Disastrous Floods and the Demise of Steel in Johnstown by Pat Farabaugh

Posted by on May 13, 2022 in | Comments Off on Disastrous Floods and the Demise of Steel in Johnstown by Pat Farabaugh Disastrous Floods and the Demise of Steel in Johnstown by Pat Farabaugh The History Press, 187 pp., paperback $21.99 Those with an interest in Pennsylvania history and natural disasters will never want for more in the examination of the Johnstown Flood and its aftermath. Farabaugh’s study condenses the standard story of Johnstown’s floods while engaging a parallel narrative of the decline of its...
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Cambria City

Posted by on Nov 29, 2021 in | Comments Off on Cambria City Nestled between a bend in the Conemaugh River and a steep bluff, Cambria City is a distinctive, dense neighborhood that tells the story of hundreds of immigrants who came to work in Pennsylvania’s steel mills and coal mines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Following the founding of the Cambria Iron Works in 1852, investors purchased land across the river from the mill, subdivided it,...
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“The Not So Good Old Days”: Disease and the Struggle for Public Health in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Oct 15, 2020 in | Comments Off on “The Not So Good Old Days”: Disease and the Struggle for Public Health in Pennsylvania In 1930 A. J. Bohl was proud to work in the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH). After 25 years there, he wrote an article in Pennsylvania’s Health in which he recalled growing up in the 1880s, when disease and illness ravaged the state. “There wasn’t much attention paid to the communicable diseases. Everybody, as a matter of course, had measles, chicken pox, whooping cough and mumps, and...
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Terror and Extortion on the Pennsylvania Railroad

Posted by on Jun 4, 2020 in | Comments Off on Terror and Extortion on the Pennsylvania Railroad Threats of terrorism and challenges to security are nothing new for railroads; these phenomena have been around for nearly 200 years of railroading in the United States. Safety and security, therefore, have been of the utmost importance for railroad lines from the 19th century to the present, and railroad police have had authority equivalent to state police in many locations. Yet, the amount of...
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Ruthless Tide by Al Roker

Posted by on Jan 13, 2020 in | Comments Off on Ruthless Tide by Al Roker Ruthless Tide The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America’s Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster by Al Roker William Morrow, 303 pp, cloth $28.99 The Johnstown Flood of 1889 retains  its fascination. The flood was caused by the breaking of a dam owned by the South Fork Fishing & Hunting Club, a group of Pittsburgh industrialists and financiers. In a horrifying display of the...
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The Dream of Security: Johnstown and Flood Control

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Dream of Security: Johnstown and Flood Control They don’t take rain for granted in Johnstown anymore. Walking down Market Street or cruising Route 56, pedestrians may pause and drivers may slow as the first drops land. Anxious glances skyward reveal the unspoken thought: will it happen again? They are re­calling the terrible night in July 1977 when the rain fell and fell and the dream of a flood-free Johnstown shattered for­ever. That...
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“Little Doc”: Architect Of Modern Nursing

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on “Little Doc”: Architect Of Modern Nursing Lavinia Lloyd Dock (1858-1956) labored long and hard as educator, settlement worker, historian, author, editor, columnist, pacifist and radical suffragist. Beyond this, she strove to internationalize the public health movement while continually elevating the status of women. But her contributions to the field of nursing­ – which helped transform what was then a despised trade into a...
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Perry County: A Sportsman’s Paradise

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Perry County: A Sportsman’s Paradise Despite its proximity to Pennsylvania’s bustling and heavily urbanized capital city, Perry County remains a sportsman’s placid paradise with its thickly forested moun­tains and lushly verdant val­leys. Much like its neighboring counties – Franklin, Cumber­land, Juniata and Dauphin­ – Perry County claims a topogra­phy that is neither unique nor unusual: its mountains give...
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A One Night Stand to Remember – Or to Forget

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on A One Night Stand to Remember – Or to Forget Laurette Taylor, an actress who knew well of what she spoke, wrote, “There is no existence so devoid of meaning as ‘the one night stands,’ none so fatal to progress as any kind of forced and hurried travel­ing.” Yet of just such ingredi­ents was the theatrical experience compounded dur­ing the last quarter of the nine­teenth century. For these were the years of “the...
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Setting the Standard for Others

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Setting the Standard for Others With a rich heritage rooted in colonial military formations – such as the forces furnished in 1740 for a disastrous English expe­dition against Cartagena, Spain’s principal seaport in South America, and Benjamin Franklin’s ten thousand mem­ber military Association, estab­lished in 1747 – the 28th Infantry (Keystone) Division, Pennsylvania Army National Guard, is the...
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