Category Archive: Heritage Johnstown at Home

John Fulton was the General Mining Engineer of Cambria Iron Company in Johnstown in the late 1800s. Heritage Johnstown houses six unpublished memoirs by John Fulton about his life, work, and retirement. The typewritten memoirs are annotated, …

March 17, 1936 is the second of Johnstown’s three major floods. Unlike the floods of 1889 and 1977, a dam failure was not involved — instead, it was caused by a massive snowmelt and three days of rain. Heritage Johnstown’s …

The Epstein Family has a long and significant history in Johnstown. Their story of immigration, religion, business, and community history all embody that of many Johnstown families. Over the past few months, Richland High School student Saffron Barrett-Ross catalogued the …

This Heritage Johnstown at Home post is based on research done by members of our organization in the early 2000s as part of an extensive local African-American history project. It was researched primarily by Andrew Baraniak, an AmeriCorps volunteer, with …

By Nicholas Gehlmann. Nick is a volunteer who has been researching military history for us. We’re sharing his research on our World War II heroes for Veterans Day, as part of our Heritage Johnstown at Home series. (Photo above: Main …

October 5-11, 2025 is National Fire Safety Week. For the occasion, Amy Regan, Heritage Johnstown’s curator, takes us on a trip to the Pennsylvania National Fire Museum of Harrisburg to show a special piece of Johnstown’s history.

The Pennsylvania National Fire …

by Amy Regan, Heritage Johnstown curator

The disaster of the 1889 Johnstown Flood presents a question: what would you do if everything you had known was taken away in a single afternoon? Anna Fenn’s story exemplifies the human ability to survive …

At the time of the 1889 flood, Johnstown’s population was about 30,000 people, and 2,209 died in the disaster. Whether you survived or not was largely determined by where you were at the time the flood hit, and sometimes sheer …

By Amy Regan, Heritage Johnstown curator

At the time of the 1889 flood, Johnstown’s population was about 30,000 people, and 2,209 died in the disaster. Whether you survived or not was largely determined by where you were at the time the …

By Nikki Bosley, Heritage Johnstown staff

“It was only a question of time until the dam would break.” – John Fulton

It was 7:00 a.m. on the morning of May 31, 1889, and John Fulton, General Manager of the Cambria Iron Company, …