A working-class Williamsburg,' Johnstown tells brighter stories, too
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Once you've experienced the attractions that tell the story of the darkest day in Johnstown's history, it's time to see the city from a broader and brighter perspective.
The Heritage Discovery Center is the place to learn about the immigrants who left central and southern Europe to make their way to Johnstown, work in its steel mills and mines and endure its floods. Their experiences become more vivid when visitors assume their identities and insert those identity cards at strategic places within the displays.
At the beginning, a customs inspector confronts you at Ellis Island. You eavesdrop on rail-station family reunions as immigrants arrive in Johnstown. At another point, you face the scrutiny of a not-so-nice, upper-crust Johnstown resident who tells you to head for the Cambria City section of Johnstown where "your kind" live.
You'll pass through a 1907 neighborhood and business district with its store and telegraph office. You'll feel like you're in a steel mill at one point and, at another, get a taste of what it was like to be a coal picker sorting rocks from coal at a mine.
Finally, you'll enter the Generations Theater, where the children and grandchildren of the immigrants who settled in Johnstown relate fascinating segments of their families' oral histories.
At the "Made in Johnstown" exhibit on the second floor, you also could learn that Johnstown has touched your life long before you stopped for a visit. The city was one of the state's leading manufacturing centers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- producing steel girders for bridges and skyscrapers and rails for railroads as well as manufacturing household items like radiators and stoves and even runners for Flexible Flyer sleds.
The Discovery Center, located in the former Germania Brewery complex, will become an even bigger draw when the new "Mystery of Steel" gallery opens next week and the new Johnstown Children's Museum opens later this summer.
The Children's Museum will enable youngsters to explore the Johnstown experience in imaginative ways, like learning how to build a proper dam in a water playroom, taking "The Mine Climb" and walking into "Steeling Away" (coal mine and steel mill replicas), as well as sliding down a replica of the town's other famous attraction, the Inclined Plane.
More treats for child-visitors and parents will include having snacks at a soda fountain recreated from the furnishings of a Johnstown landmark and watching freight trains rumble past the building from a rooftop vantage point.
The Wagner-Ritter House and Garden, and the adjacent visitor's center, is a short walk from the Heritage Discovery Center. Originally the home of a a German immigrant who worked in the steel mill, the house illustrates the domestic life of ordinary people. One of the few homes in the Cambria City neighborhood that survived the 1889 flood, it remained in the same family from the 1860s through the 1990s.
It even has its own flood story. According to family members, an ancestor reached out from one of the home's second-story windows to pluck a flood victim from the raging waters.
"Fortunately, the family's later generations didn't throw much of anything away. Their belongings and oral histories, along with archaeological digs in the backyard and pictorial records were used to recreate its history," says Shelley Johansson, spokesperson for the Johnstown Area Heritage Association that owns and operates the house plus the flood museum, discovery center and children's museum.
"We like to think of our current attractions and future plans for exhibits as a working-man's Williamsburg," Johansson says. Those plans include reopening the Cambria Iron Co.'s original blacksmith shop, which will house a working blacksmith.
Final stops before leaving the city should be the Tranquility Monument and the more than 700 gravesites in Grandview Cemetery's Plot of the Unknown as well as the historic Inclined Plane.
The Inclined Plane, started just after the 1889 flood and completed in 1891, enabled city residents to live in new suburbs high above the flood plane. Like an oversized elevator, it travels along rails to transport both people and cars up and down the steep incline (71.9 percent grade) of Yoder Hill.
Take a ride and you'll also be able to enjoy the adjacent lookout that's 900 feet above the base of the inclined plane. It affords amazing views of the Stoney Creek and Little Conemaugh river valleys, the city and its suburbs and the abandoned steel mills near its heart.
Duck into the souvenir shop at the top and you can peer through a window to see the engine house that powers the cars' climb up and down the hill.
If the altitude at the top of the hill causes hunger pangs, you can cool off with a fresh-scooped cone from the ice cream shop. Or you can have a meal, appetizers or drinks at a window table in the much grander City View Bar and Grill. It's an unforgettable place for a last look at the town whose residents have stubbornly refused to let floodwaters wash away their hopes and dreams.
The famous Johnstown Flood is the "hook" that gets people interested. However, there's much more to see and do in Johnstown and it also serves as a good base for other area sightseeing.
WHAT TO SEE: Johnstown Flood National Memorial, South Fork, 14 miles from the city, and the place where the South Fork Dam's collapse sent a wall of water crashing through a valley and into Johnstown. Visitor Center contains exhibits, maps and a dramatic film about the dam, its collapse and the disaster that ensued. www.nps.gov/jofl, 814-495-4643,
Johnstown Flood Museum, 304 Washington St., Johnstown. In the heart of the city, this museum tells what happened when the wall of water crashed into the city, dragging debris including houses, trees, and tons of barbed wire. Displays of flood debris, a wall-sized graphic showing what residents saw when the wall of water came at them, another excellent movie about the flood and its victims are inside. 814-539-1889, www.jaha.org.
Heritage Discovery Center, 201 Sixth Ave., Johnstown. It contains extensive exhibits about Johnstown's industrial history and the people who left Europe to work in the steel mills and coal mines. Many interactive exhibits. On June 1, a new "Mystery of Steel Gallery" opened, featuring graphic illustrations of the mills at Johnstown. Later in the summer a new Children's Museum will fill the remaining space in the complex. Watch www.jaha.org for an exact opening date. (Your ticket for the flood museum ($6 for adults and $4 for students) also includes admission to the Heritage Discovery Center and the Wagner-Ritter House & Garden.
Wagner-Ritter House & Garden, 418 Broad St., Johnstown. The home was inhabited by generations of the same family from the 1860s through the 1990s and shows the domestic phase of immigrants' lives in the city.
Grandview Cemetery/Plot of the Unknown, 801 Millcreek Road, Johnstown. Contains the unmarked graves of more than 700 victims of the flood who could not be identified, 801 Millcreek Road, Johnstown, 814-535-2652.
The Johnstown Inclined Plane, 711 Edgehill Drive, Johnstown, 814-536-1816, www.inclinedplane.com. Built shortly after the flood, the plane's two "cars" carry passengers and vehicles up and down Yoder Hill, a steep incline with a 71.9 percent grade. There's a lookout at the top of the hill, as well as a snack bar and a restaurant, www.inclinedplane.com, 814-536-1816
Other area attractions and their distances from Johnstown: Windber Coal Heritage Center, featuring Quecreek Mine Rescue Exhibit (11 miles); Horseshoe Curve (46 miles); Gallitzin Tunnels (30 miles); Allegheny-Portage RR National Historic Site (30 miles); Prince Gallitzin State Park (35 miles); Rock Run Recreation area (45 miles); Seldom Seen Coal Mine (34 miles); Altoona Railroaders Museum (50 miles); Flight 93 Memorial Chapel (45 miles); Altoona Curve Baseball and Lakemont Amusement Park (50 miles)
WHERE TO EAT: If ever there was a restaurant with a view, it's the City View Bar & Grill, 709 Edgehill Drive, next to the top of the Inclined Plane. You can have sandwiches, lunches or dinners here. Johnstown Brewing Co., 942 Pinegrove Lane, is located in the former Bethlehem Steel Club and names its brews with Johnstown history in mind, including Flood Light, Steelworker Stout and Dam Beer. Phoenix Tavern, Second Avenue and Broad Street, serves ethnic fare like Cambria City Chile (contains macaroni) and pierogi and halushke. Gallina's Pizza & Pasta Shop (fresh baked rolls daily!), 130 Market St., features fresh bread made daily for sandwiches, as well as pizzas, salads, homemade soups and pastas. Em's Sub Shop, 345 Main St., offers subs, sandwiches and salads. Coney Island, corner of Clinton and Locust streets, offers hot dogs with a secret meat sauce as well as "sundowner" burgers with cheese, fried egg and secret sauce on top.
For dessert, stop at Blaine Boring Chocolates, 123 Market St., for frozen, chocolate-covered bananas ($1) or chocolate bars shaped like the Inclined Plane or The Stone Bridge ($2 apiece).
WHERE TO STAY: Make sure you mention the Heritage Package when you make a reservation at either Johnstown's downtown Holiday Inn at 250 Market St. or the Holiday Inn Express at 1440 Scalp Ave. The packages do not include tax and are subject to availability.
The downtown Holiday Inn offers a $139 per night package including breakfast for two (up to $20 value), two tickets to the Johnstown Flood Museum and two tickets for the Inclined Plane. Children 12 and under stay for free in their parents' room and also eat free in the restaurant. Their admission fees to attractions are extra.
The Holiday Inn Express offers a package from $114 to $134 a night, including a room for two, with free continental breakfast bar, two tickets to the Flood Museum, the Johnstown Flood National Memorial, and the Inclined Plane. Children 12 and under stay and eat free with their parents. Their admission fees to attractions are extra.
SPECIAL EVENTS:
June 26-29: 11th annual Thunder in the Valley Motorcycle Rally. The city floods with some 200,000 people for events, including bike parade, guided rides, food booths, live entertainment and hill climbs. 800-237-8590, www.visitjohnstownpa.com/thunderinthevalley
Aug. 29-31: Ameriserve Johnstown FolkFest, 75 hours of free music in many genres. Free admission, too. 1-888-222-1889, www.johnstownfolkfest.org. During the same weekend, there's the Annual Log House Arts Festival on Aug. 30 and 31, featuring some 100 craftsmen, food and entertainment, as well as the Forest Hills Festival with still more crafts, food and entertainment.
INFO: On community events, attractions and activities, request a copy of the 2008-2009 Official Johnstown Visitors Guide at www.visitjohnstownpa.com or by calling 800-237-8590.
First Published June 16, 2008 12:00 am
