Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Johnstown Flood: The True Story of the Day a Mountain of Water Erased an American City

The Johnstown Flood: The True Story of the Day a Mountain of Water Erased an American City

W. Cole, Nathan

Paperback

Series: Forgotten Disasters, Book 2

19th Century United States HistoryEnvironmental Studies

ISBN13: 9798188276751
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 21 2026
Pages: 88
Weight: 0.26
Height: 0.23 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
May 31, 1889. A private lake owned by millionaires. A city of 30,000 in the valley below.

On the last day of May 1889, after a night of torrential rain, the neglected South Fork Dam gave way in the Pennsylvania mountains. Fifty-seven minutes later a wall of water forty feet high arrived in Johnstown with a city's worth of wreckage on its face. Inside you'll find:

  • The exclusive club of Gilded Age titans - Carnegie, Frick, Mellon - that kept a dying dam as its private playground
  • The repairs done cheap, the warnings ignored, and the morning the lake began to rise
  • The fifty-seven minute journey of the wave, town by town, told hour by documented hour
  • The Stone Bridge fire, the survivors' stories, and Clara Barton's first great Red Cross campaign
  • The lawsuits that all failed - and why not one club member was ever held liable
Drawn from the historical record and modern engineering studies, The Johnstown Flood restores the day America learned what happens when the powerful hold back a river - and lose.

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19th Century United States History

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