Calamity and Prosperity

Calamity and Prosperity. . The booming period, from 1867 to 1889, was used to make steel rails and fortunes...Across this rampant industrial expansion, the Great Flood of 1889 rolled like a juggernaught. , - Nathaniel Daniel Shappee. A History of Johnstown and the Great Flood of 1889. , The Stoneycreek River, which flows beneath this bridge, rose fourteen feet in four hours during the flood of 1861. But that flood, as well as many others, is not considered among Johnstown's major floods. The so-called "major floods" include the flood of 1977, the flood of 1936, and the fabled "Great Flood of 1889." , This physically dangerous environment was created during the formation of the rivers and mountains here geologic ages ago. Ironically, it was an environment that also contained all of the ingredients to create a city "celebrated as the seat of the leading steel and iron factory in America...", Mountains of timber, iron ore, limestone, and coal were all located at the headwaters of navigation of the Ohio River watershed., Everything about us was in inextricable confusion, showing the effects of the terrific convulsion through which nature and humanity has passed. , Rev David J. Beale, A Survivor of the 1889 Flood., Along toward dusk tongues of flame would shoot up in the pall around Johnstown. When some furnace door was opened the evening turned red. A boy watching from the rim of hills had a vast arena before him, a place of vague forms, great labors, and dancing fires. And the murk always present, the smell of the foundry. It gets into your hair, your clothes, even your blood. , Charlie Schwab., On this trail you will encounter extraordinary objects created in Johnstown's steel industry, a coal mine that once fueled that industry, and a glimpse of the 300 million years of geological history invovled in the creation of coal.