DISASTER TOURISM AND THE MELODRAMA OF AUTHENTICITY: REVISITING THE 1889 JOHNSTOWN FLOOD

Abstract

The Johnstown Flood of 1889 offers an opportunity to examine late nineteenth-century attitudes about tourism and tragedy. The events leading up to the devastating dam break are well known, and the story has recently gained currency as the events leading up to New Orleans' levee breaks during Katrina are dissected. However, some of the events after Johnstown's disaster have not been discussed as thoroughly: as soon as they were able, visitors came to Johnstown to see the wreckage. Rubbernecking tourists flocked toward the scene of disaster (instead of away from it) and seemed to get a shivery pleasure from seeing a city turned into a morgue. Furthermore, newspapermen and photographers conveyed the graphic lessons of Johnstown to a wider and equally eager audience of armchair disaster tourists. By examining the various touristic practices (including souvenir hunting, photography, and the collecting of aftermath pictures) this essay shows how Johnstown's rubberneckers reframed actual disaster in the rhetoric of leisure. As in the late-nineteenth century flowering of melodrama, the practices of disaster tourism are involved with the thrill of encountering the authentic and the real.