Johnstown Flood National Memorial

Remnants of the South Fork Dam lie in a wooded valley in Cambria County, Pennsylvania. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania built the earthen and rock-fill dam between 1838 and 1853 to supply water to the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal between Johnstown and Pittsburgh. The Pennsylvania Railroad left the dam largely unattended after 1857, and in 1879 a group of Pittsburgh industrialists formed the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which bought the dam and reservoir and repaired it by 1881. On May 31, 1889, after heavy rains, the poorly reconstructed dam failed, releasing a wall of water that killed more than 2,200 people and caused over $17 million in property damage. The surviving abutments, spillway and sluice foundations show how the dam was built and operated. The Elias J. Unger House, constructed in the mid-1880s, is linked to the disaster because Unger, the club's president, was at the site and tried to lower the water level before the collapse.