{"id":157,"date":"2016-05-12T00:02:08","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T04:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usparks\/?p=157"},"modified":"2016-06-22T11:08:13","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T15:08:13","slug":"johnstown-flood-national-memorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usparks\/johnstown-flood-national-memorial\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnstown Flood National Memorial: All about what\u2019s missing and missed"},"content":{"rendered":"

SOUTH FORK, Pa.<\/span><\/p>\n

I<\/span>f you stand down in the middle, at the base of the dam where the earth gave way, there\u2019s an overwhelming sense of emptiness and loss.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how it still feels deep in the gaping hole that was cleaved into the face of the South Fork Dam on the afternoon of May 31, 1889, when storm-swollen Lake Conemaugh burst through.<\/p>\n

On that sodden Friday, in the narrow 14-mile long valley from here to Johnstown, 2,209 people died as a wave of water, moving with the force of Niagara Falls, flattened the towns of South Fork, Mineral Point, East Conemaugh, Woodvale and, finally, Johnstown.<\/p>\n

The flood, which washed away homes, businesses, churches, bridges, train cars and whole families, was the worst death toll disaster in U.S. history at the time. And It still ranks as the sixth worst, just behind the surprise Japanese air attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, 1941, where 2,467 died.<\/p>\n

From the wide picture windows of the Johnstown Flood National Memorial visitors center, just up the hill from the dam site, it\u2019s easy to see the foreshortened ends of the stone and earth breastworks, still anchored to their hillsides and reaching out like arms that won\u2019t ever embrace again.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because, 127 years later, there\u2019s both nothing here for the dam to hold onto along the South Fork of the Conemaugh River. Visit the dam, wander through the exhibits, watch the visitors center movie, and come away with the sense that this disaster was both preventable and inevitable.<\/p>\n

Even with its rich trove of archival photos, its interactive map that charts the path of the wall of water bearing down on Johnstown, the coroner\u2019s handwritten records that are both incomplete \u2014 about a third of the bodies were never identified \u2014 and provide too much grisly detail, this park service site is all about what\u2019s not here anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very much what we struggle with here at the flood memorial,\u201d said Megan O\u2019Malley, a National Park Service ranger and chief of interpretation at the flood memorial. \u201cThat void is in the forefront of what we do here because a lot of stuff just isn\u2019t where it was before.\u201d<\/p>\n

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South Fork Dam Timeline<\/p>\n

The South Fork Dam looked impressive enough, but, according to the National Parks Service, its checkered construction history and inadequate maintenance combined to make it a \u201cticking time bomb.\u201d Here\u2019s the who, where, when, how and why the dam was built and what lit the fuse that caused its failure:<\/p>\n

The flood killed 2,209 people, including 99 entire families. One hundred twenty-four women lost their husbands; 198 men lost their wives; 396 children under the age of 10 died. It destroyed four square miles of Johnstown, including 1,600 homes and 280 businesses, and caused more than $17 million in property damage.<\/p>\n

Source: Johnstown Flood National Memorial webpage<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Photograph <\/a>
Photograph was taken from a point below the breast of the South Fork Dam whose collapse May 31, 1889, caused the historic Johnstown Flood, a catastrophe which took more than 2,000 lives. A 55-acre tract at the dam site will become a unit of the National Park System under a bill signed into law by President Johnson. The tract will be known as the Johnstown Flood National Memorial. September 20, 1964 photo. (AP Photo) <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"This <\/a>
This photo released by the Johnstown Flood Museum shows the destruction along Main Street in Johnstown, Pa., following the collapse of the South Fork Dam May 31, 1889, killing 2,209 people. More than 116 years before Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, a flood in Johnstown exposed the rift between rich and poor, the kindness of strangers and, in the end, the power of the human spirit to rebuild. (AP Photo\/Johnstown Flood Museum) <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Wrecked by neglect and shame<\/p>\n

So the dam is all but gone.<\/p>\n

Lake Conemaugh, the 2-mile-long, 450-acre recreational impoundment where club members boated and fished for black bass brought in from Lake Erie by the train load, is gone, leaving behind the empty bowl of a lakebed.<\/p>\n

The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, owner of the dam, is gone, disbanded and dissolved after the flood.<\/p>\n

Nicknamed \u201cthe Bosses Club\u201d by locals, its 61 members comprised a who\u2019s who of industrial titans, bank presidents, successful businessmen, well-heeled lawyers, politicians and other assorted Western Pennsylvania plutocrats. Among the names on the members roll were Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew W. Mellon, Henry Phipps Jr., a steel company president and philanthropist; Pittsburgh department store owner Durbin Horne, and Sylvester Stephen Marvin, a cracker business mogul who would go on to establish the National Biscuit Company, also known as Nabisco.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s clubhouse, a rambling three-story frame structure in the Eastlake Style, with a gingerbread-encrusted wrap-around porch and room for 200 guests, still stands. But it\u2019s more skeleton than showplace. The park service recently put on a new roof, interior supports and a coat of exterior paint. But the once well-appointed interior remains severely damaged, its fixtures gone and its walls wrecked down to exposed lath by time and neglect and, some might hope, shame.<\/p>\n

Where is the Woodwell painting?<\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/a>
Joseph Woodwell (1843-1911), Seascape, Magnolia, MA, 1887, Oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches, Gift of the Mary Marchand Woods Memorial Fund, Collection of The Westmoreland Museum of American Art<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gone, too, is one of the two paintings commissioned by the club in 1887, two years prior to the flood, from George Hetzel and Joseph Woodwell, artists who were members of the \u201cScalp Level School,\u201d a loose cadre of Western Pennsylvania landscape painters led by Hetzel and named after the then-verdant valley 10 miles south of Johnstown where they often went to paint.<\/p>\n

Hetzel\u2019s painting, titled \u201cFisherman on the Conemaugh,\u201d hangs in the visitors center, and is representative of the realistic yet sublimely lit Scalp Level landscape style that bears similarities to the Hudson River school in New York and the Barbizon School in France.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A painting titled “Fisherman on the Conemaugh,” 1887 by George Hetzel is on display at the Westmoreland County Museum of Art in Greensburg, PA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ms. O\u2019Malley said that according to records of a 1904 auction of furniture and fixtures at the clubhouse, the Hetzel painting was bought by George Wertz, a then-prominent member of the Johnstown community, and donated to the park service by his great nephew, Roger Hager, in 2010.<\/p>\n

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Johnstown Flood National Memorial<\/h2>\n

733 Lake Road, South Fork, PA 15956<\/p>\n

1-814-495-4643<\/p>\n

Official Website<\/a><\/p>\n