The Gilded Age humor magazine Puck takes potshots at millionaires living it up at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club while destroying America.
Puck, June 19, 1889
The Gilded Age humor magazine Puck takes potshots at millionaires living it up at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club while destroying America.
Puck, June 19, 1889
Henry Clay Frick, steel and coal baron, founding member of the club.
Library of Congress
Daniel Morrell, the Johnstown ironmaster who warned the club about the South Fork dam.
Library of Congress
Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie helped pioneer both American monopoly and a fad for recreation amid natural beauty.
Library of Congress
Tom L. Johnson. The Johnstown Flood changed him from a monopolist to a progressive.
New York Public Library
Lake Conemaugh: 20 million tons behind a soaring dam.
Johnstown Area Heritage Association
South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club members’ lakeside “cottages.”
Johnstown Area Heritage Association
High-end recreation and relaxation, 1880s-style.
Johnstown Area Heritage Association
Boating: a luxurious novelty in the Pennsylvania mountains.
Johnstown Area Heritage Association
“Cambria-land”: Johnstown’s industry in the valley of the Conemaugh.
Library of Congress
Harper’s Weekly gives its readers an inside glimpse of the steel industry that was remaking America.
Library of Congress
Men labor in the mills and mines, women at home.
Pennsylvania State Archives
Immigrant coal miners in western Pennsylvania.
Library of Congress
Library of Congress
Library of Congress
Library of Congress
Library of Congress
White tents of the relief camp can be seen in this wide shot of a ruined city.
A work crew poses for one of the many photographers who rushed in to capture the devastation.
Library of Congress
The grim task of recovery.
Library of Congress
Red Cross Hotel No. 3, Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Library of Congress
The mythical “Paul Revere of Johnstown” gallops across some sheet music. The scale of the disaster shocked the nation, and the flood soon featured prominently in popular culture.
Johnstown Area Heritage Association
Publishers cranked out popular accounts of the disaster.
The public’s hunger for special-effects disaster spectacle didn’t start in Hollywood.
. . . but by 1926 the Johnstown Flood was on the big screen.
Johnstown Area Heritage Association