Once the site of a 450-acre lake, Johnstown Flood National Memorial is now an empty lakebed bordered by rolling hills, farmlands and towns. Woodlands, wet meadows, managed fields, and the South Fork of the Little Conemaugh River make up the landscape today. As a memorial the pastoral setting is appropriate, but stands in contrast to the tumultuous nature of what the landscape must have been that fateful day in 1889 when the dam burst.