Johnstown Flood | Prepare for the Worst | 5
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I'm Mike Corey, and this is Against the Odds. We've been telling you about the story of the Johnstown flood, which destroyed the city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania on May 31st, 1889. Now imagine what it would have been like to work as a telegraph operator for the Pennsylvania Railroad that day. You get notice of a potential disaster at the nearby South Fork Dam. There's concern about causing panic, and there have been false alarms before.

But you relay the message anyway. My guest today is Doug Bosley. He's a park ranger at the Johnstown Flood National Memorial. And that telegraph operator was Doug's great-great-grandfather. Our conversation is coming up next.

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Doug Bosley, welcome to Against the Odds. Happy to be here. Thank you, Mike. So, Doug, you live in Johnstown, right? Yes, I do. I was born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Born and raised. I would love if we could paint the picture for our listeners about the geography of the town. Where is it located and why is this significant in our story?

Johnstown, Pennsylvania sits basically in the bottom of a bowl in the middle of the Allegheny Mountains and a system of streams and rivers has eroded the landscape over tens of thousands of years.

And two rivers come together down in the center of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the Stony Creek River and the Little Connemara River to form the Connemara River. Pretty much every drop of rain that falls in the area eventually ends up at the bottom of that bowl where Johnstown is located.

And it's always been prone to flooding because of that. So then the nature of a valley is that it funnels water down into the base. Like you said, it's almost like a bowl. So there was the big flood in 1889, but there's been many other floods since then. Can you give us a bit of a rundown of how often it floods?

Johnstown has flooded quite a bit over the years. The three major floods, 89, 1936, 1977, but there were many smaller floods just because of Johnstown's location and everything built right next to the rivers. Most of the people living right next to the rivers, most of the property development right next to the rivers and everything.

Every drop of water that falls in the area eventually makes its way to the bottom of that bowl where the main part of Johnstown is located. And it's caused quite a bit of a mess over the years. Yeah, especially in 1889 when there was the big flood that we told in the podcast. Can we paint the picture of Johnstown? What was it like back in 1889? And how many people lived in Johnstown and the other towns in the area? Yeah.

Johnstown had around 30,000 residents, including Johnstown itself and the smaller towns and villages up and down the valley. South Fork, not too far from where the flood started. Mineral Point downriver from that, just a small railroad town. East Connemaw, a fairly large railroad town. Woodvale.

probably one of Johnstown's nicest suburbs. Most of the people in Johnstown worked for the Cambria Iron Company, by far the largest employer in the area. Pittsburgh by then had overall become the largest iron and steel maker in the country, but the Cambria Iron Company was still the largest single mill in the United States. And Johnstown pretty much lived and died with the Cambria Iron Company and those supporting industries, including the railroad industry,

coal mines or associated businesses.

And about, what, like 14 miles above the city of Johnstown, there was a dam. And can you explain why that was there? Yes, 14 miles away from Johnstown, the South Fork Dam. And the South Fork Dam was originally built as part of the Pennsylvania Canal System between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. And the state of Pennsylvania built this system, built the South Fork Dam, and it was there to supply extra water in the dry summers for this canal system.

Can you tell us a bit about how the dam was built? The South Fork Dam was an earthen dam, so it was built of layers of earth and rock, rock put on the outside to prevent erosion. The very bottom of the dam had five large pipes originally, and then there were valves in those pipes that could be opened to let water out of the reservoir behind the dam and then flow down river and into the canal in Johnstown. So,

So it was an earthen dam. It did have a spillway for excess water to go out around the dam in case of an emergency. But even from the very beginning, that spillway wasn't quite big enough to carry off the water from a very large storm.

One interesting part of this whole story is that this dam was purchased by the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. It was owned by some of the richest people around, right? It was meant to serve the Musks and the Bezos, these big wig industrialists who had a ton of money. They had purchased this dam and the lake to build this club, correct? That is correct. The canal went out of business in the 1850s, and that dam and reservoir had been pretty much abandoned.

had actually broken one time in 1862. So by the 1870s, it was a broken dam with a big hole in the middle sitting there when the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club purchased the entire property. They were this group of wealthy Pittsburgh industrialists mainly associated with the steel industry and

This particular group of people, they were very interested in the outdoors and they wanted their own private resort where they could enjoy the outdoors, the fishing, hunting, boating. And they purchased that old broken dam and made a few repairs to it so that it could hold water again. Maybe not the best engineered repairs.

But they did repair it so the lake would form once again behind it, which they called Lake Connemaw. And I guess you can picture it, right? Because Cambria Ironworks was there. Iron was shipped all across the country, building railroads. It was a massive industry. So there was a lot of money.

and a lot of people with money. So why not take this defunct dam, repair it, make a beautiful lake, stock it with fish, and make it this wilderness resort? A bit of a paradise, I guess. The resort was very convenient to Pittsburgh by train. It was only about a 90-minute train ride. So it was

away from all of the smoke and pollution in Pittsburgh, from all of the steel mills, but still close enough that they could come and go fairly quickly. Along one shoreline of Lake Connemaw, about a mile up the lake from the dam was where most of the development was. There was a large clubhouse building, which was basically their hotel, and strung along the shoreline on either side of the clubhouse. There ended up being 16 private cottages built throughout the 1880s. And

Sometimes people imagine them coming here because of the people that they were. Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, those types of people, the richest of the rich that they were going there to conduct business. But they were pretty much going there to get away from all of that and enjoy the outdoors. And when they purchased that dam, like we mentioned, they had made some changes. And those changes actually played a key role in what happened next. Can we go over some specifics of what they did to change the dam?

Quite a few changes had been made to the dam. One of them was made right before they took ownership. There was an intervening owner of the property, a man named John Riley, and those pipes that I had mentioned earlier that were in the base of the dam to allow water to be let out to feed the canal.

Those pipes were quite a bit of cast iron and that previous owner had those pipes removed and sold for scrap. So those pipes had been taken out not long before the club bought the property in 1879. So first mistake they made was that they didn't put the pipes back in and they simply just began filling the hole and there was no

trained engineer involved with the reconstruction of the dam, with the refilling of that hole. And instead of being those carefully engineered, packed layers of earth and rock, how the dam was originally built, the club pretty much just dumped in

dirt and rock and whatever else material they could find to fill that giant hole so that was another mistake that the hole wasn't filled properly and over time that material that they dumped in there settled and created a dip in the center of the dam yeah i guess it's just like a dam's a dam pile some stuff up it'll stop the water but without really much uh foresight as to what could happen just fill the hole back up and they didn't put too much thought into that

And you have a direct connection to the event, as we mentioned in the introduction. So it was your great-great-grandfather that was a telegraph operator at Mineral Point, yeah? Yeah, my great-great-grandfather, William H. Pickerel, worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad in Mineral Point. He was born in Illinois, and as a young man, he went to school to learn telegraphy and become a railroad telegrapher and

and he got a job with the Pennsylvania Railroad in the mid-1870s as a telegraph operator and ended up spending most of his career from the 1870s to around 1920 in Mineral Point at that particular telegraph office. Seen maybe a half dozen photographs of him. All but one are from when he was older, probably in his 50s, 60s, 70s. He did have fairly dark hair and then some of them it is

getting quite gray. He always looks very serious. How much did he think about the flood? It's almost in his eyes when you look at these photos that that was never far from his mind in the years after the flood. I see that when I look at photographs of him that he's almost always thinking about it.

Telegraphers, not a word you hear very often these days. Can we just refresh my memory and our listeners' memory? What exactly a telegraph operator would do back then? So for the railroad, it's the electric telegraph. So they are using an electrical system called

And then the telegraph key that you're using your hand or fingers to tap out Morse code and send messages. And where the railroad was concerned, their main reason for sending the messages was the control of trains on the railroad tracks. So they didn't run into each other. And so they'd be there with a singular button. And then hearing the beeps back and then trying to translate that as quickly as possible. So trains don't collide, basically. Correct. They would control the railroad signal.

that was right next to that particular telegraph office. And whether it was, you know, to stop the train or let the train go, let the train reduce speed, working for the Pennsylvania Railroad like that, they would have been mainly concerned with railroad business. And did your great-great-grandfather describe or do you know what it was like the morning of the flood? In July of 1889, the Pennsylvania Railroad, who had quite a few employees involved one way or another in the flood that day,

The railroad interviewed all of their employees that were associated with the flood, including my great-great-grandfather. And he had reported coming on duty around 7 a.m. that it had been raining all night. It was still raining fairly hard that morning. The railroad tracks and the telegraph office in Mineral Point were right next to the Little Connemaw River. And he said that the water was about bank full.

So it was pretty close to overflowing the river just from the rainstorm. So the flood had already started even before the South Fork Dam broke. I'm speaking with park ranger Doug Bosley about the 1889 Johnstown flood. We'll take a quick break and then we'll talk about what happened when the dam broke.

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Head over to Symbiotica.com and use code ODDS for 20% off and free shipping on your subscription order. I had seen there was an uncommon event that happened where there was a storm coming from the south and a storm coming from the north, and they kind of collided and paused together, causing an excessive amount of rainfall in that area during that time. When did the people at South Fork Dam realize that they had a problem? They realized they had a problem fairly early that morning of May 31st.

The club's president, a man named Elias Unger, was on site.

along with the club's resident engineer. They had been making some improvements to the property, so they had an engineer on site. They didn't have an engineer when they were rebuilding the dam, but they had an engineer on site that day working on this project. But when everybody had woken up that morning and they knew it had rained all night, some people said it was raining so hard it woke them up in the middle of the night. And so the first thing everybody did was take a look at the lake. And they said about how full the lake was and

They had never seen the water that high before. And so they started looking into it more and quickly discovered that the water was very quickly inching up the face of the dam and it didn't stop raining or if something wasn't done.

They were worried very early on that the water could run over the top of the dam. And it was something like six or eight inches of rain overnight or something, right? Yes, six to eight inches. It depended on where you were in the area. Some places a little bit less than that, some a little bit more than that. Right around the area of the club, it was around eight inches of rain near the South Fork Dam. Yeah, which is incredible, all funneled down into the valley. If you get an inch of rain...

or two inches, that can cause at least some minor flooding. So yeah, imagine what six or eight inches of rain will do. I think we know.

And this is a time before cell phones and social media. So back in that time, there was the telegraph like we spoke about. But how did word get around about there could be a problem? It wasn't going to be easy. 14 miles from the dam to the nearest population center of Johnstown. There were telephones in the area in 1889. The clubhouse, the club's hotel actually had a telephone, but it wasn't hooked up yet for the season. They only used it during the busy summer season.

And it only rang as far as the train station in the town of South Fork, which was two miles away, basically to communicate traffic.

back and forth when club members were coming and going from the train station to the club. So they needed to get to South Fork, the town of South Fork, two miles away to the train station there where there was a telegraph office. And once you have the telegraph involved, it's pretty much instantaneous communication with wherever you want to send that message. So that was the plan when things were looking really bad.

Around lunchtime, around noon on May 31st, the club had decided they need to warn the people down the valley, especially as far as Johnstown, because the water was pretty much ready to run over the top of the dam around 12 o'clock.

And did your great-great-grandfather have a role in warning people? Yes, he was involved in the process that day between South Fork and then his was the next office down river or down the railroad in Mineral Point a few miles away. And so Mr. Pickerel was in the middle, helped craft one of the messages and was also a little more heavily involved because there were problems with the telegraph system that day because of the storm and the electricity was cutting out.

whether it was a short in the wires or something like that. So it wasn't always functioning west of his office towards Johnstown. And two of three messages that were sent that day had to be carried on foot for part of the journey of that message because the telegraph didn't have an open line the whole way to Johnstown. By the time of the third message, things had sort of corrected themselves and there was a full telegraph connection between South Fork and Johnstown, but only for that third message.

Man, now it's just a tweet. It's crazy to think how fast we've come to the point we are today. You had mentioned that message was crafted, yeah? Do we know what these messages said?

Yes, most of the copies of the messages were lost in the flood, but during that testimony that the Pennsylvania Railroad took in July of 1889, they reconstructed those three messages, so we know pretty much what they said. What was it? The first message said, South Fork Dam liable to break. Notify the people of Johnstown to prepare for the worst. And the second one was just worded slightly different. It said, the water in Lake Dam is running over the center and west side and is becoming dangerous.

And the third one said, the dam is becoming dangerous and may possibly go. Which puts the telegraphers, is that right? The telegraphers? Yes. Which puts the telegraphers in a difficult position because there had been many rumors for years about the dam and it wasn't stable and there had been some leaks and break 25 years earlier, but it wasn't serious. So if you're going to relay a message that's

basically prepare for the worst. No, literally, because that's what it said. I can see why there would be hesitation because that would cause panic, right? When the first message was being sent, there was concern that, you know, what if this is just one of those rumors that people have been hearing for years that the dam could break? And this message is sent. It's not true. And it gets everybody in a panic. The employees of the railroad didn't want to get in trouble for causing panic. The railroad didn't want to get in trouble. But they decided, though, that

It sounds serious enough that they had better send it just to be safe. And my great-great-grandfather said that it was a thing that there oughtn't to be risks taken on.

And when that message got out, what did the people do? Pretty much nothing. When the first message was received in Johnstown in the very early afternoon and employees in the train station didn't believe it because they had heard similar things before and they didn't spread the word beyond the train station. Like a fire drill or something, right? It comes up so many times. It's like, ah, probably not anything serious, right? So it's raining and we're hearing this again, just like the other times. So they...

Nobody spread the warning beyond the train station. And that's what happened when the second message came in. Also, maybe an hour later, nobody believed it and nobody spread the warning beyond the station. The one employee at the telegraph office in Johnstown, a man named Frank Deckert, he survived. He said after

If he would have actually believed those, he would have done something about it because his family lived like a block from the train station and he didn't even tell them. He really didn't think anything of it. Thought it was just same rumors that they had heard before throughout the 1880s anytime it rained.

Well, they would know soon enough. And those first eyewitness reports when the flood was coming towards them, what did they say? Most of those eyewitness reports said that they didn't see water. People didn't see water when things were first coming. The flood wave had picked up debris, you name it. It was picking it up along the way. Railroad tracks, trees, houses, fences, bridges. So a lot of times people didn't know what they were seeing. They just saw this

sort of rolling ball of debris being pushed ahead of the flood wave. And that third telegraph message that was received in Johnstown, the people actually started spreading that one because they thought, wow, we haven't received three messages like that so close together before. Maybe there's something to this. So they tried their best to spread the warning through Johnstown, but people, even if they did get the message, the water in the streets was so high that you couldn't get out of your house.

So you're kind of stranded there and you got the warning, but nothing you could do. So some people by then knew that the worst was coming, but pretty much could just watch it as it was coming at them through the neighborhoods of Johnstown, this rolling mass of debris that depending on where you were, it could be 20, 30 or more feet high. Yeah. And I think moving at about 40 miles per hour or something crazy like that, right? Anywhere from 20 to 40 miles an hour or more, depending on the

what part of the valley it was passing through, how narrow it was, how wide it was, what sort of obstructions were in the way. And when the dam broke around three o'clock that afternoon, it took about an hour for that water to make its way down the valley to Johnstown, picking up that debris. So it took about an hour to go 14 miles. So it wasn't always speeding along. It slowed down to a stop actually twice along the way, but then other times going up to 40 miles an hour.

But what do you do, right? You look out your window, you see a wave of tracks and buildings and railroad cars, just you would be so confused. And then at that point, it would be too late. Like, where do you go? What do you do? You run into your home, but your home can get taken away. So what did people try to do to survive at that point? Or was it already too late?

For the most part, it was too late for a lot of them, but a lot of people, they would hear the flood coming first before they even saw it. Just hear this deafening roar of this debris smashing everything in its path.

And once people heard that, they knew what it was before they even saw anything. And if you're in your house, you can't get out because there's already flooding from just the rivers overflowing from the rain. And a lot of people would just start running up as high as they can get in whatever house or building that they're in. Were most of the houses wood or most were stone? And the people who were trying to save themselves, what exactly were they doing?

There was a mix of frame, wood frame structures and either stone or especially brick buildings in Johnstown. A lot of people actually, if they had the chance, they went to some of those masonry buildings thinking that they would be stronger.

And that actually ended up being a mistake. They just crumbled to nothing when the flood wave hit. In a lot of cases, the wooden buildings would be ripped off their foundations, but then they would start floating. So as people were trying to run upstairs or run up to the attic and whatever building that they were in, that would save them in some cases. And they would ride in that building or on that building. But then a lot of cases, it would smash into something else and break up and they would

jump onto another piece of debris, there another roof that was floating by or just whatever object was floating by. It was a steamer trunk, a mattress, a tree. Then there's a lot of stories of people on multiple things as one thing would sink, they'd jump on something else.

and just try to stay on top as that rush of water is carrying them across the valley. Sounds like a horrible game of chicken where you're rotting on top of your house, wondering if your house will smash the thing it hits or it'll smash you and you got to pick and jump. And it just sounds horrific, man. Do you jump on that roof that you see over there? It might look better than what you're on, but is that stable? And people were seeing

other people going by on a roof or another piece of debris and then disappear. A house collapses on top of them, a chimney topples over on top of somebody, and you're hoping that you're not that next person to go under or something topple onto you. Do you try to swim for it? Do you maybe see something off to the side that maybe looks a little more substantial, or do you just stay where you are and ride it out? And this is happening hundreds of times over throughout the valley, all in a span of just a few minutes. Yeah.

Right. And what's your great-great-grandfather's story? He was in his office, and it wasn't too long after that third message had been passed down the valley. And he said in his testimony he heard something first before he saw the water. And he looked out of the windows of his telegraph office and saw a sudden increase in the level of the water in the river, this sudden extra surge.

And he turned around and actually took the time to grab his coat and hat before he went outside. And as he was doing that, the level of the water increased even more. There was even more of a surge. And he noticed a house floating down the river on this surge of water and that there was a man on the roof of that house. And as he got closer, he recognized that it was his neighbor from Mineral Point. Oh, no. So that'll stop you in your tracks. And the man was shouting to him that,

The town had been washed away and his family washed away and all drowned. And my great-great-grandfather shouted back to him, do you know anything about my family? And the guy said to him, I think they're all drowned. And Pickerel, my great-great-grandfather, kind of froze, but then collected his wits and got out of the tower fairly quickly, crossed the railroad tracks and started climbing up the hillside just as the water started passing through and sort of just...

probably seconds away from getting swept downriver by the flood wave. His telegraph office was toppled over.

carried partway down along the railroad tracks. His neighbor that was on the roof of the house, the house smashed into the riverbank and the neighbor got thrown up into a tree, but he did survive. And he eventually made his way up onto the hillside where my great-great-grandfather was. So it was just seconds away from being killed. And I definitely wouldn't be here doing this podcast if that had happened. Yeah.

I was going to say, we're speaking. So some of his family did survive then? Yes, he assumed that they were killed and the family all survived. His wife and several kids survived and they assumed that he had been killed because the telegraph office and the railroad was on the opposite side of the river from the town. And there was no way, all the bridges had been washed away. So there was no way to get back and forth to see what was really true. And they each for a few days thought that everybody in the family had died.

Yeah, I can't imagine a darker hell to see a whole city destroyed, a whole valley destroyed, and then not knowing if your wife and your children are alive or dead. It's suspecting they're dead, but not never really knowing. Yeah, that is one family that had a happy ending, but it was not the case for hundreds of families up and down the valley. What was the death toll? Do they know? The best number that they've arrived at is 2,209. It's probably more than that.

but that was the number that was come up with within a few years after the flood just comparing who had been here and who isn't here anymore so there's a lot of photos of that day and when you look at those what do you see what do you feel several hundred photographers came into johnstown in the days weeks months after the flood and i've been looking at these photographs for decades as part of my job and then just from growing up in the johnstown area

They still amaze me every time I look at them, whether it's a photograph I've seen a hundred times or one that I've come across that I've never seen before. Just the amount of total destruction that took place. This fairly sizable small city, sections of it are completely gone. What is left is in ruin, debris everywhere. Some of the photos have bodies in the images, dead horses.

It's hard to make heads or tails of what you're looking at, even if you're familiar with the Johnstown area. It's hard to tell exactly what neighborhood that was, unless you compare the hillside in the background to what you're familiar with. Some of the photos just leave you speechless. After another quick break, we'll hear about the aftermath of the Johnstown flood and then Park Ranger Doug's own flood story.

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After the flood, were people able to rebuild fairly quickly or was everything just ground to a halt for a long time? The people that had survived that day and the next day on June 1st started helping one another. And Johnstowners originally wanted just to help themselves. The idea was we'll take care of it. But they quickly saw that it was more than they could handle and

outside help came in and then beginning to clean up the mess. Acres and acres and acres of wreckage all over the Johnstown area. And a lot of that was blocking the channels of the rivers. And there was a worry that if another rainstorm comes along, it's going to flood again because the water can't drain out of Johnstown. So they really made an effort to get that debris cleaned up. And by

maybe two or three years after the flood, it was very hard to tell that anything bad had happened in Johnstown. We had spoken about how there's over 2,000 people who died during the flood, and you work at the National Memorial. Can you tell us a bit about when it was made and what's it like to work there? Johnstown Flood National Memorial was created as a unit of the National Park Service by Congress in 2009.

1964 would have been the 75th anniversary of the flood. The property where the remains of the dam, which had survived until then, was purchased by the United States government to create a memorial to remember the lives lost in the Great Johnstown Flood. One of the largest ways we do that every year is on the anniversary of the flood. We put out 2,209

luminaria bags with a candle in and light the candle the evening of May 31st. So one to represent each victim of the flood is placed on the remains of the dam and throughout the memorial that evening of May 31st every year. Well, let's turn the spotlight on to your past a little bit, because in July 1977, you were five years old and

And you were living in Johnstown and it had been raining a lot and there was another flood. Can you tell us about that story? Late in the day of July 19th and then into July 20th, a very large rainstorm stalled over the area and it rained even more than it did in 1889 in Johnstown. There was just under a foot of rain in less than 24 hours in Johnstown, like 11 point some inches rain.

And Johnstown very quickly flooded in the middle of the night. There was actually another fairly large dam that broke, but thankfully it was slightly down river from the main part of Johnstown. It killed over half of the 85 people that ended up being killed in that flood. I think there were around a dozen people killed in my neighborhood in Johnstown.

There were some kids that I would have ended up going to elementary school with. I was about to start kindergarten that year, and some of those kids had lost their lives in the flood. Do you have any snapshots in your brain, memories of the moments? I still have very, very vivid memories of the flood, even though I was only five years old at the time. There was a lot of damage, a lot of floodwater.

pretty much right up to one or two houses from my house. The street that I lived on had a fairly steep grade to it. So the water came partway up the street and then turned and went down an alley beside my house. So my house didn't receive any direct damage.

But I woke up the morning of July 20th. Something woke me up, loud noise or something, and looked out my window and I saw a big helicopter really close to my house. And I thought, oh, this is kind of neat. What's this big helicopter doing? It was army green. It looked like an army helicopter. And then there was a line going down and I kind of followed that line down to the ground and I noticed

They were actually trying to pull people out of the water and was suddenly as a five-year-old, that's not what I expected to see that morning became a little bit upset. Yeah. Ran downstairs to ask my parents or my older brother, what's going on here? And nobody was there.

But then I heard voices and hear my whole family was out on the porch watching the floodwaters come down the street. I still have memories looking up my street and where my street had been was now a river. And I still have very vivid memories of walking around my neighborhood, other neighborhoods in the Johnstown area, and just seeing all the mud everywhere, rocks and smashed cars and

destroyed houses and trees. And in my mind, I can picture it like it happened a few weeks ago or last summer or something. I just never forget all of those visions I have in my head from experiencing that pretty much firsthand. I imagine. And five is the ripe age for some emotional dents when you witness something like that. Have the events that day affected you at all going forward, like in your adult life?

Sometimes when it rains really hard, that kind of takes me back to that day. I still live in the same neighborhood that I lived in at the time of the flood. And just when I go for a walk through the neighborhood, I can't help but envision what it looked like back then. I can like see the mud and the destroyed houses. And that's where that red car was that I remember that was all smashed up. I remember finding a

a mud-covered matchbox car over on this street that I think I probably still have somewhere. The memories never go away, and it's weird how sometimes things will make me think of the flood, whether it's a smell or something somebody says, and it'll just take me right back to that day. Well, Ranger Doug Bosley, thank you so much for talking to me today on Against the Odds. I was happy to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

This is the fifth and final episode of our series, Johnstown Flood. Thank you so much to our guest, Park Ranger Doug Bosley. To learn more about the Johnstown Flood, visit the Johnstown Flood National Memorial in Pennsylvania or go to their website. I'm your host, Mike Corey. This episode was produced by Pauly Stryker, senior produced by Peter Arcuni. Audio engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Coordinating producer is Desi Blaylock.

Series produced by Emily Frost and Alita Rosansky. Managing producer is Matt Gant. Senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr. Senior producers are Andy Herman and Rachel Matlow. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer-Beckman, Stephanie Jens, and Marshall Louis for Wondery.

My name is Georgia King and I am thrilled to be the host of And Away We Go, a brand new travel podcast on Wondery Plus, where we'll be whisked away on immersive adventures all around the world. Where we go, what we do, what we eat,

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feel about a spot of sugaring off with Emily Hampshire in Montreal. And Away We Go will immerse you in some of the wonders of the world. We're going to be seeing some yellows and vibrant oranges. And the shoes clicking against the cobblestone. If you're looking to get somebody in the mood, have them look at the Chicago skyline. You can listen to And Away We Go exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Georgia, do you know what joy sounds like? I think I'm hearing it right now.