This section of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association Web site gives you more information about JAHA as an organization, and how you can be a part of what we do. Choose from the navigation bar to the left to learn more.

JAHA History
The Johnstown Area Heritage Association (JAHA) was founded in 1971 as a non-profit educational organization. Then called the Johnstown Flood Museum Association, its foremost mission was to preserve and interpret the story of the 1889 flood. The organization has since developed into one of the most dynamic heritage associations in the state. In 1973, it opened the Johnstown Flood Museum in the former Cambria (Carnegie) Library building. In 1989, the organization achieved its long-range goal of presenting a high quality visitor experience on the theme of the Johnstown Flood when it reopened the Johnstown Flood Museum following a $4 million capital investment that included restoration and renovation of its building, and installation of a new permanent exhibition and a new film. The Museum's film on the Johnstown Flood won the 1989 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.
In 1990, the Johnstown Area Heritage Association expanded the scope of its programs and collections to include the themes of iron and steel making, immigration and ethnicity. Also in 1990, JAHA successfully recruited the National Folk Festival to Johnstown in cooperation with state and city officials, and raised the money necessary to bring the festival here. After the National Folk Festival's 3-year run, JAHA began to produce the event on its own as the AmeriServ Johnstown FolkFest - one of the nation's best free music festivals. In addition, JAHA offers a broad range of cultural and educational programming year-round.
JAHA continues to find new ways to preserve and interpret the nationally significant stories of Johnstown, and to use the community's heritage as the basis for a new cultural tourism industry within the region. In 2001, JAHA opened the first phase of the Frank & Sylvia Pasquerilla Heritage Discovery Center, featuring an interactive permanent exhibition that places the visitor in the role of an immigrant to Johnstown around the turn of the century. In June 2006, JAHA opened the Wagner-Ritter House and Garden, a Cambria City steelworker's residence that was inhabited by three generations of the same family from the 1860s through the 1990s. JAHA recently began construction on the Johnstown Children's Museum in unused portions of the Heritage Discovery Center building. JAHA's future plans include the opening of the 1864 Cambria Blacksmith Shop as a visitor site. Click here for more on JAHA's long-range plans.