A River Runs Greedy

The Johnstown Flood of 1889

tldr; 🧍‍♂️💰: Rich dudes wanted a lake for vibes.
🌧️: It rained. A lot.
🛠️: Dam was held together with straw (literally).
💥: Dam said “I’m out.”
🌊: 40-foot wave, 2,209+ dead.
🔥: Then it caught fire.
🧒🏽: A 6 y/o floated on a mattress thru hell.
💔: No one was held accountable. Of course.
🧑‍⚕️❤️: Red Cross pulled up. Heroes activated.
🧠: It was 100% preventable.
📢: Reminder that disasters often aren’t “natural”—they’re manmade. By greed.

Listen Here: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/a-river-runs-greedy-the-johnstown-flood-of-1889–65112082

⚠️Trigger Warning⚠️

Before we begin, a quick heads-up. Today’s story includes some heavy and heartbreaking moments, including mass death and destruction, historical trauma, and graphic disaster aftermath—such as fire, injury, and body recovery.
It’s a hard story—but an important one. And I’ll be right here with you through all of it.
But if it’s too much? That’s okay.
Listen when you feel ready, or skip this one entirely. Your well-being matters most.

Transcript

Hello, my curious and slightly morbid friends! Welcome back to Bygone Echoes, the podcast where history isn’t just something we study—it’s something we feel deep in our bones. Sometimes it makes us laugh, sometimes it makes us shudder, and sometimes it makes us so angry we have to scream into the void for a minute. I’m your host, Courtney.

Grab your raincoats, because today we’re trudging into one of the deadliest, most infuriating preventable disasters in American history: the Johnstown Flood of 1889.

But don’t let the word “flood” fool you. This wasn’t just a bit of river drama. This was a man-made catastrophe—constructed by the decisions of the rich, sealed by negligence, and unleashed like a biblical curse.

It was caused—literally—by some of the wealthiest men in America. Because their weekend fishing trips mattered more than the lives of thousands of innocent people.

Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was no stranger to flooding. Nestled in a narrow river valley in the Allegheny Mountains, flooding was practically an annual tradition. Move your furniture upstairs, sweep out the mud, move on. But in the last days of May 1889, things escalated. Ten inches of rain fell in 24 hours. The rivers turned to monsters. And back then? They had no sirens. No warnings systems. No alerts.

Even worse? People had been warned before. The dam was a known danger. It failed before. But those in charge laughed it off.

Gaslighting. At. Its. Finest.

So picture it: you’re eating lunch, rain tapping on the window. It’s loud, sure, but it’s always loud in the bustling steel-town you call home. Then, you hear it—a deep, inhuman roar. You look outside and see a forty-foot wall of water barreling toward you at 40 miles per hour.

You don’t have time to run. You barely have time to scream, before its on you.

The Johnstown Flood wasn’t just a tragedy—it was a warning. A warning about what happens when the powerful are allowed to put profits over people, when wealth shields the reckless from consequences, and when communities are forced to live in the shadows of disasters they were told to ignore.

It also set the stage for how America handles disaster relief today, since it was one of the first major U.S. disasters to be responded to at a national level. And though it took decades, this flood helped pave the way for modern disaster relief efforts—because it proved that when tragedy strikes, communities can’t just be left to fend for themselves.

So today, we’re telling the story of how a dam held together with hubris and hay brought devastation to an entire valley. This episode has everything: steel barons, disaster science, Gilded Age pettiness, and even guest-featured ducklings.

Because history isn’t just about the past. It’s about the systems of then that got us here, the greed that still runs unchecked, and the echoes that flood our present.

This is the story of what happens when power refuses to listen—until it’s too late.

Welcome to the late 1800s, a world of progress, power, and crushing poverty. Electricity was just starting to light city streets, the first payphones had arrived in New England. And while Johnstown was flooding, the rest of the world wasn’t exactly on pause.

Europe was in full main character mode—innovation, spectacle, and nonstop drama, with every country elbowing to outshine the rest.

In England, the public was still buzzing about Jack the Ripper—no one knew if the killer was finished, or if another victim would turn up. The case had sparked the first full-blown media frenzies in history—unless you count the Servant Girl Annihilator murders in Austin, Texas a few years earlier. Newspapers printed wild theories, fake confessions, and enough panic to keep everyone on edge.

Meanwhile, Oscar Wilde was stirring up his own kind of scandal, putting the finishing touches on The Picture of Dorian Gray—his only novel, and a spicy little cocktail of art, ego, and moral rot that left Victorian readers clutching their pearls and gasping in iambic pentameter.

Germany was leveling up hard—steel, chemicals, and high-key bossing the industrial revolution. Bayer (yes, that Bayer, like “take two and call me in the morning” Bayer) was out here cooking up industrial chemistry that would literally change the world.

Meanwhile, just south in the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Absolute chaos.

30-year-old Crown Prince Rudolf was found dead in what became known as the Mayerling Incident—a royal disaster featuring a suicide pact, a 17-year-old mistress, untreated mental health struggles, and enough scandal to keep Europe spilling tea for months.

Meanwhile, over in Paris, France, the world got its first look at the brand-new Eiffel Tower—a slightly scandalous metal giant that soared to 1,083 feet (about 330 meters), making it the tallest structure on Earth at the time.

The U.S. was in the throes of the Gilded Age—a time of unbelievable wealth, brutal inequality, and zero worker protections. The rich were stupidly rich, and the poor? They were lucky to survive.

Imagine if Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Walmart heirs didn’t just own their industries—but also controlled the government, had zero taxes, and could lawfully crush anyone who dared to complain.

That was Andrew Carnegie, Henry Frick, and John D. Rockefeller.

They were building empires of steel, oil, and railroads, throwing lavish parties in their mansions, while their workers were literally dying in factories for pennies.

And these weren’t just bad jobs—they were deadly jobs. There were no workplace safety laws, no minimum wage. No safety nets. Factory work was so dangerous that losing a finger was just considered part of the job.

And if you complained? They’d replace you before your blood dried on the machine. This wasn’t just income inequality—it was a world where wealth made a man untouchable.

But not everything in America was about progress and ambition. It was also a time of violence, white supremacy, and government-sanctioned cruelty. Out West, lawlessness still ruled. And in just a year, the U.S. government would massacre nearly 300 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee.

And in the South? Jim Crow was tightening its grip.

The promises of Reconstruction were crumbling. Black Americans were being stripped of voting rights, barred from schools, segregated by law, and terrorized by mobs. Lynchings weren’t rare—they were public spectacles, and the perpetrators almost never faced consequences.

Progress was for the powerful. Everyone else? They were expected to suffer quietly.

While some organizations existed to help those who fell on hard times—whether due to losing a job, mental illness or catastrophic events—many were always underfunded, unorganized, or simply ineffective. The American Red Cross? It was still in its infancy and still proving its worth.

In the wonderful world of music, everyone was jamming to “The Washington Post March” by John Philip Sousa. I like to imagine it playing at Idora Park’s grand opening—which we talked about in Episode 2. Fun fact, Idora Park opened the day before the Johnstown Flood!

And okay, confession time: I only know Sousa’s name because Harold Hill name-drops him in the 1962 film, The Music Man. I’ve never actually seen the movie, but somehow I have half the soundtrack memorized from my “Musicals I’ve Never Watched” playlist on Spotify.

Life is weird.

Anyway.

The Gilded Age was a time of unprecedented wealth, with few regulations. And what’s a rich person to do with all that excess cash?

Sure, you could hoard your fortune like Smaug on a mountain of gold, or—if you had real confidence—use it to actually help people.

But for the Gilded Age elite? The real flex was buying your way into exclusive, members-only retreats. Because what’s the point of being rich if you’re not reminding everyone, constantly?

Back then, that meant private hunting and fishing clubs—luxury getaways where America’s wealthiest men could escape the cities they polluted and profited from, and pretend to be rugged outdoorsmen. Of course, roughing it still came with fine china and full staff.

One of the most infamous clubs? The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club.

Founded in 1879, it was built around an aging dam and reservoir—Lake Conemaugh—which was originally constructed in the 1830s for canal transport. But when railroads took over, the system was abandoned like last season’s tech.

A group of Pittsburgh industrialists bought up the land as a private vacation spot. Membership was invite-only and included more than 50 of the wealthiest men in America. Among them? Henry Clay Frick. And if that name makes you angry—congratulations, you have excellent instincts.

These men spared no expense—think Gilded Age lakefront Airbnbs, catered yacht parties, and total exclusivity. And the dam? That was just aesthetic. A picturesque backdrop to their leisure, held together with hope and hubris.

We all know what a dam is—but the South Fork Dam? It was a masterclass in how not to maintain a dam. Or how not to give a dam(n)? Because clearly, they didn’t. [ba dum tss]

Proper dams need:

✔ A strong barrier

✔ Spillways to release overflow

✔ Discharge pipes to lower water when needed

Armed with this knowledge, the South Fork Fishing Club said, “Nah.”

Pop quiz! What did they do instead?

A.) Removed all the discharge pipes

B.) Blocked the spillway with fish screens that clogged

C.) Lowered the top of the dam for a scenic carriage road

D.) All of the above?

If you picked D—congrats. They were literally the damn worst.

And everyone knew the dam was unsafe. Locals raised concerns for years. Reputable engineers inspected it, even saying outright: “Yeah, this will fail.”

And the club’s response? Gaslight. Gatekeep. Patch it with literal straw, like a cartoon villain trying to plug a sinking ship.

They dismissed every warning as paranoia. But, to make everyone feel better, they sent their own, handpicked, unqualified “inspectors,” who–SURPRISE-declared it safe. They said people were overreacting. And they brushed it off.

And the common folk? They believed them. I mean, these men were wealthy, educated, “job creators.” Men who literally ran the economy.

So, of course they knew what was best for everyone.

Right?

Well, let’s talk about the people who actually had to live beneath that damned dam.

There were several towns below the dam—small farming villages, logging camps, coal and iron outposts. Blips on the map. Then, there was Johnstown.

Johnstown sits in a rare flat stretch of land in western Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains—part of the Appalachian Mountain range that runs from the Deep South to Canada. It was carved by the Conemaugh River and has always been a place shaped, sustained, and threatened by water.

The land that became Johnstown had long been home to Indigenous nations—first the prehistoric Monongahela, then the Shawnee and Lenape (called the Delaware by European settlers). Their connection to the river ran deep: it nourished their bodies, carried their trade, and held spiritual meaning.

Flooding wasn’t an occasional disaster—it was a fact of life. The rivers that made settlement possible also made it dangerous, swelling with seasonal rains and mountain runoff. People adapted—building higher, rebuilding when they had to.

As Europeans pushed west, Indigenous communities were forcibly removed—displaced by treaties they didn’t sign, violence they couldn’t escape, and European invaders hungry for land.

The same river that was once sacred was seized and repurposed to power industry. Mills replaced ceremony. Railroads replaced trade paths.

Johnstown was founded in 1800, but its true transformation came in 1852 with the arrival of the Cambria Iron Company. The booming steel mills rose on land already rich with memory—now stripped, renamed, and claimed.

Cambria Iron became one of the largest steel producers in the country, pioneering the Bessemer process and investing locally. Unlike many factory towns, they hired both immigrants and locals, invested heavily in the local community, and helped shape Johnstown into a gritty, hardworking city in the valley.

Like many industrial giants, Cambria practiced industrial paternalism—taking care of workers just enough to keep them dependent. They built hundreds of houses for workers. It was a convenience for all, but the company benefitted greatly because, during strikes, families could be evicted overnight.  

They had a company hospital—because injuries were common. But, getting hurt could mean losing your job and your home.

They supported schools, churches, and social programs—but workers still put in 60+ hours a week in dangerous conditions, with the company controlling nearly every aspect of life.

None of it was kindness. It was control. And as crazy as it sounds, they were actually considered one of the better companies to work for.

With such a major investment in Johnstown, Cambria Iron especially raised concerns about the dam—but like everyone else, they were ignored.

Johnstown was never silent. It had a population of around 30,000 people. The mills thundered day and night, spitting black smoke into the sky—the sound of steel shaping the world echoing through the valley. The air smelled of hot metal, coal dust, and sweat.

The town moved with the rhythm of the mills. Factory whistles told you when to wake up, when to eat, when to sleep—if you had time for it.

It was a town of families. Wives stretched meals to make the money last. Children worked in family stores or took jobs of their own. Men picked up extra shifts whenever they could. Some days, it was just enough. Other days, it wasn’t.

Just a few summers before the flood, diphtheria swept through Johnstown, killing more than 120 children in a single season.

Imagine being a parent back then.

Your child wakes up with a sore throat—nothing serious at first. Kids get sick all the time.

But by the next day, they’re gasping for air. Their throat is literally closing.

There’s no cure. No medicine. No help.

All you can do is watch them suffocate to death, helpless.

And when it’s over, you still have to find the money to bury them—alongside dozens of other grieving families.

Funeral processions lined the streets, and the smallest coffins always seemed to weigh the most.

Diphtheria was a nightmare.

And today? In places with access to healthcare and routine vaccination?

It’s almost gone. Because we have a vaccine. And it works.

In 1889, parents would’ve given anything for what we have now.

And yet, despite the grief and hardship, Johnstown kept moving.

The skyline was a mix of grit and grandeur.

For the working class, home was cramped company housing—rows of brick and wooden tenements stacked so close you could hear your neighbor’s life through the walls. A single house might hold two or three families. Laundry lines crisscrossed over dirt streets turned to mud whenever it rained.

New immigrants and single men lived in boardinghouses, packed into small rooms, renting beds by the week.

But higher up—literally and socially—was a different Johnstown.

Mill supervisors, business owners, and professionals lived in grand homes: Queen Anne, Italianate, Second Empire architecture. Turrets, wraparound porches, stained-glass windows. Elegance above the floodplain.

An important landmark in Johnstown was the Stone Bridge, built by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1887. It was a lifeline—carrying steel, coal, and goods in and out of town. Without it, the mills couldn’t run. It was built strong—and it still stands today.

Despite long hours and low wages, Johnstown was a tight-knit community. Churches, markets, and schools filled the spaces between the factories, giving people something to hold onto.

Church bells rang for births, weddings, and funerals. Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist—every congregation a lifeline.

Markets filled the town with the smell of fresh bread, salted meat, and roasted coffee. A trip to the market wasn’t just about food—it was how you caught the news, shared gossip, and stayed connected.

But not everyone found comfort in church or family. For every steeple stretching toward heaven, there was a saloon door swinging open.

Saloons lined the streets, packed with men shaking off the day’s exhaustion with cheap whiskey and beer. Gambling houses promised fortune but usually emptied pockets. Brothels operated quietly—tolerated by some, frequented by many.

No matter who you were or how you spent your nights, everyone lived with the river.

Flooding wasn’t rare—it was routine. The same rivers that sustained the town also threatened it, swelling with rain and mountain runoff. People adapted: building homes on stone foundations, raising wooden sidewalks, and moving valuables upstairs when the storms came.

Johnstown endured. Through flood, fire, disease, and hardship, the town always rebuilt. Always carried on.

And on May 30, 1889, it wasn’t hardship filling the streets—it was celebration. The skies were cloudy, the rivers already high, but the town had its parade, its speeches, its music.

It was Decoration Day. What we now call Memorial Day.

The town gathered to honor Civil War veterans—men who had fought at Gettysburg, Antietam, and beyond. Their uniforms were pressed. Their medals gleamed. Bands played The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

For many, it was a rare day off from the mills. A day to rest, to celebrate, to remember. And fortunately, the storm held off until later that night.

It had been a joyous day. And for many—their last.

What even is a storm?

Think of Earth’s atmosphere like an ocean in the sky—currents of air constantly shifting between high and low pressure. When warm, moist air crashes into cooler, drier air? Chaos. That’s a storm. It’s the atmosphere throwing a tantrum.

Most of that drama happens in the troposphere—the lowest layer, where we live, breathe, fly planes, and where all the weather happens.

At the heart of a storm is usually a low-pressure system—basically an atmospheric vacuum. Warm air rushes in, rises, cools, and thickens into angry storm clouds. The lower the pressure, the wilder the storm.

And late May in places like the U.S.? That’s prime storm season. Cold air still lingering from winter. Warm, humid air pushing up from the Gulf. And boom: natural instability.

The storm that rocked Johnstown was born over Kansas and Nebraska on May 28. It pulled in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and dumped rain from Missouri through Ohio.

Most storms like this one keep moving—and by the time they reach the Atlantic, they run out of fuel and die in open water.

But this one stalled for a few reasons. One: Mountains act like walls. Johnstown sits in the Allegheny Mountain range—in a literal bowl, surrounded on all sides. Two: A second low-pressure system was already hovering over western Pennsylvania. The two systems collided, trapping the storm in place.

So the storm, still full of water, stayed.

And unleased catastrophic rainfall.

No one thought much of it. Although by the time it was over? It dropped 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain in 24 hours. For context? That’s enough to submerge the tires of a car.

By dawn, the Conemaugh River was painfully swollen. Bridges upstream were failing. Trains derailed, their tracks were underwater. It was a mess. Streets became rivers. Telegraph & telephone poles were down—communication was gone.

Still, people weren’t panicked. It rained all the time. The dam always held. Once the water receded, they’d clean up and move on—like they always did.

But 14 miles upstream, the South Fork Dam was holding back more water than ever before. Lake Conemaugh was at its breaking point. Water was trickling through cracks. Workers scrambled to reinforce it—with rocks and mud. It wasn’t enough.

At 10:00 AM, the club finally sent a telegraph warning the dam might fail.

Not that it mattered. Most telegraph lines were already down. And with no mass alert system, no sirens, no way to warn towns downstream—no one knew what was coming.

By noon, the lake was nearly spilling over. The dam’s earthen walls, soaked and crumbling, couldn’t take much more.

And at 3:10 PM, it happened.

The dam let go.

14 million tons (or about 12.7 million metric tons) of water burst free—tearing through the valley like an avalanche.

The entire reservoir emptied in just 30 minutes.

One of the first victims was a dam worker, still trying to plug leaks with a shovel.

The first wave? Nearly 100 feet—or 30 meters— high, roughly the length of a Boeing 737. It raced down the valley faster than a car on a highway. It didn’t just hit. It consumed—like some ancient, godless leviathan—all teeth and momentum.

The water carved through the valley, picking up homes, mills, factories, telegraph poles, train cars, wild and domestic animals, and human bodies—some alive, some already dead. All of it—plus debris from a barbed wire factory—twisted into a single, deadly, tangled mass.

It wasn’t just a flood. It was a firestorm in waiting—water soaked in oil, gas, and grease from dozens of sources. One spark away from becoming something even worse.

By 4:07 PM, the flood reached Johnstown. Thankfully, it had slowed slightly and was only 40 feet or about 12 meters high now. Which is still… as long as a shipping container. And it was full of death.

People had no time to run. The water hit like a battering ram—tearing people from their homes, smashing bodies into debris, dragging them under thick, muddy water choked with splinters, glass, and blood.

Some clung to wreckage. Most never stood a chance.

For many, death came in seconds.

There were so many direct quotes and eyewitness accounts from that day. And before we go on, I want to take a moment to share one of the most powerful firsthand accounts from the flood. This is the story of Gertrude Quinn Slattery—who survived the disaster as a child and lived to tell it.

What you’re about to hear is a condensed version of her account, told in her voice, as an older woman remembering that day. I’ve shortened some of the details for time, her account is like almost 200 pages long, but her memories—and her courage—remain exactly as she described them.

The morning of May thirty-first was dark. There was a mist, like smoke from brushwood fires, that turned into a heavy rain. It came down steadily, soaking everything. The rivers were already over their banks. People in the lower parts of town were hauling their belongings upstairs. But at our house we still felt safe. We lived in a tall, three-story brick home with iron gates and a little garden. That day, only the ducklings were allowed outside.

Mama had gone to visit family a few towns over, leaving us children with Papa, our nurse Libby, and my Aunt Abbie, who’d just arrived from Kansas with her baby. My sister Marie was sick with the measles and crying softly from her crib. My older brother was out with friends, playing in the rising water.

Papa had been worrying for days. He kept saying if the rains didn’t stop, the dam upstream would break. The neighbors laughed at him for being so cautious. But when he left for work that morning, I could see the fear in him.

He came home around lunch, soaked to the bone, and told us to get ready in case we had to run for the hills. We waited, because Marie was sick, and Papa didn’t want to drag her into the cold rain.

I snuck outside and the garden was underwater. Only the ducks’ heads were visible. My dress clung to my legs, and my shoes were soaked. Papa caught me and was furious. “My little white head,” he called me—his nickname for my pale blonde hair. He spanked me all the way back inside. He was about to take us to the hill. But first, I had to be changed.

That’s when it happened.

Papa looked out the window and saw a blur—a mist moving fast, like dust before a cavalry charge. Then he heard the roar.

“The dam,” he said. “RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”

He scooped up Marie, called for Aunt Abbie, and took off toward the hill with my other sisters.

Aunt Abbie refused to follow. “This house is brick,” she said. “It won’t fall.” She didn’t want to get her feet wet. She thought it was all an exaggeration. So our nurse Libby held me while I kicked and screamed to run after Papa. She chose to follow Aunt Abbie upstairs to the third-floor nursery.

Papa didn’t realize we hadn’t followed until it was too late.

We huddled in a cupboard. Aunt Abbie and Libby cried, screamed, and prayed as the house shook and water burst through the floor.

I don’t remember the moment it hit.

Just the cold. The splintering wood. The silence.

When I woke, I was floating on a mattress. Alone.

My clothes were gone. My hair hung in muddy ropes down my back. Around me: fire, ash, broken houses, dead animals. The air stung. The water burned in places. I called out again and again:

“Help! Please! Someone help me!”

Everything I saw—ruined homes, lifeless bodies, fire licking across the water—looked like the Day of Judgment. Like the world had ended, and I was the only one left.

That’s when I saw him.

A man on a rooftop drifting in the current. There were a dozen or so people on it, injured and scared, all begging him not to go. But he looked at me and said:

“I’m going to save that baby. Do you think an angel is coming down to help us? God helps those who help themselves.”

Then he dove into the water.

He disappeared under the current and I feared I’d lost him. But he rose again, reached the mattress, pulled himself up, and scooped me into his arms. I held on like grim death. We floated together—surrounded by the gurgling, moaning wreckage of a ruined town.

Then he saw a house still near the edge of the current, with men leaning from the window.

“Throw that baby over here to us!” they shouted.

My hero said, “Do you think you can catch her?”

They said: “We can try.”

And he threw me—fifteen feet or more—across the water.

They caught me.

His name was Maxwell McAchren. He survived and went on to have fifteen children of his own. And when he died, an old man, we sent him flowers.

I was carried to dry land. But no one knew who I was. Just a mud-covered child with tangled hair and empty eyes. That night, a kind family took me in. They wrapped me in flannel and kept me warm. The mother held me in her lap and rocked me like I was her own.

I didn’t speak. I didn’t ask for anyone. I thought I was the only one left alive. I wondered, if I was lucky, maybe this kind family would take me in.

But the next morning, someone looked at me closely and gasped:

“She’s a Quinn! That’s Gertrude Quinn!”

They sent for Papa. He had blamed himself, angry he hadn’t held me as he had my sisters. Unsure of the fate of myself or my brother. He was washing his face when they arrived, claiming to have found me. He dropped everything and ran.

When I saw him climbing the steps, soap still clinging to his face, I ran and leapt into his arms.

He dropped to his knees, sobbing into my hair. “My poor little white head,” he whispered again and again. “My poor little white head…” My sisters clung to his coat, crying too.

And all around us—hardened men and women who hadn’t wept once through the disaster—finally cried.

Because for the first time since the flood… Someone had made it home.

Gertrude lived. But thousands didn’t, including her older brother, aunt, her cousin and her nurse. While she was wrapped in flannel in a stranger’s home, safe for the first time since the flood struck, the nightmare for others was still unfolding.

The Stone Bridge, Johnstown’s lifeline, had held through the flood. But that strength became a trap. Wreckage piled against it—trees, railcars, houses and various other debris. And inside of it all? Hundreds of people, still alive, screaming for help.

Then, after sunset—maybe a power line snapped, maybe a gas lamp tipped—but something sparked.

And the wreckage held by the bridge ignited.

The water burned.

People screamed, prayed, tried to escape—but no one could reach them. Flames engulfed the debris, turning the bridge into an inferno.

The fire burned all night. And for three more days.

Veterans, survivors of the Civil War, said they had never seen horror like it.

When the sun rose again, Johnstown was gone. Where there had once been hundreds of buildings, now there were only scattered remnants.

Sometimes I get really cynical. I mean—how could this happen? How could people be so selfish, so reckless, so willing to gamble with thousands of lives that are not theirs to gamble with!? Especially when it comes to something that never had to happen?

But then… I read about the helpers. And my little heart soars. It’s still awful this ever had to happen. But when the dam failed, the people rose higher than that water ever did.

There was the locomotive engineer who was just going about his day—business as usual—until he realized the flood was coming. He reversed his train at full speed, whistle tied down, risking his life to warn everyone in the valley.

Then there was Maxwell McAchren, who didn’t even know Gertrude or her family. He risked his life to save her. The others on the roof he’d left behind? Almost all of them died.

Many men and boys, despite being injured, used ropes and ladders to pull people from floodwaters even as buildings were collapsing around them. People formed human chains to pull survivors from the current.

Even children helped. Some led their younger siblings through the water. Some flagged down rescuers. Some sat with the dying—just so they wouldn’t be alone.

And countless others—unnamed, unknown—became rescuers on instinct. People fortunate enough not to lose their homes in the flood opened their doors, shared what little they had with strangers, took care of the weak, injured and grieving. People came from far and wide, brining supplies, wanting to help however they could.

And that’s the part that stays with me. In a disaster caused by the recklessness of the powerful, it was ordinary people who became the heroes.

They didn’t wait for orders. They didn’t have to do anything.

But they acted—with courage, instinct, and compassion.

And in the middle of all that devastation…

that’s what rose.

That’s what survived.

Clara Barton was already a legend when the flood hit Johnstown. She’d served as a battlefield nurse during the Civil War, founded the American Red Cross, and was pushing seventy when she heard what had happened.

And she didn’t wait.

She packed supplies, gathered volunteers like medical professionals, and came straight to the valley.

Clara and her team arrived just days after the flood—and then she stayed for five months. She helped feed the hungry, clothe the freezing, treat the injured, and bury the dead. She reunited families, organized volunteers, and brought order to a town that had been absolutely shattered.

And through her leadership, the American Red Cross stepped into the national spotlight.

At the time, it was still a young organization—barely eight years old—and not yet the household name it is today. But this moment? This was their first major disaster response on U.S. soil. And they showed up like they’d been preparing for it forever.

They brought structure to chaos—coordinating relief, setting up emergency shelters, distributing clean clothes, hot meals, and medicine. They stayed long after others left. Long after it wasn’t a trending topic.

And for the first time in American history, a national response was organized for a domestic catastrophe. People across the country donated what they could—money, blankets, food, clothing. And the response didn’t stop at our borders. Countries around the world—from England to Italy to Russia—sent donations and letters of sympathy.

Because what happened in Johnstown wasn’t just a local tragedy.

It was a wake-up call:

that industrial power didn’t guarantee safety,

that the government wasn’t equipped to handle mass disaster,

and that when tragedy strikes, the people—and the systems they build to help one another—matter more than ever.

The dam failed. But the Red Cross rose.

Death Toll

The official death toll of the Johnstown Flood is 2,209.

The true number is higher.

That count doesn’t include those who died later from injury, infection, or disease.

Some people were never found.

Some were burned to ash in the fires.

Others were so disfigured—headless, limbless, decayed beyond recognition—they couldn’t be identified.

One in every three bodies was labeled “unknown.”

Hundreds were buried without names, without markers—just numbers.

The youngest was just two days old.

• 99 families were completely lost.
• 396 children under the age of 10 died.
• 777 of the dead were never identified.
• 124 widows.
• 198 widowers.
• 98 orphans.

A body was found as far away as Cincinnati, Ohio—over 330 miles, or 530 kilometers, downstream.

And that? That’s just the people we could track.

There were passengers on the trains.

Travelers visiting for Memorial Day.

New immigrants not yet on any census.

Tramps and hobos passing through for work.

Entire families with no one left to report them missing.

We will never know how many were lost.

And the burials took weeks.

Mass graves were dug.

Schoolhouses and churches became temporary morgues.

Some bodies were still being pulled from the wreckage months later—

badly decomposed, tangled in barbed wire, washed miles downstream.

The last body from the flood was recovered in 1911. That’s over 20 years later.

It was exhausting.

Traumatizing.

And for many, the grief never had a name.

Just a number. A blank tag. A missing face.

Rebuilding took time—but it started fast.

The people of Johnstown didn’t wait.

Even before outside help arrived, survivors were clearing rubble, salvaging lumber, and putting up makeshift shelters.

Within five years, the city had been largely rebuilt.

The mills were running again.

New buildings stood where the ruins had been.

But nothing—not the money, not the reconstruction, not even the passing of time—could replace what was lost.

The flood didn’t just wash away homes.

It tore holes in the town’s memory—

names we’ll never recover,

lives we’ll never be able to trace.

Because that number—2,209—

It’s just a headline.

The real toll?

Is in the people we’ll never be able to count.

So, clearly after such an awful, catastrophic, preventable event, the victims got justice and everyone lived happily ever after?

Nah.

No one was held legally accountable.

Not one member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was ever criminally charged or sued successfully.

They lawyered up, blamed it on an “act of God,” and got away with it.

Why was that allowed?

Because back then, the legal system heavily protected the wealthy.

And the doctrine that saved them was simple:

If you didn’t intend harm, you weren’t liable.

Even if your negligence caused the disaster.

Even if your choices killed thousands.

If you didn’t mean to kill anyone?

The courts said: “It do be like that sometimes.”

And let you go.

No fines.

No consequences.

No legal compensation for the survivors.

The Club just… walked away.

And remember—these weren’t just some rich guys.

They were some of the richest and most powerful men in the country.

Andrew Carnegie. Henry Clay Frick. Andrew Mellon.

They had the money to fix the dam.

They had been warned—for years—that it wasn’t safe.

They had engineers telling them it wasn’t if, but when it would fail.

But hey—rich guy LARPing, and who cares who it crushes in the process?

A few members did throw money at the recovery.

Some donated thousands of dollars to relief efforts.

Which is like Jeff Bezos handing you a five-dollar bill and saying, “Hope that covers the trauma.”

Andrew Carnegie also funded a new library for the town—one of his earliest philanthropic gestures.

But let’s be clear:

No donation, no building, no “philanthropic gesture” erased the fact that no one was held accountable.

The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club quietly shut down not long after the flood.

The local backlash was immediate. Their name was mud. Some of their properties were even vandalized.

And the media?

That was… interesting.

Some local papers pushed back.

But nationally? A lot of them played it safe. Soft. Cautious.

Because—let’s be real—when the men who caused the disaster are also funding your railroads, your steel supply, and your ad space?

You don’t bite the hand that owns the press.

The official story became one of natural disaster, not human negligence.

A storm.

A tragedy.

But not a crime.

And so the people of Johnstown were left to bury their dead and rebuild their lives—

while the men who caused it went home to their mansions…

and found somewhere else to play pretend.

The Johnstown Flood wasn’t just a warning for 1889.

It’s a warning for now.

Because when you zoom out?

The patterns haven’t changed.

The names are different. The tech is newer.

But the story?

Same.

Back Then: A group of rich men cut corners, ignored engineers, and refused to be accountable.

Today: Billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and their buddies play with rockets, factories, and political influence—while gutting labor protections, dodging regulations, and laughing in the face of oversight.

Musk is a major political player with no elected office, no public accountability, and no interest in regulation that slows down his empire-building.

And when people raise concerns?

They’re labeled paranoid. Alarmist. “Anti-progress.”

Sound familiar?

Gaslight. Gatekeep. Patch it with straw.

Back in 1889, the dam was failing, and the wealthy told everyone they were overreacting.

In 2024, Hurricane Helene brought catastrophic flooding across the southeastern U.S.—some areas saw up to three feet of rain. Roads collapsed, water systems failed, and decades-old warnings about crumbling infrastructure suddenly became everyone’s problem.

And just like in Johnstown, much of it was preventable.

Maintenance had been delayed, budgets slashed, oversight ignored—

and when disaster struck, it was ordinary people who paid the price.

The truth is:

We can’t prevent every natural disaster.

The rain was always going to fall in Johnstown.

The Conemaugh was always going to rise.

But the dam? The avalancge of water it unleashed?

That was preventable.

We could have reinforced that.

We could have taken responsibility.

We could have listened.

We didn’t.

And that’s the moral here.

Natural disasters are inevitable.

But the damage?

The death toll?

That’s on us.

On the systems we allow, and the people we choose not to hold accountable.

That’s what Johnstown teaches us.

That when we let the powerful police themselves, people die.

When we let greed make the rules, the rules won’t save us.

And that’s why we need organizations like FEMA.

Why we need robust, funded, transparent disaster relief systems that exist to protect people—not profit margins.

FEMA wasn’t even created until 1979—ninety years after Johnstown.

And even now? Every time it gets defunded, defanged, or delayed?

People suffer.

Disasters get worse. Recovery gets slower.

The Red Cross is still here, doing what it can.

But charities can’t carry this alone.

Communities can’t keep being left to fend for themselves while CEOs get richer from cutting corners.

Because this story?

It’s played out again and again:

• In Hurricane Katrina
• In Flint, Michigan
• In COVID hospital wings
• In Hurricane Helene, 2024

Everywhere where legitimate warnings are ignored because someone decided it was too expensive to care.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We can demand better.

We can vote better.

We can build systems that value human lives over executive bonuses.

Because history isn’t just about what happened.

It’s about what keeps happening—

And what we’re willing to do to stop it.

And that, my friends, is the story of the Johnstown Flood of 1889—a tale of greed, negligence, community, survival, and the brutal cost of looking the other way.

It’s easy to treat disasters like distant history, like relics of a time when people didn’t know better. But that’s the thing—we do know better. And yet, the same patterns repeat. Warnings ignored. Corners cut. Lives lost. Accountability dodged like it’s contagious.

But we also see the best of humanity in the worst of times. In every helper who leapt into floodwaters. In the people who dug graves and built shelters. In the communities who carried each other, even when the system didn’t.

So what do we do with all this?

We remember. We fight for better systems. We hold the powerful accountable. And we don’t wait for tragedy to show us what we should’ve done.

Because when it comes to greed, infrastructure, and disaster?

It’s not a question of if the dam breaks.

It’s when.

Thank you for tuning in to Bygone Echoes. I’m so grateful you were here for this one. If this episode moved you, shocked you, or made you rethink how history repeats—share it. Rate it. Talk about it.

And next time? We’re shifting gears just a little—into omens, curses, and the curious magic of superstition. That’s right: Episode 13 is The Devil’s Dirty Dozen: A Superstition Special. We’re talking black cats, unlucky numbers, haunted mirrors, cursed trinkets, and maybe even a little salt tossed over the left shoulder—just in case.

Because weird history is real history.

Until then—be kind, be curious, and be ready to make history.

Interested in learning more? We recommend:

• “Johnstown and Its Flood” by Gertrude Quinn Slattery
• “The Johnstown Flood” by David McCullough
• The PBS documentary “The Johnstown Flood“
• Visit the Johnstown Flood National Memorial Site run by the National Park Service
• Visit the “Johnstown Area Heritage Association” website.

And visit our website at www.bygoneechoes.website