We drove to Johnstown, PA, today to visit the Johnstown Flood National Historic Site. Johnstown is in southwestern Pennsylvania. The flood was in 1889 and completely decimated several small towns and Johnstown and claimed over 2,200 lives. The movie at the Visitor’s Center was very dramatic, and gave you the feeling of the horror and panic that the town went through.
What happen was that an elite group of wealthy people out of Pittsburgh rebuilt an earthen dam up-river from Johnstown so that they would have a fishing lake, stocked with truck loads of fish, and a place to spend their summers. After an unusually heavy rain, the dam broke and millions and millions of gallons of water flooded the valley and came crashing down on Johnstown. Huge brick railroad bridges and trains were swept down the river along with entire towns. Johnstown was wiped out in 10 minutes. David McCullough wrote a book about the flood. The book just made it onto my Christmas list.
We drove into Johnstown and rode the world’s largest “inclined plane” to the top of one of the many hills surrounding the downtown. The inclined plane is like the cable car in Dubuque, except much larger. You could drive several cars on it. The restaurant on top, City View, was a good place for lunch. Today was our first restaurant stop so far.
We are in an area of Pennsylvania called the Laurel Highlands. Lots of hills and some early signs of nice fall color. I have no idea how much more color is coming, but right now the hills are very colorful.
More tomorrow. We’ll be at Fallingwater! We had to reserve tickets on line and several tours were already booked.
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