Visiting Johnstown

After our book club read The Johnstown Flood, we decided to visit Johnstown, instead of our regular book club meeting. Nothing beats seeing first hand, the location of a historical event.

There is two museums about the Johnstown Flood and we visited both of them. Both were informative. There was some repeat of information but both also covered items that the other did not.

If we could have only went to one museum, I would have chosen the Johnstown Flood National Memorial operated by the national park service. The Memorial is located at the dam at the site of the dam caretaker's farm. The park service did an excellent job in designing a building that blends with the farm and does not detract from the dam site.

My favorite display at the Memorial was of Victor Heiser, who escaped the flood on a floating roof. Included was his interview as an old man with David McCullough.

The video depicting the flood was well done, but in my opinion would have been too graphic for children.

The second museum, The Johnstown Flood Museum, is located in Johnstown, just down from the stone bridge where much of the worse damage occurred. The museum includes a relief map which helps picture the events on May 31, 1889 and where they occurred.

The Museum contained information on the rebuilding efforts and several of the other floods in Johnstown.  An Oklahoma house was part of the tour. The Museum itself is a Carnegie library which includes a gymnasium on the upper floor.

Since we had all read "the book," much of the two museums information was merely review. There is no way they could cover the detail of a 260 page book. But the seeing the setting and location of the flood helped us to understand the catastrophe better.