is one of the most horrifying nonfiction books I've ever read yet it is full of information worth learning about and considering. Who knew that dam construction was so complex? Those water release valves in old earth dams are there for a reason.

The dam that created Conemaugh Lake in Pennsylvania didn't have water release valves because a former landowner decided to remove them and cart them off for resale or scrap metal, or something he apparently thought was important.

The new landowner, Benjamin Ruff, rebuilt the dam but didn't bother to get new water release valves installed. By the time the dam broke during a particularly rainy springtime, Ruff had been dead over two years already.

This was the first book written by David McCullough. It was published in 1968. I appreciated reading his comments in the introduction about his first attempt at researching for a nonfiction history book. It was a valiant effort and learning process for a worthy project. The world needed to learn more about this flood. This disaster is something the world should never forget.

I've started out neutral about the subjects of McCullough's other books—why should I care about the Brooklyn Bridge?—and ended up converted, completely fascinated. But in this book, that never happened. I still don't much care about the Johnstown Flood. McCullough's description of the flood itself starts out captivating, but then it turns into almost a laundry list recording. I'm not sure what most of the flood survivors' stories added, except for being stories from flood survivors. I was more than disappointed by McCullough's short and facile remarks on the history significance and effects of the flood.

> by 1889. With the valley crowding up the way it was, the need for lumber and land was growing apace. As a result more and more timber was being stripped off the mountains and near hills, and in Johnstown the river channels were being narrowed to make room for new buildings and, in several places, to make it easier to put bridges across.

> nearly always someone said, “Well, this is the day the old dam is going to break.” It was becoming something of a local joke. Many years later Victor Heiser would recall, “The townspeople, like those who live in the shadow of Vesuvius, grew calloused to the possibility of danger.

> Henry Bessemer, a brilliant English chemist, had devised just such a process at about the time Kelly first arrived at the Cambria works, and, deservedly enough, got nearly all of the credit. The Bessemer converter used a blast of air directed through molten iron to oxidize, or burn off, most of the carbon impurities in the metal to make steel. Previous steelmaking techniques required weeks, even months. The Bessemer process could produce good-quality steel in less than one hour.

> SOUTH FORK DAM IS LIABLE TO BREAK: NOTIFY THE PEOPLE OF JOHNSTOWN TO PREPARE FOR THE WORST. It was signed simply “Operator.” At Johnstown the message was received at the telegraph office at the depot only a few minutes later. The freight agent, Frank Deckert, was told it had come in; he glanced at it, but he did not stop to read it. As he said later, he knew that “it was in regard to the dam; that there was some danger of it breaking.” But it created no alarm in his mind. He had heard such warnings before.

> Parke estimated that it took forty-five minutes for the entire lake to empty, but others said it took less, more in the neighborhood of thirty-six or thirty-seven minutes. In any case, later studies by civil engineers indicated that the water charged into the valley at a velocity and depth comparable to that of the Niagara River as it reaches Niagara Falls. Or to put it another way, the bursting of the South Fork dam was about like turning Niagara Falls into the valley for thirty-six minutes.

> In that part of the valley through which the flood had passed, the population on the afternoon of the 31st had been approximately 23,000 people, which means that the flood killed just about one person out of every ten.

> brought the newly organized American Red Cross in from Washington. Miss Clara Barton and her delegation of fifty doctors and nurses had arrived on the B & O early Wednesday morning. Clara was sixty-seven. She had been through the Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, and several nervous breakdowns. For a while she had tried running a women’s prison in Massachusetts. But since 1881, when, after a long campaign, she had succeeded in establishing an American branch of the International Red Cross, little else had been of real interest to her.

> “In fact, our information is positive, direct, and unimpeachable that at no time during the process of rebuilding the dam was ANY ENGINEER WHATEVER, young or old, good or bad, known or unknown, engaged or consulted as to the work,—a fact which will be hailed by engineers everywhere with great satisfaction, as relieving them as a body from a heavy burden of suspicion and reproach.” Moreover, contrary to some statements made in Pittsburgh since the disaster, they had found no evidence that the dam had ever been “inspected” periodically, occasionally, or even once, by anyone “who, by any stretch of charity, could be regarded as an expert.” … In other words, the job had been botched by amateurs. That they had been very rich and powerful amateurs was not considered relevant by the engineering journals, but so far as the newspapers were concerned that was to be the very heart of the matter. It was great wealth which now stood condemned, not technology.

> alluded to here was the failure to remove the fish guards, which, very quickly, had come to symbolize everything repellent about the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. “…To preserve game for some Pittsburgh swells the lives of fifteen thousand were sacrificed,” … The membership of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, according to its initial plans, was never to exceed one hundred sportsmen and their families. The membership fee was $800.

> Many thousand human lives— Butchered husbands, slaughtered wives, Mangled daughters, bleeding sons, Hosts of martyred little ones, (Worse than Herod’s awful 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!

> Not a nickel was ever collected through damage suits from the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club or from any of its members. The Nancy Little case dragged on for several years, with the clubmen claiming that the disaster had been a “visitation of providence.” The jury, it seems, agreed

> Because there were no longer discharge pipes at the base of the dam, the owners never at any time had any control over the level of the lake. If the water began to rise over a period of days or weeks to a point where it was becoming dangerously high, there was simply nothing that could be done about it. If, on the other hand, the pipes had still been there, as they were up until they were removed by Congressman Reilly

> just as the clubmen were willing to accept on faith the word of those charged with the job of rebuilding the dam, so too were most Johnstown people willing to assume that the clubmen were dutifully looking to their responsibilities.

Re-read 2016 This is still one of the places on my list of travel destinations I must see. The disaster in Johnstown is a good example of what happens when corners are cut in the building process and when the extremely wealthy decide that it doesn't matter what happens to the lower classes. The flood started because of a dam at a club for the wealthy wasn't constructed properly and it ended with multiple deaths. No one really knows how many people actually died, for multiple reasons. One of the history books in my collection that I can easily re-read many times.

Re-read 2018
I've received the new book by Al Roker on the Johnstown Flood called Ruthless Tide and wanted to re-read this prior to reading the new book to find the differences in the two books, so far there are quite a few. The books seem to focus on different angles, this is more on the victims of the flood. Roker's book is on why the flood happened.

The author certainly had his hands full with reassembling the mountain of research that made an intriguing novel possible. A labor of love. It was a pitiful tale that still holds true today; the lives of many being in the hands of so few.

In the mountains above the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the year 1889, set nestled an old earthen dam. It's lakeside features had attracted the likes of the rich and famous. Luxurious homes were scattered along the waterfront.

No attention was given to the integrity of the dam. It had not received any maintenance in years and was desperately, long overdue. There were some residents in Johnstown who feared a breach of the dam might occur. And they were right.

On May 31, 1889 the dam failed. Residents of Jamestown had no warning. There were over two-thousand lives lost in the tragedy. It could have all been avoided.

I think this book covered just about every known fact about the Johnstown flood. From the business innovations that built the town into a thriving metropolis, and the concerns that might have driven millionaires to vacation by a lake in the summer months to the exact change recovered from one corpse and the date of the last discovery of a corpse. Well, okay. It might have left out a few minor facts along the way, but I doubt that anything left out could materially add to the reader's understanding of the tragedy.
It starts out with an exhaustive history of the area and its settlement. Then follows a history of the dam is covered from its original purpose through its transition from a public utility to private property. Throughout those histories are sprinkled the business and personal histories of many different businessmen, engineers, politicians, farmers, and citizens. Finally, we get to the day of the tragedy. He chronicles that by drawing from numerous first-hand accounts as well as newspapers and official records. That is where it becomes intensely personal as we hear the accounts of survival and heroism. The aftermath is handled in much the same way. So it is filled with tidbits of human interest, such as the reunion of a father and daughter, the confusion, almost inability, of people to orient themselves in what were once familiar streets, and the strong purpose of the survivors to rebuild almost immediately.
I found it a very interesting read. Even the early parts had enough detail to give a complete picture yet moved quickly enough not to get bogged down.
Content warning.
Considering that it’s the story of 2,209 tragic deaths. It’s not really graphic. He manages to capture the horror of so many gruesome deaths by drowning, fire, and plague without being graphic just for shock value. It’s still hard to read, though, and may be too hard for some readers.
Early in the book, there is a brief discussion of the seamier side of town and the.

Incredible story. A bit tedious at times but still recommended. It reminded me of “Isaac’s Storm” but written and edited a bit tighter.

2.5 stars

In 1889, Johnstown, Pennsylvania’s dam broke and the town was flooded. The town had flooded many times before, but it was nothing like this. Over 2000 people lost their lives. Turns out the dam wasn’t maintained nor repaired properly.

Sounds like an interesting story, but it just couldn’t keep my attention. Much of the book was just not that interesting to me, especially before the flood hit and after. The flood itself and people’s stories of what happened during was a bit better, but not great. I have read one other book by this author and it seems I was underwhelmed reading it, too; that one, I listened to and wasn’t sure if it was the writing or the topic, but I’m thinking it’s the author’s writing style that just isn’t for me. There were photos included, and I have to say those were pretty impressive, pretty scary. The photo that might stick with me is one of all the debris smashed up against a bridge.

Stunning! McCullough’s account of this American tragedy is exceptional. In his first book, published in 1969, he details what happens when a lake three miles long and one mile wide, sixty feet deep in places, explodes through a dam and travels 14 miles down mountains to overtake a city. This will be on my mind for weeks!

David McCullough did incredible research to write The Johnstown Flood. On May, 31, 1889, Memorial Day, an earthen dam broke and killed over 2,000 people in and around Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Similar to other tragedies, there were many opinions before the disaster on whether the dam was safe. Once trouble was apparent, the ability to communicate the potential for disaster was severely hampered.

Once the tragic event occurred, news reporters and photographers descended upon Johnstown and many “facts” were not verified before being published.

Interesting, insightful book with leadership lessons and errors that unfortunately have been repeated with other disasters.