This review is here at Magyar American - BlogSpot because the Johnstown, Cambria County, Pennsylvania area, especially the Cambria Iron Works, was the destination and workplace of so many immigrants from central and eastern Europe, including Magyars, Slavs, and Ruthenians.
Over 2000 people died. Poor people, who didn't know what hit them as the flood waters took them away, to be struck by logs and trees, floating houses ripped from their foundations, detached roofs, factories, and locomotives, lost their lives in minutes. Some people floated on debris a while, praying or singing hymns. A memorial cemetery, the Grandview, in Johnstown is the higher burial ground of many who were never identified.
The Conemaugh Valley was the home to 30,000 people and it was a bustling place to live and work. The Fishing Club upriver was the exclusive social club for men like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Phipps, people you may have heard of as Robber Barons or the founders of Pittsburgh institutions such as the Carnegie Library, Carnegie-Mellon the university, or the Phipps Conservatory, owners of steel mills. The Pennsylvania Railroad ran trains all around Pennsylvania, and from Johnstown to Pittsburgh there were trains that ran like commuters - The Daily Express. One of my ancestors took this train for work in Allegheny Country before moving the family there from Johnstown.
The South Fork dam was built years earlier in 1852 of clay and earth and the lake filled with more water and was more vast than had been expected so maybe it was just a matter of time. Heavy rains pushed it to the limit and when it broke, there was near no escaping the violence of rushing waters. Cambria Iron Works was wiped out. Then caught fire. The train roundhouse and the trains in it were carried away though each weighted many tons.
The people had been warned. Men on horseback had ridden through town shouting warnings. These warning were ignored. Trains blew whistles and still, many people stayed put. Commuters got off trains that had been waylaid and ran for the hills. Entire towns were wiped out in Conemaugh Valley. Eventually Clara Barton who founded the Red Cross made a personal visit to the disaster site and it became the law to shoot and kill looters, who were cutting fingers off the dead to take the rings.
I sat glued to my seat watching this one, and I think you might too, especially if the Johnstown area was the destination of your immigrant ancestors.
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