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Concrete retaining walls constructed by the Army Engineering Corp as part of the Johnstown Local Flood Protection Project, Johnstown, PA, circa 1945.
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Black and white photograph of town and flood walls.

Credit: Courtesy of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association, http://www.jaha.org/

After the Great Flood of 1936, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1936, which funded flood control projects on Pennsylvania's rivers. In Johnstown, the Army Corps of Engineers between 1938 and 1943 constructed what was then the nation's largest flood-control system. To deepen and realign the channels of the Stonycreek and Little Conemaugh Rivers, the Corps excavated three million cubic yards of earth and rock, and built nine miles of concrete side slopes. Elsewhere in Pennsylvania the Corps constructed a levee system along the Wilkes-Barre/Kingston stretch of the Susquehanna River, and the Kinzua Dam on the Upper Allegheny.

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