History
From 1834 to 1854 the river was paralleled by the Allegheny Portage Railroad, connecting the two branches of Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, with the western terminus of the portage railroad at Johnstown.
On May 31, 1889, a dam on the South Fork holding back a slightly longer than 2 mile reservoir failed, sending a wall of water down the Little Conemaugh at 40 mph (64 km/h) and up to 60 ft (18 m) high, resulting in the loss of over 2,200 lives in one of the worst disasters in U.S. history—the Johnstown Flood.
Read more about this topic: Little Conemaugh River
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“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
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—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)