It also offers a powerful historical lesson for our century and all times: the danger of assuming that because people are in positions of responsibility they are necessarily behaving responsibly. Graced by David McCullough's remarkable gift for writing richly textured, sympathetic social history, The Johnstown Flood is an absorbing, classic portrait of life in nineteenth-century America, of overweening confidence, of energy, and of tragedy. It was a tragedy that became a national scandal. Then came May 31, 1889, when the dam burst, sending a wall of water thundering down the mountain, smashing through Johnstown, and killing more than 2,000 people. Gigantic billows of flame burned the debris even through the cascading water. Despite repeated warnings of possible danger, nothing was done about the dam. The Johnstown flood by McCullough, David G Publication date 2004 Topics Floods - Pennsylvania - Johnstown (Cambria County) - History - 19th century, Johnstown (Pa. When the tsunami of water hit the bridge it carried with it mud, debris, trees, houses, hundreds of people, both living and dead, and it rammed into the trestle causing a gigantic dam that the water continued to crush as the flood continued. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon. At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation's burgeoning industrial prosperity.
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