The Johnstown Horror

A chronicle published in 1889, the very year of the disaster. At the end of May 1889, endless rain swells the rivers around Johnstown, a factory town in Pennsylvania wedged at the bottom of a valley. On 31 May, upstream, an earth dam gives way and the lake it held back rushes down onto the town. The book gathers newspaper dispatches and eyewitness accounts: families taking refuge on rooftops, the fire in the wreckage piled against the stone bridge, the search for the dead, and then the help sent from all over the country. A first-hand record, direct and often deeply moving, of a tragedy that shook all of America.