I picked up this, the first of McCullough's three "civil engineering" micro-histories, to scratch my itch of a notion that the flood was a seminal event in US history.

Turns out that notion was only half right. The Johnstown Flood was a seminal event. The cataract was terrible and awesome and one of a kind. But the story has mostly faded from history. Unlike other national disasters (eg, the attacks on Pearl Harbor and 9/11), this one didn't blossom into a nation-rallying justification for kicking ass. The deluge brought only suffering, death, and dislocation. (The people responsible never faced court damages or even apologized.) And as with the pain of a messy breakup, or a shot to the balls, we decided the best thing was to simply move on, put the event behind us, forget it ever happened. As we will now try to forget the inundation of New Orleans.

Long way of saying, thank you David McCullough, for interviewing the now-deceased survivors before they died, and reviewing the newspaper accounts, and packaging it into an entertaining and readable narrative for modern-day-armchair-disaster tourists like me.

Excellent history of the flood of May 31, 1889. A dam supporting a lake for summer retreat for Pittsburgh’s finest (Frick, Phillips, Carnegie, Mellon) burst. The engineering is interesting. The dam was earthen, which is still very common. However, an earthen dam needs to be higher in the center (if a dam overflows, it should be at the edges), a spill way over rock (earth erodes under fast water), and a discharge system to maintain water level. In this case, the original Dam was properly built to support a trans-Pennsylvania canal in the early 1800s. However, that went into disrepair after the railroads started and the canal was abandoned. Then in the 1870s, Ruff sets up the South Fork fishing club and buys the property including dam from the Pennsylvania railroad and re-builds the dam sloppily. The Dam fails ten years later. The flood kills 2300 people (about 1 in 10 in the valley). The Dam broke at 3:10 and it took an hour to travel the 15 miles to Johnstown. Everyone in Johnstown had been saying the dam would break some spring and disregarded the few initial warnings. Johnstown was already flooded due to large spring rains, but up to 1-2 feet in the center of town. In the tight areas of the Valley, the wall of water was 70’ high. It would bounce off hillsides and come back to destroy small villages missed. There was a large railroad viaduct, then held for 10 minutes fill the valley behind it to the same level of water as what had been in the original lake prior to failing which strengthened the water as it collapsed all at once. The greatest calamity happened at a bridge in the lower part of town. The bridge held, but then had 45 acres of debris held up. This caught fire with hundreds of people still strapped. Many were rescued but many survived the flood only to be burned to death. While the members of the club were vilified in the press (not the individual members as the list was not know until a year later), none was held financial responsible or criminally negligent.

Released in 1968, this is McCullough's first swing for the fences, and it is a homer, though less engaging, perhaps, than his other books.

The Johnstown Flood made an enormous impression on 1889 America. Even the nations of the world responded in sympathetic groan and gracious opening of their purses. McCullough explores the fault lines of the flood, literally and how the great industrialists of the age bore some responsibility, perhaps...even in a sense, though were never prosecuted. It is interesting to note the manner in which the country could have been crippled further, had culpability been ascribed to the patricians (esp. Carnegie) and their fortunes been disbursed as punitive damages.

As a plain historical event, the flood in Johnstown is riveting. McCullough told the story and the stories within the story marvelously.

Published over 50 years ago, The Johnstown Flood was David McCullough’s first book, but it carries his storytelling charm and the detailed, exhaustive research that he has become known for and that has characterized all of his subsequent books.

On May 31, 1889, following days of unprecedented rainfall, the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam upstream of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, sent a wall of water thundering down the mountain, obliterating virtually everything in its path and enveloping the town. The flood took 2,209 lives and caused damages in excess of $17 million or about $534 million in 2022 money. McCullough methodically documents the events and circumstances occurring before, during and after the disaster, with details and human stories that are simply jaw-dropping at times.

The South Fork Dam was originally built to enhance the Western Division of the Main Line Canal, which was designed to provide a direct, nonstop link from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Ironically, shortly after the dam was finished in 1852, the canal became obsolete when an all-rail route was completed. The dam sat unmaintained until it was purchased by a group of Pittsburgh’s wealthiest moguls to create a hunting and fishing resort. For years following the flood, people blamed the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club for its negligence in rehabilitating the old dam and its cavalier attitude toward the people in the valley below. Still, the people of Johnstown themselves had grown numb to warnings about the dam over the years and most had become unbelieving and complacent.

The individual stories that McCullough relates during the flooding are compelling, with survival or death hinging on a single decision made such as grabbing onto a specific tree or choosing to remain on the third floor of a building. Following the flood, the whole panoply of human behaviors played out, everything from heroic rescues and humanitarian aid in staggering proportions to bogus news stories and charlatans attempting to capitalize on the tragedy. McCullough’s overarching theme as he painstakingly re-creates the tragedy in this very readable, nail-biting narrative is the lesson that there is danger in assuming “that because people are in positions of responsibility they are necessarily behaving responsibly.”

It is not an exaggeration to list The Johnstown Flood as the most significant American natural disaster of the 19th Century. Though an exact number is not known, 2209 is regarded as the most accepted death toll -- some 400 more fatalities than Hurricane Katrina. Only two hurricanes and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake registered more fatalities in U.S. history.

But was it really a natural disaster? The story of the Johnstown Flood reads like Hurricane Katrina more than a century later. Hundreds died and an entire city was nearly destroyed by what seemed like nature's wrath. But upon closer examination, the fault rested with human failings.

David McCullough tells the story of the 1889 Johnstown Flood with a master's touch. He weaves through the layers of this event, telling the story of the time, the people, the weather, and the fatal hubris all intertwined in the Johnstown Flood and its aftermath.

This is an engrossing read from page one until the end. By all means, put this on your must read list.

A highly readable account of a major American disaster. McCullough draws upon a wide range of sources to describe the people of Johnstown, the geography, and the role of the rich guys from Pittsburgh whose modifications of the dam at their summer resort likely contributed to the 1889 failure of the dam in unusual storm conditions. He notes that they were never found liable in court for the damage and loss of 2,209 lives, however, as the cases were tried in Pittsburgh. Some of the wealthy made relief effort contributions; one even splurged to the extent of fifteen dollars.

It was interesting to learn the importance of the steel making enterprise in Johnstown. At the time of the Civil War the author points out that Johnstown produced more steel than Pittsburgh. Andrew
Carnegie lured top executives and skilled workers from the Cambria Steel Company, Johnstown's main producer, to join his Carnegie Steel Company.

The story makes for a compelling read, and is highly recommended for both its tone and for its informational content.

Fascinating!

More than I ever wanted to know about Johnstown and its residents. Where the book shines is the interplay between the wealthy dam owners and the common folk down the mountain. Set in the late 1800's, the book shows the power of money and status along with the lack of concern for others. The narrative of the flood and it's destruction is very well told and chilling but the level of detail outside of the actual catastrophe is a little overwhelming. A nice snapshot of America at that time including a pretty vicious press not very concerned with truth or accuracy but more focused on sensationalism. Worth reading if you aren't dying to read something else. (And I really, really like a lot of McCullough's other writing.)

McCullough's first book and it's a winner. This flood was caused as much by human failure as by nature's rainfall. Building a dam to increase trout fishing and not keeping it in repair caused several towns in Pennsylvania to completely disappear. Hundreds of people died. Even just listening to the story was scary, I can't imagine seeing it (though I believe there is a PBS documentary on this occurance). Reading this book just as the recent hurricanes were devastating Florida (and looking at the pictures of the aftermath) made this "history" into a "horror" story.

Ed Hermann is a great narrator; almost, but not quite, as good as McCullough himself.

I've been meaning to read a David McCullough book for a while, and with no particular idea of where to start, I defaulted to The Johnstown Flood, his first book. Little did I know that mere weeks after I finished it, the US would be suffering through the impact of a major hurrican and a flood the size of the state of Michigan that would make the images in the book pale in comparison to those on the news.

Nonetheless, this is a compelling story for those who are interested in disaster narratives or tales of human survival against steep odds. McCullough was clearly, even at the beginning of his career, a gifted storyteller as well as a careful and thorough researcher. Here, he pulls together hundreds of sources to piece together a cohesive timeline of what happened in Johnstown, Pennsylvania one fateful day in 1889. As massive and unprecedented spring rains lash the area, an old earthen dam on the Little Connemaugh river gives way, sending a 70+ foot wall of water rushing down the valley, wiping out everything in its path. McCullough starts by giving us some history of the community and the dam, moves into eyewitness accounts of the 24 hours before and after the disaster itself and then spends considerable time on the aftermath, including the clean-up, the national horror, the wave of support and the public outcry against those who could or should have prevented the tragedy in the first place.

At times, it can be hard to keep track of all of the characters. Because McCullough has been comprehensive and wants to give the reader multiple points of view, almost every section deals with a new cast of townspeople, reporters, industrialists, relief workers, etc. I sometimes got confused as to which characters were which and with whether I had encountered any of them before. Nonetheless, the plethora of detail is remarkable and really humanizes what could be an overwhelming and abstract idea (e.g. 2000 dead, hundreds of buildings destroyed, etc.)

I was perhaps most struck by how the disaster is not over when the flood waters recede. There were waves of challenges to overcome, one on top of the other, as buildings and land became unsafe due to damage, infrastructure needed to be rebuilt and disease threatened due to the unsanitary conditions. The secondary effects linger for months and even years. The other takeaway comes from the human element. People could have potentially prevented this disaster, but the right words were not heard or believed at the right time by the right people. I fear that there are far too many parallels to current world crises. But the other side of the coin is that people did heroic things to save their fellow human and that humans rallied together to rebuild. So despite incompetence, greed and hubris, all was not lost.

This is a fascinating story, well told. Forget the old 1970's disaster movies; this is the real deal.

I have lived for years within an easy drive of Johnstown, PA, and I’ve long been aware of the big flood that everyone in the area associates with that unfortunate town – one of the great disasters in the history of the US. I also knew about the wealthy Pittsburghers who were members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which failed to properly maintain the lake and dam that burst to cause the flood.

So it took me a long time to get around to reading David McCullough’s book, because I figured I didn’t needed to. It’s true that I did not learn many new “facts,” but McCullough did a fabulous job of putting me there, right there, in the midst of that town and that torrent of water. I should add that I recommend the audio version, read by Edward Herrmann. The print version includes photos, and they are not to be missed, but they and many others are available on the internet.

The first half of the book introduces us to the cast of characters in this disaster: small merchants, recent immigrants, ordinary citizens, and factory owners in the thriving community of Johnstown, as well as the men from Pittsburgh who sometimes came for recreation at the lake created by the damming of the Little Conemaugh River. Some of their names are familiar: Carnegie, Frick, Mellon.

In 1879, when the South Fork Club bought the lake and surrounding land, they needed to remedy years of neglect to the earthen dam that had been built between 1840 and 1850. The kind of “repair” they undertook was the precipitating event for the flood. No engineer was involved. There were several forms of neglect, but most egregiously, the old lead discharge pipes, which had earlier been removed and sold for scrap, were never replaced.

As the lake crested in the torrential rains that arrived in 1889, there was no safety valve. When the huge storm caused the lake to rise above the dam, it gave way and rushed 15 miles down the mountain, killing 2209 people – more than Hurricane Katrina – and leaving countless more homeless and jobless.

It was not only water that plunged through Johnstown; it was water plus houses, trees, bodies, tangles of barbed wire, livestock, telegraph poles, boxcars – a wall which ultimately formed a hideous mountain against the one bridge which did not collapse. That terrible mound caught fire, burning the living people trapped in it.

But some survived to report on their moments of terror. This is a vivid recollection from a woman named Gertrude, then six years old, who later recalled the way she was swept away from her home:

Then the big house gave a violent shudder… The walls began to break up. Then, at her aunt’s feet, she saw the floor boards burst open and up gushed a fountain of yellow water. “And these boards were jagged … and I looked at my aunt, and they didn’t say a word then. All the praying stopped, and they gasped, and looked down like this, and were gone, immediately gone.”

She felt herself falling and reaching out for something to grab on to and trying as best she could to stay afloat. “I kept paddling and grabbing and spitting and spitting and trying to keep the sticks and dirt and this horrible water out of my mouth.”

Somehow she managed to crawl out of a hole in the roof or wall, she never knew which. All she saw was a glimmer of light, she scrambled with all her strength to get to it, up what must have been the lath on part of the house underneath one of the gables. She got through the opening, never knowing what had become of her aunt, Libby, or her baby cousin. Within seconds the whole house was gone and everyone in it.

The next thing she knew, Gertrude was whirling about on top of a muddy mattress that was being buoyed up by debris but that kept tilting back and forth as she struggled to get her balance. She screamed for help. Then a dead horse slammed against her raft, pitching one end of it up into the air and nearly knocking her off. She hung on for dear life, until a tree swung by, snagging the horse in its branches before it plunged off with the current in another direction, the dead animal bobbing up and down, up and down, in and out of the water, like a gigantic, gruesome rocking horse.

On the day after the flood, the remaining Johnstown citizens proved themselves heroic and level-headed. They organized to care for the injured and to bury the dead, to organize supplies and to handle finances. Help did indeed pour in, much of it from Pittsburgh. Members of the South Fork Club were occasionally generous but largely silent. Clara Barton arrived with her newly organized Red Cross, bringing doctors and nurses, and she stayed for five months.

A few people tried to take the South Fork Club to court. The club itself had few assets, and it was impossible to assign specific blame to individual members. Benjamin Ruff, the person who had overseen the changes to the dam, had died. The courts considered the dam break to have been an “act of God,” since the torrential rains had been unprecedented. No lawsuit was ever successful.

[McCullough’s book does not pursue the legal changes which might be attributed to the flood. Other sources suggest that it influenced state courts in the following decade to hold that non-negligent defendants could be held liable for damage caused by the unnatural use of land.]

On May 31, 1889, the city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania was all but obliterated by one of the most devastating floods in American history. There were over 2,000 fatalities. Just over one in every people who lived in the city or the surrounding area died. At the time, it was the worst natural disaster in American history, but the circumstances surrounding the disaster illuminate the particular nature of American class and culture.

I can't go any further without noting the particular situation I found myself in reading this book. I've been meaning to read this for years, and there I didn't have any conscious inclination to read this now due to the circumstances of where I live. Parts of Tuscaloosa, the town I've lived in for the past three years was completely devastated in late April. I don't have any cool stories about surviving the storms of '11, none of my friends were injured, my apartment was completely untouched. In fact, I was out of town at the time, so I wasn't prevented from watching the NBA playoffs. However, even two months after the fact, a couple of hundred yards from my house there are areas that are completely unrecognizable. I'm a Florida / Gulf Coast guy. Hurricanes are my storm of choice, I find them much more conducive to drinking. Tornadoes are a little to random for my liking. The fact that my neighborhood seemingly got by without a lost branch but within a mile there are blocks where not a house was still standing gives you a good understanding of the fragility and capriciousness of the man-made. Anyways, I'm not gonna go on and on, I just mention it because recent events added perhaps a particular resonance to this reading.

Anyways, the Johnstown Flood is, on a sociological level, a lot more interesting than most other 'natural' disasters. While the ultimate cause was a once in a century rain storm that had caused damage across the country on its path to the Atlantic the immediate cause was something more human. The flood was unleashed when a earthen dam holding back a man-made body of water broke. But this wasn't any particular dam. It was built to hold back a reservoir that would enable a nearby canal to operate in the dry months. Shortly after the dam's completion the canal, along with the need for the reservoir, was made obsolete by the rise of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The reservoir was neglected and the dam soon became somewhat decrepit.

Later, however, a group of Pittsburgh industrialists saw a hidden potential for the area, and purchased the dam and the surrounding property. They envisioned a mountain resort, away from the troubles of Pittsburgh. Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Philander Knox, and Andrew Mellon were members of the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club. When plans were made for the resort in the 1870s the original members realized that substantial repairs were required on the dam. This was done, but in an extremely negligent and reckless manner. The contractor put in charge had no engineering experience. The original emergency spillways at the base of the dam were not replaced. Adequate measures weren't taken in repairing the dam. Also, the center of the dam dipped slightly lower than the ends, which violates one of the basic rules of dam construction. Perhaps most infamously, several screens, which easily became clogged, were inserted in the spillway to prevent the club's imported fish from escaping down the dam.

David McCullough does an excellent job of relating the circumstances of the times and the results of the particular disaster. Before this I've only read his Truman and Adams biography, and I think his skills as a writer and a historian are much more well suited for a social history such as this. He does a great job weaving both individual stories and sociological background into the narrative. He can put on his historian hat and engagingly present historical background and then seamlessly alternate to his storyteller hat and cause the reader to be swept up in an individual survival tale. His ability as a writer, along with the unique circumstances of the event, elevates this from a standard disaster tale and makes it an informative and engaging snapshot of a particular period of American history.