Cache la Poudre River

Near the bend in the Poudre, Robert Strauss’ tenants were trying to convince him to leave, but he refused, saying he had lived by the river for forty years and knew how to survive a flood. He would attempt to leave later as the waters rose, spending the night knee deep in water and dying from exposure the next morning after being rescued. (Robert was one of only two casualties.) His neighbor, Will Lamb, also dismissed the warnings, but retreated with his wife and son to their hayloft for the night as the waters rose, now including the force of the Box Elder Creek.

Flood Viewed from the railroad tracks looking at Strauss Cabin in Fort Collins. Image Credit: Archive at Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, [H01961].

In Windsor, “…the flood made a general interchange of property, real and personal, that was not destroyed.” For example, “Melvin Kyger, eight miles from Greeley counted elven houses that floated past his house within an hour and twenty minutes.” William Jones lost 60 of his chickens and all 100 of his turkey eggs but did manage to save his carpets (whew).

Because the landscape levels out, the flood traveled slower through the Timnath and Windsor areas, giving the people downriver more time to prepare and move to higher ground. In fact, the flood didn’t even reach Greeley until the wee hours of the next morning (May 21^st) but rose from four to fifteen feet. Like their neighbors in Fort Collins and Windsor, the people of Greeley watched from the edges of the much wider Poudre, as the forceful water swept away bridges, houses, chickens on haystacks, and destroyed the cabbage and onion crops. As the Greeley Tribune later observed, “Thousands of people watched the water from every vantage point, and it really looked more like a holiday for the town than a calamity that was destroying thousands of dollars worth of crops.” (May 26, 1904)

By May 22^nd, the flood had moved on, leaving feet of mud and destruction in its path. As the Larimer County Independent Reported:

A collapsed train track over the flooded Poudre River in Greeley. Image Credit: [H08350] City of Greeley

One of the biggest concerns as the communities looked towards the future was the repairs needed to the irrigation ditches. Ironic that water in abundance destroyed the very systems the agriculture communities relied on for water in scarcity, but the reality that few headgates remained, and ditches were filled with mud cast a very real reality that irrigation, and therefore a harvest, would be impossible. Though the system did need thousands of dollars of repairs it was not as bad as first anticipated and there was a harvest in 1904.

Apart from the irrigation damage, there was only one standing (or safe) bridge between Greeley and Bellvue and hundreds of families had lost their homes (including 150 of the German from Russian immigrant families in Fort Collins). In the wake of devastation, Will Lamb, the farmer from Timnath who had spent the night in a hayloft, reminded the communities that sometimes humor and gratitude are the most needed in times of crisis:

Floods are not uncommon on the Poudre. The City of Fort Collins is located where it is today due to a flood on the Poudre in 1864 that destroyed the first Camp Collins, originally located closer to Laporte. Residents of the area might remember when the Poudre and Big Thompson flooded in 2013 or when the Spring Creek flooded in 1997 after torrential rains. But the 1904 storm remains the peak discharge in cfs for the Poudre River. For the people along the Cache la Poudre River, both past and present, water—in abundance and scarcity—continues to be one of our greatest adversities.

A group of people gathered to view the flooded river. Image Credit: [H08408] City of Greeley Musuems

By Heidi Fuhrman, Heritage Interpreter

This year we mark the 120^th anniversary of the 1904 flood on the Cache la Poudre River, or, as the papers called it, “A Great Calamity.” Read on to discover the story of one river, two days, and thousands of “unfortunate victims of cruel circumstances.”

May 20^th, 1904 began like any other morning along the Cache la Poudre River. Well, perhaps not like any morning—dark storm clouds lay low over the foothills and there were reports that it was raining up-river, and rain in Colorado is unusual—but for the residents of the lower Poudre’s communities the day began like any other.

Down near Laporte Mrs. J.L. Armstrong fed her children breakfast before shooing them out of the house. In Fort Collins, Chris Mason kissed his wife goodbye before strolling over the Poudre to the new dance pavilion he owned on the north bank, pausing to admire the new piano he’d just installed. Down the road, a group of Germans from Russia walked from the immigrant neighborhood to the new Fort Collins Great Western Sugar factory to put in a day’s labor turning beets to sugar.

Further down, at the bend of the Poudre before it wound down through Timnath, Robert Strauss looked out from the cabin he’d built in 1860 on morning light hitting the river. A few miles downriver his neighbor, Will Lamb, told their other neighbor yet again that he couldn’t borrow the hay rake.

Destroyed train tracks and flooded river in Fort Collins. Image Credit: Archive at Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, [H03229].

In Windsor, William Jones let his flock of chickens and turkeys out before collecting a hundred eggs. And down in Greeley, the farmers near the river bottoms surveyed their fields and were grateful the early onion and cabbage crops were growing well, stretching before turning to finish putting in the last of the beets.

Further up-river, however, all was not normal. High in the Poudre Canyon, and in the tributary streams and canyons that feed the Poudre River, rain was falling. Not just a gentle sprinkle, a deluge. On a landscape that sees an average of fourteen inches of annual precipitation, three to eight inches of rain fell within 24 hours (that’s 20-57% of the annual). The mountain streams and Poudre, already swollen from spring snowmelt, couldn’t contain the water. Unbeknownst to the communities below, Boxelder Creek, a tributary of the Poudre, ordinarily a few feet wide was swiftly growing to a raging river from bluff to bluff, while the Poudre itself was deepening and widening as the North Fork, up in the canyon, dumped its gallons into the already overwhelming torrent.

At about 4 o’clock in the afternoon on May 20, 1904, a wall of water ten to twelve feet high burst through the bottom of the Poudre Canyon a few miles above Laporte, quickly spreading out to more than a mile wide. The Armstrong family, found themselves in the midst of the river, cut off from help by walls of water, scrambling to the top of their home for shelter like the rest of their neighbors in Bellvue and Laporte as the river swept away their buildings, gardens, and bridges. Someone managed to phone Fort Collins before the lines were swept aside, alerting the community that a flood was quickly heading their way.

The view looking at College Avenue from the sugar mill during the flood. Image Credit: Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, [Z-1813].

An hour later, at five o’clock, the flood hit Fort Collins. At four o’clock the river was flowing about 900 cubic feet per second, by six o’clock it was flowing at least 30,000 cubic feet per second (afterwards the USGS commissioner estimated it was closer to 40,000cfs, the yearly average today is around 300cfs). As the water commissioner later wrote in the USGS report, “The flood was down …almost before anyone could remove anything out of the way, and had it been in the night there would probably have been a great loss of life as well as property.”

Luckily for the residents of Fort Collins it wasn’t night, but as the newspaper reported, “…scores of families were driven from their homes in great haste, often compelled to wade through muddy water waist deep to places of safety. Nearly all their belongings, except what they had on their backs at the moment, were left to become the playthings of the rolling, surging flood.” (Larimer County Independent May 25, 1904.)

Rolling and surging it was. Moving houses from their foundations or sweeping away the lighter ones, wiping out gardens and fields, and destroying all but two bridges between the canyon and Greeley. Steel or wood, nothing could stand against the flood water. Chris Mason stood on the north bank near the river—now over a mile wide and running down College Ave five feet deep—with thousands of other residents, watching the “work of destruction” and the dance pavilion, piano and all, collapse and be swept away, taking out the railroad bridge. Across the river his wife, with their children, sought refuge on the second floor of their home, “with fear and trembling,” while through the night a river up to the windowsills swept through the lower level. The next morning their neighbor, Jim Clayton, swam out and rescued them one by one although he refused a final trip to rescue the family chicken.

The sugar factory was surrounded by feet of water and the workers found themselves trapped for the night. Thousands of pounds of sugar escaped being ruined by only six inches. Meanwhile, their families, watched as the entire immigrant neighborhood (now the neighborhoods of Buckingham & Andersonville) was swept away.

Flood damage at Buckingham Place which was the Great Western Sugar Factory housing for the German-Russian beet workers located in Lincoln St. between Willow and Lemay. Image Credit: Archive at Fort Collins Museum of Discovery. [H02438]

By seven o’clock the height of the flood swept through Fort Collins (although it would take hours to recede) but was only just reaching the communities downstream …

Read Part 2 for the rest of the stories of Robert Strauss, Will Lamb, William Jones, and the other residents downriver.