Johnstown Flood National Memorial

The site of the failed dam that caused the 1889 flood, now preserved as a national memorial

The Johnstown Flood National Memorial sits at the site of the South Fork Dam, about 16 km northeast of downtown Johnstown near the village of St. Michael. What you see today is the broad breach in the hillside where the dam gave way on the afternoon of May 31, 1889 — a gap roughly 90 metres wide that unleashed the reservoir in under an hour. The remnants of the earthen dam still rise on either side of the breach.

The National Park Service visitor centre at the memorial has excellent exhibits on the dam's engineering, the flood's path, and its aftermath. Rangers lead walking tours to the lakebed itself, now a shallow meadow where the reservoir once stood. Standing at the breach and looking down the valley where the water went gives the disaster a geographic reality that no museum exhibit can match. The memorial is managed by the National Park Service and admission is free.

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The South Fork Dam was built in the 1850s to feed a canal system that was already obsolete by the time it was finished. It sat abandoned for years before the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club bought it for $2,500 and converted the reservoir into a private retreat. The club's members lowered the dam's spillway to allow carriages to cross — a modification engineers later said contributed directly to the failure.