Calamity and Prosperity

From 1867 to 1889, Johnstown experienced a booming industrial period that made steel rails and fortunes, drawing on nearby timber, iron ore, limestone, and coal at the headwaters of navigation of the Ohio River watershed and earning recognition as the seat of a leading steel and iron factory in America. Yet the same geologic forces that formed the rivers and mountains created a physically dangerous environment prone to destructive flooding. The Stoneycreek River rose fourteen feet in four hours during the flood of 1861, but Johnstown's major floods are remembered as those of 1889, 1936, and 1977, especially the Great Flood of 1889, which swept across this industrial expansion. Johnstown's history also includes its steel industry, a coal mine that once fueled it, and the three hundred million years of geological history involved in the creation of coal.

Westmont, Pennsylvania · United States