When on May 31, 1889 a dam holding back the waters of Conemaugh Lake broke, sending torents of water into the valleys east of Pittsburg, the lives of thousands of steel dependent citizens were put into peril. However, beyond the millions of dollars in damage and the hundreds of lives lost, the Johnstown flood cut a cross section through the industrial society that was developing in the later half of the 19th century. The lake formed high above Johnstown, PA by the Conemaugh river, just before it converges with the Stony Creek, was created by a
group of wealthy Pittsburg elite who sought a summer escape from the hectic city life they commanded. The quiet refuge, home to the rowboats of the likes of Steel Magnate Andrew Carnegie, was the product of an old earth dam reinforced by a pseudo-engineer hired by the resort's charter members. Although successful in holding the millions of gallons of water, in addition to the fish stock that the club introduced, a variety of serious flaws in the dam lead observers and inspectors to repeatedly warn the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club of the dam's dangers. While the dam sagged considerably in the middle, and there was no functioning way to control its level, because nothing came of the the warnings and close calls of the previous year, the citizens believed that the dam was of no danger. So, when after torrential rains, the level of the lake did begin to rise to the dam's crest, there was no way to prevent the dam from breaking. Neither could the prosperous town of Johnstown be made to take heed. As a result, when the dam finally broke, the wall of water caught the town almost entirely by surprise, killing nearly 2,000, and demolishing the majority of buildings in the Johnstown area.
Following the catastrophy, thousands of dollars of relief money, and trains of American Red Cross supplies poured into the Johnstown area. Utilizing the technology of the day, primarily the railroads and telegraph, the reporters and editors made sure that the flood dominated the news for days. The same elite whose negligence had caused the flood used their power to make it the nations first modern
disaster. Though it was not until much later that the steel magnates lost much of their power, as more and more information about their club's role in the disaster emerged, a backlash among the urban and rural communities was felt. As the dead included the workers who literally ran the steel industry and the rural businessmen who supplied them, as the flood was in part caused by the elite who owned the industry, and the response included Americans all across the country, it is clear that the flood does indeed do much to describe the American modern culture that arose during the late 1800's.
