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below the top of the dam. From there the broad surface of the lake, gleaming in the sunlight, swept off down the valley until it disappeared behind a wooded ridge in the distance.
    Along the eastern shore, to the left, were the hayfields and orchards of the Unger farm, neatly framed with split-rail fences. Beyond that was what was known as Sheep’s Head Point, a grassy knoll that jutted out into the lake. Then there were one, two, three ridges, and the water turned in behind them, out of sight, running, so it seemed, clear to the hazy blue horizon off to the south.
    At the western end of the dam the road swung on through the woods, never far from the water, for another mile or so, to the main grounds of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which, seen from the dam, looked like a colorful string of doll houses against the distant shore line.
    From the dam to the club, across the water, was about a mile. Except for a few small coves, the narrowest part of the lake was at the dam, but there was one spot, on down past the club, where an east-west line across the water was nearly a mile. A hike the whole way around the shore was five miles.
    When the water was up in the spring, the lake covered about 450 acres and was close to seventy feet deep in places. The claim, in 1889, was that it was the largest man-made lake in the country, which it was not. But even so, as one man in Johnstown often told his children, it was “a mighty body of water to be up there on the mountain.”
    The difference in elevation between the top of the dam and the city of Johnstown at the stone bridge was about 450 feet, and the distance from the dam to that point, by way of the river valley, was just under fifteen miles. Estimates are that the water of Lake Conemaugh weighed about 20 million tons.
    The water came from half a dozen streams and little creeks that rushed down from Blue Knob and Allegheny Mountain, draining some sixty square miles. There was Rorabaugh Creek, Toppers Run, Yellow Run, Bottle Run, Muddy Run, South Fork Creek, and one or two others which seem never to have been named officially. South Fork Creek and Muddy Run were the biggest of them, but South Fork Creek was at least twice the size of the others. Even in midsummer it was a good twenty feet across. Like the others it was shallow, ice-cold, very swift, and just about a perfect place for trout fishing.
    In South Fork there were scores of people who had been out on the dam and had seen the view. There were others who knew even more about the club and the goings on there because they worked on the grounds, tending lawns or waiting on tables at the clubhouse. But for everyone else the place was largely a mystery. It was all private property, and as the club managers had made quite clear on more than one occasion, uninvited guests were definitely not welcome.
    The club had been organized in Pittsburgh in 1879. It owned the dam, the lake, and about 160 acres besides. By 1889 sixteen cottages had been built along the lake, as well as boathouses and stables. The cottages were set out in an orderly line among the trees, not very far apart, and only a short way back from the water. They looked far too substantial really to be called “cottages.” Nearly every one of them was three stories tall, with high ceilings, long windows, a deep porch downstairs, and, often as not, another little porch or two upstairs tucked under sharp-peaked roofs. The Lippincott house with its two sweeping front porches, one set on top of the other, and its fancy jigsaw trim, looked like a Mississippi riverboat. The Moorhead house was Queen Anne style, which was “all the rage” then; it had seventeen rooms and a round tower at one end with tinted glass windows. And the Philander Knox house, next door, was not much smaller.
    But even the largest of them was dwarfed by the clubhouse. It had enough windows and more than enough porch for ten houses. There were forty-seven rooms inside. During the season most