(gentle music) - Dark clouds hung low
along the lofty range. When broke the storm,
hell's fury seemed unleashed to wreck and ruin
all the universe. The lightning played
among the giant peaks, and crashing thunder
smote the mountain side. The awful din of elements
at war was echoed from the canyon depths below. Clouds burst asunder
and a deluge came. It was thus that nature in
her maddest mood sent down the raging waters of the flood to scourge the fertile
valleys of the plain. Fair Pueblo man
had builded there, was crushed and maimed,
now prostrate bleeding lies but not for long. The spirit that has
made this wonder city of the west survives, and
men will build with bigger, broader plans to meet the
wrath of nature, unafraid. Walt Drummond. (film reel whirring) - [Narrator] In
early June, 1921, a great flood struck the
city of Pueblo, Colorado. The mighty Arkansas
River joined forces with a volatile Fountain Creek, to deliver a near fatal blow
to this thriving community of immigrants and
blue collar workers. 100 years later, we
remember their stories. - [Announcer] This
program was made possible by the following. The History Colorado
State Historical Fund. - [Announcer] Supporting
projects throughout the state to preserve, protect
and interpret
Colorado's architectural and archeological treasures. History Colorado
State Historical Fund. Create the future,
honor the past. - [Announcer] Pueblo county,
promoting the health, safety, welfare and
quality living environment of Pueblo county
residents and visitors. Encouraging compatible and
sustainable land use development within unincorporated
Pueblo county. Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority. Renewal through perseverance,
preservation and partnership. Celebrating the resilience
of our community since 1959. For more information,
visit Puebloura.org. The city of Pueblo. From outdoor recreation
to cultural traditions. Offering opportunities
for families to explore and create lifelong memories. PB&T Bank. Local people making local
decisions since 1889. And Wilcoxson Wealth Management. With additional funding
provided in memory of Deanna E. La Camera by
Hassel and Marianne Ledbetter. And by members like you. Thank you. With special thanks to
the Denver Public Library, History Colorado and
the Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media. And to these organizations. (soft music) (somber music) - [Narrator] The outpost
known as El Pueblo was founded in 1842 at the
confluence of Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River. Diverse from the
beginning, it drew traders from various countries whose
wives included Native American, Spanish and Mexican women. In 1848, after the
Mexican-American War and the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Arkansas River ceased
to be a national border, but it continued to attract
the world to its banks. - When you cross
the Union Av Bridge and you see those flags
flying over the bridge and over the historic
Arkansas River channel, each of those flags
represents a country that owned this land at
some point in history. Obviously, initially it
was native Americans, and at one point in time,
it was owned by the Spanish. At one point in time, it
was owned by the French. It eventually became the
United States of America. - [Narrator] The
outpost location at the confluence of two rivers was both highly convenient
and incredibly risky. In this semi-arid
high desert ecosystem, even the moderate
seasons are unforgiving, and given to sudden
cataclysmic weather events. So in the mid 19th century, at the base of the
Rocky Mountains, life was difficult
for early explorers, trappers, traders,
and miners here. And in 1869, Pueblo became
home to Charles Goodnight, one of the most iconic
cattlemen in the country and the inventor
of the Chuck wagon; a kitchen on wheels
and prototype for
today's food truck. - We have Goodnight bringing
his cattle drive up here. He established his
headquarters here. One of his barns
still stands today. And so it just, it started
growing from there. But the river
always had its way. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Before the flood, Pueblo was quickly
becoming a modern city. A bustling center of
industry and culture on the southern front
range of Colorado. Incorporated in 1870, Pueblo grew by absorbing
local communities. South Pueblo, Central
Pueblo, and later Bessemer. - Pueblo was more
of a railroad town. There was a meat
packing plant here. So cattle was brought
in from all over. Farmers locally
would truck it in, but a lot of it came in by rail. - [Narrator] By the early 1900s, Pueblo was home to
the largest steel mill west of the Mississippi River. - Was Colorado coal and
iron in the early days. We were known as the
steel city of the west, or the little
Pittsburgh of the west. - When the steel
mill gets there, then it becomes an actual city. 'cause you need lots of people
that work in a steel mill. And you need lots
of people to work in the secondary industries
that serve the steel industry and serve the people
who work there. - [Narrator] Originally
established to
produce steel rails for the Denver and
Rio Grande railroads expanding narrow gauge empire, by 1910, Colorado Fuel and
Iron was the largest employer in Southern Colorado,
accounting for nearly 10% of the entire
Colorado workforce. - One of the reasons why
CF&I was located in Pueblo was, it's in the middle
of the basic materials needed to make steel. Coal from the fields in
Florence and in Trinidad. Iron ore was mined in Orient
in the San Luis Valley. Water was fairly
readily available. And CF&I grew at a
time when railroads were in need of rail,
and railroad fastenings and spike and other
building materials. It kind of all came
together at the same time. - The steel industry really
did change the face of Pueblo. It also created the opportunity for all of the individuals to
come from all over the world. - You had a huge influx of
immigrants in the early 1900s. And my understanding is
you could get free passage to Pueblo from your
country of origin if you agreed to sign on
to work at the steel mill. And so thousands of people
from all over the world basically came to Colorado
with the understanding that they would work
in the steel mill. - There was a lot of industry that a lot of these
immigrants moved here and came to the United States,
but specifically to Pueblo because of the steel mill. And a lot of agriculture
out in the county. So you had a lot of
the Italian families, the Mexican families
that farmed. And so that's why they
were all in Pueblo. That's why we're such a great
melting pot of everything. It's what makes Pueblo
so unique and so special. - Yeah, well, Pueblo was a
real boom town of course, at about that time. It had been ever since
the railroad came about 50 years before the flood. Pueblo had really
been on a roll. Second biggest
city in the state. - [Narrator] With electric
trolleys, paved streets, sewers and horseless carriages, Pueblo was transitioning from
frontier town to modern city. The wealthy class found
sufficient resources to build landmarks, some
of which remain today. The Union Depot
was built in 1890, as was the 1100-seat
Grand Opera House. A new home for city
government, Memorial Hall, was built in 1919
to remember soldiers who perished in World War I. The steel and cattle
industries were enabled by a railroad hub that
connected the region to an expanding Western empire. In 1920, the 48 states
that then made up the United States of America had more than 106
million residents. The state of Colorado accounted for just under one
million of those. And the growing city of Pueblo was home to nearly 50,000. Only 44 years old,
the Centennial State was just beginning
to find its place in the new modern era, just as Pueblo was
defining itself too. (menacing music) Despite their reputation
as hardscrabble settlers, residents of Pueblo
were unprepared for the misfortunes about
to be visited on them. A series of tragic
and deadly events that would precede and
follow the flood of 1921. - If you think about the
historical timeline for this, the First World War
is from 1914 to 1918. Spanish flu pandemic, which
hit Pueblo particularly hard, was in 1918. The flood was 1921. In 1929, they had
the Great Depression. And in 1931, they
had the Dust Bowl. And the resilience
of the community, the resilience of the people, I think is just
really a testament. And keep in mind there
were no stimulus checks. There was no unemployment. The people just decided they were gonna rebuild
their community. - Pueblo before the flood
was a city of juxtapositions. There was this aspiration to be a progressive
era model city, but at the same time,
having a steel mill and having just some
really extreme poverty in different neighborhoods. We start off with this
much more diverse history than a lot of other
cities in Colorado and really in the United States. - I think what's really
unique when you look at the number one and
number two employers, CF&I, and also the
Nuckolls Packing Company, is they're fairly
close to each other. They're within about a mile
and a half of each other. And in between those
two large employers, you'll find all of the
ethnic neighborhoods. From the Slovenians
to Czechoslovakians, to Yugoslavians, to Hungarians,
to Mexicans, to Italians. All of them falling
into their own unique kind of neighborhood
kind of cultural subset. - [Narrator] Colorado
Fuel and Iron and the Nuckolls meat
packing plant needed workers who could stand up to
demanding physical labor. Immigrants from Eastern
and Southern Europe streamed into the country, and made their way to Pueblo,
where the jobs were plentiful. - So unlike cities back in
the Midwest or back east, Pueblo was micro segregated. So if you were Italian, you
might be comfortable living in the 1100 block of Elm,
but in the 1300 block of Elm, you might have Greek residents. And so we have these
incredible groups that are coming from, actually
first kind of Northern Europe and then Eastern Europe. - Some of them, particularly
Eastern Europeans, are specifically recruited, 'cause that is
the kind of people who worked steel in the east. And they figured that you
might as well get them to do it out here. A lot of people came north
to work in the steel mill. Mexican, Mexican-Americans, that sort of makes the
community even more diverse than Pittsburgh or
any of the Eastern or Midwestern steel towns. - [Narrator] The ethnic
diversity of Pueblo was evident in the fact that 40
languages were spoken by employees at the steel mill. And more than two dozen
foreign language newspapers were published in the city. By the 1920s,
immigrants accounted for nearly 20% of the
city's population. (suspenseful music) As spring gave way
to summer in 1921, Pueblo's diverse communities
were about to meet the unifying force of nature, in the form of a weather
system rolling in off the foothills of
the Rocky Mountains. - During the spring and
early summer months, we have a lot of snow
runoff from higher peaks just to the west across
the continental divide. And the mountains
basically were acting as a lifting mechanism to
get that air to rise quickly, generating showers
and thunderstorms. Lots of heavy rain
fell on the second, even more so happened on
the third and the fourth. - Pueblo exists because
it is where Fountain Creek meets the Arkansas River, or essentially where the
Arkansas River intersects with the front range. So the flood plain is
at the intersection of those two bodies of water. - [Narrator] The
great flood of 1921 was not the first
flood to hit Pueblo, only the deadliest. Prior to 1921, at least 10
floods had been recorded, including one on May 30th, 1894. The 1894 flood, which
claimed five lives and caused $2 million of damage, prompted the building
of levees 18 feet tall, that were designed to
protect against flows as high as 40,000
cubic feet per second. But it wasn't enough. - Flooding was always
a problem in Pueblo. All along the front range, water comes out of the
mountains very quickly during flood season. - [Narrator] While there
were no official measurements of rainfall during
the 1921 flood, this was a weather event
of epic proportions. - Based on eyewitness accounts, you couldn't see
across the road. It was coming down in sheets. One guy said he got five
inches of rain in 30 minutes, which is 10 inches an hour. That's unbelievable how
much rain that actually is. And some people were reporting that it had total rainfall
depths of 14 inches. When you look at modern day
designs for engineering, you look at what they
call 100-year storm, or a 1% annual chance of a storm and that's what we design
most of infrastructure for. You've heard reports of
horses dying in a field just from drowning in the rain. Well, if it's raining
10 inches in an hour, even if it's not
a major tributary, 10 inches of rain is gonna make
a huge impact on the field. - [Narrator] First
person accounts of that tragic weekend
in June of 1921, survive in the form of
letters and oral histories. - Hazel Waldron had
just graduated from
Central High School. And on June 7th, wrote
a letter to her mother to let her know
that she was okay. - [Hazel] Dearest
mother, I suppose that you, like everyone
else, have heard that Pueblo is swept
clear off the map. But I want to tell you that
the Mesa is still left here. It is real hard to describe what an evening
Friday night was, and no one who did
not go through it can understand how
terrible things were. It began to rain
about three o'clock, and then at five, it hailed. At six o'clock, the whistles
for high water began to blow and they blew until nine when the waterworks
was underwater. At 8:30, the lights
went out and at nine the telephone
connections were gone. Hazel G. Waldron. - [Narrator] Bernard
Kelly had just completed his last day of eighth grade
at St. Patrick's School. At the time, his
pressing concern was how he was going
to acquire a new suit with long pants to wear to
Central High School next fall. But that was about to become
the least of his concerns. In his written
account of the flood, Kelly remembers people rushing
to see the swollen river as it approached the
top of the levee. - [Bernard] A kind
of holiday spirit took over the town as if the
banshee voice of the siren announced good tidings. Hundreds of Pueblo-ans
hurried from their homes to the river banks, thrilled at the sight of
the angry, high water. The scene was dramatic,
no doubt about that. Tree trunks, lumber,
demolished houses and the bodies of animals
swept by in the muddy water. The water whipped by perilously
close to the levee tops, but the crowd
stayed on enchanted. The Arkansas overflowed
it's channel at 8:45 p.m. near Main Street. The crowd on the
Union Avenue viaduct saw the black water racing
through the Depot yards. The babble of excitement
suddenly choking to a gasp. Like a blast of canon,
a crash of thunder came then a fresh deluge of rain. The cloud burst, which
had pelted the planes to the west all afternoon,
finally had arrived over Pueblo. It was almost
impossible to breathe. Our party of five ran
toward the south bank, which was the long bluff
on which our house stood. We arrived home drenched, but we were able to
tell the exciting story to the stay-at-homes. "But look out there,"
my father said. Out of our front window,
I could see a red glare. "That's a fire," he said. Bernard Kelly. - [Cora] Read the worst
you can and believe it. I shall not try to describe it, except to say the stricken
district is utter disillusion. The newspaper writers
with their facts cannot give you
half of the picture. Fires lit up the scene,
the roar of waters and crashing of timbers and
cries of people for aid. With lightning flashing
and thunder rolling, it's no wonder people thought
the end of the world had come. They saw men shoot their
families and then themselves. Mrs. Cora Rockefeller. - It's almost like before 9/11, you can't perceive of something of that magnitude
until it happens. And so people, will
there be a flood and maybe there'll be
some water in my house, but they didn't respond quickly, 'cause I don't think
they could conceive of the order of magnitude
of the disaster coming. And so I think a lot of people
did hear the warning sirens and they did hear the
policemen warning them, and they just stayed behind 'cause they didn't wanna
leave and they didn't think it was gonna be that bad. So Pueblo had just done a
huge flood control project, 15, 20 years before. So if you're living down there, you assume that you were
protected by the government, and they had already
done levee walls and things were protected. (soft music) - [Narrator] For those
who ignored the warnings, the quickly rising
floodwaters were unforgiving. One victim of the flood
was a German immigrant by the name of Wilhelm Korber. His grandson, Pueblo
historian, John Korber, remembers his father telling
him about that night. - The night of the
flood, my father was on one of the last D&RG
trains coming in from Salida, but the water was
already about knee deep. So he had walked across
that and up at the blocks. And when he got there,
my mother told him that they were forecasting
more water coming in, and that maybe he should go down and bring her father
up to the house. So he attempted it. He went down and talked to him, but he was a
stubborn old German. He wasn't about to
leave his house. So the next time my dad saw him, they had bodies laid out at, I think it was 7th
and Main Street. My dad was looking around, but
he could not spot the body. One of the people from
the mortuary says, "Well, did he have
a ring or anything?" "Yes, he had a ring." So they started
looking for his ring and that's how they
identified the body. He had not made it
out of the flood. The flood took him
from his little house, and it floated over to where
Pryor's Furniture used to be. And that's where he was found. - [Narrator] While
estimates of economic loss were quickly assessed,
human suffering and loss were much more
difficult to quantify. And while the actual death
toll from the great flood continues to be
debated to this day, early estimates range
from dozens to thousands. - The first thing you
have to understand when you talk about casualties, is that the people who are
running Pueblo had no interest in documenting the exact
number of casualties. The estimates that
appear in the paper immediately afterwards, suggest that casualties run
between about 150 and 250, which is obviously a
terrible, terrible tragedy. And I don't mean to
say that it wasn't. It's very important. Any town that loses
150 to 250 people, something terrible
has happened there. - We had large neighborhoods like Peppersauce
Bottom and the Grove. We have lots of
immigrant groups, people just settling in kind
of barrios down by the river, and they couldn't speak English. They couldn't
understand the warnings. - Many people here who are, I guess you'd call
'em undocumented now. I don't think it
mattered then too much. And also what I found
in the papers afterward, was for years, ads would
pop up in the paper from other cities,
looking for people who may have been in
Pueblo during the flood. People came through
and disappeared. And they might've been
on a train that capsized, they might've been
caught downtown at that very
horrible first night. And also they didn't really pay that much attention
to minorities. You would have, one
of the entries said, "Colored family at
234, south fifth." And they didn't know how many
people were in the family. So that was one of the reasons for the loss of life
being so hard to pin down. - People are still studying
the 1921 flood to this day. We have graduate students
coming from universities who are still digging
into the story and still not finding
all of the answers. - They were finding
bodies up until, the last one I saw was 1929. They found a skeleton. And the skeleton still had
a ring and it was a woman. Mrs. Edward Kendall. Woman in those days didn't
have first names in the paper. They were Ms., Mrs or a widow. They found her 40
miles east of town, and it was a person who had
been missing from the flood. (menacing music) - [Narrator] As water surged
through Pueblo Union Depot, two passenger trains
were caught in the flood. With an estimated 200
passengers onboard, the trains were trapped by the rising
floodwaters and debris. - The early descriptions is
that the people who stayed on the trains was
almost a party. They thought this was
quite interesting, that all this water
was around them. So they had no idea the
danger they were in. So you had train number
14 and train number three, basically parked side by side, right at the edge
of the Arkansas River that was in flood. And with all the wood and
debris floating up against, next to the cars, it just
kind of lifted them up off and then in slow motion,
they began to turn over. - And we have photographs of
what looks like a toy train just flipped and
twisted and turned. And we've learned that
approximately 200 passengers that were on that train. I can't imagine that
they were all rescued, but they do indicate
that most of all of those passengers were rescued and put on the upper floors of the Nuckolls Packing Company. - They lost over 1400 rail
cars, I believe were destroyed. Almost 50 locomotives. It was the largest
single monetary loss was to the railroads. - Of all of them, the Rio
Grande suffered the most damage. Its Walker yard was pretty
much totally destroyed, and that was their main
switching yard at the time. The tracks through
Union Depot were buried in about 18 inches of
silt, and piles of lumber stacked up underneath all
of the railroad bridges. It took about two years
before the railroads got back to what they called
normal activity. - [Narrator] Union Avenue
and Pueblo Union Depot remain landmarks of a
time when the railroad was the heart and
soul of the city. Before the flood,
hundreds of freight cars and eight to 10 passenger trains passed through the
Depot each day. And it was here that travelers from the east got
their first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains and
the mighty Arkansas River. - [Wade] Pueblo before the
flood, there is no I-25, there's no interstate. You get into this city
from the railroad. And so that part of the city that is our main gateway now
was non-existent back then. - At the time of the flood, you had four major
railroads serving Pueblo. The Santa Fe-Rio
Grande, Missouri Pacific and the Colorado and Southern. Pueblo was a major railroad hub. Just at CF&I, there was
over 500 car loads a day delivered to the mill,
loads in and out. So it's hard for
us to comprehend the amount of traffic that
flowed through Pueblo. - Union Avenue was a hotspot. Partly because of the railroad, there were a number of hotels. There were rooms available above every kind
of establishment, but also rooms were
for other uses. This was also a big,
red light district. - Well, Union Avenue
was more famous probably for its bars
than anything else, but there were clothing
stores that catered to the working class
scattered along Union Avenue. Restaurants, flop houses, other institutions
were located there. - Union Depot, which is
another interesting picture with its tall clock tower. After '21, the
clock tower changed. And if you were to step outside
and look over there today, the clock face is even with the
roof line that is behind it. - And so as a
result of the flood, it was determined
that the depot tower would have to come down. And so, they took that
cantilevered section, the 15 to 20 feet
out of the clock, that only became visible
from three sides, not four. - [Narrator] Just down the
street from Union Depot, was the Mountain States
Telephone & Telegraph office. As the floodwaters
continued to rise, the staff of young women
stayed at their posts. A simple act of duty that
may have saved many lives. - [Operator] Warn everybody. Get them out of the low country. - The phone company
was on D Street. So they're just a
block off of the river. It had been raining
all afternoon. - [Woman] I had been working
for the Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph
company for about two years. When I heard the flood
was coming, I was
off duty on a date, but I rushed over to our office 'cause I knew I would be needed. Sure enough, we
started calling people who lived near the
river and downstream, warning them to get
out of their homes. - They were making phone calls. I mean, just to every
single living human being that would pick up a
phone and spread the word that water was on its way, and it wasn't just
your typical rainstorm. - The banks had
already overflowed. And so water started
coming into the building. The switchboards are
all run on electricity, and the girls were
getting kinda nervous. And then the power went out. - [Woman] We helped so many
people get out in time. We called until the
phone lines went down. By then, we were
stuck in the building as the whole first
floor was underwater. - And so they grabbed
what they could. Records, books, things
like that, and moved up to the second floor. In all of the madness, somebody noticed over in
the corner an old Victrola. And of course a Victrola
doesn't need electricity. It's hand powered and it
has the big megaphone. So they decided to
keep themselves sane, little entertainment. They crank the Victrola
and put that record on, and this would kinda help
get them through the night. - [Woman] In late June, the city awarded all of us
operators, a bronze star medal for our valor on behalf of
the whole city of Pueblo. - [Narrator] At the
time of the flood, Rush's lumber yard was one
of five lumber businesses operating in downtown Pueblo, founded by Josiah Rush in 1909. Now, his great grandson,
David Rush runs the business. - Mainly what was sold here were building materials
and mainly lumber. And then along came
the flood 1921, and that business
was just wiped out. And this is a page
of the general ledger recovered from the company
safe after the flood. It went through the flood, and so there's mud
on the top of it. And the entry on
the top is June 3rd. And then the next entry
there is June the 30th. The swirling muddy waters
just wiped everything out. And a lot of that lumber
simply got washed downstream, along with the other lumber
companies that were down here. They had to literally
go downstream and recover what they could
in the way of material and then bring it back here
and get started over again. And there was no
nice FEMA program from the federal
government then. They simply had to do the best
they could and start over. - [Narrator] In the
midst of pouring rain and rising flood waters,
fires breaking out might seem to be a
most unlikely scenario. But in this case, sadly, fires
became a serious problem. - When the water hit,
what was stored here and at the other lumberyards, a construction material
called lime, hot lime, then that's a very
dramatic reaction, generates a lot of heat. And so it actually would catch
whatever's nearby on fire. So lumber would catch on fire and then it would go floating
down through town on fire, and it would catch
other things on fire. So during the early stages
of the flood that evening when all the lights went out, the electricity in
the town was out. It would have been totally dark except for these
floating barges of fire. So that had to add to the
surreal scene that was downtown, and had to terrify the people
who were on top of buildings trying to get away
from the water. It was a traumatic scene. - [Narrator] Local
attorney, John A. Martin witnessed the flood and fires from the tower of the
Grand Opera House. - It seemed like
the crack of doom, like the end of the world, like that first great
flood in Genesis when the waters prevailed
exceedingly on the earth. I've often heard the
expression, hell's broken loose. That's just what it looked like. When great burning rafts
of lumber began to twirl through the streets on
the fast rushing waters. I never saw anything
so sinister in my life as that procession
of burning rafts, jamming against buildings
or going silently on their way to join the vast,
mass of wreckage and debris into which the heart of
Pueblo was being converted. John A. Martin. - [Narrator] Visitors to
Pueblo may see a mural depicting flooding,
toppled buildings, and oddly, a horse, high
in a cottonwood tree. But many don't realize that
the mural tells the story of the great flood and one
of its most famous survivors. - Before the First World
War, Pueblo was one of the premier saddle making
capitals in the world. A guy named Artie Frazier
started mail order catalog. And that was one of the
reasons Pueblo's industry in particular really took off. And he was filling orders
for nobility in South America and in Europe and
things like that. Lucky, the horse,
so far as I know, the first instance we
have of him was in 1919. We have a photograph
of him in Frazier's. And in 1921, like several of
these buildings on June 3rd, the cloudburst just west
of town came through. - As the water rushed in, there were saddles and
harnesses, everything, all kinds of tack
that you would need and this big paper mache horse. The water goes in,
sucks everything out including the horse and away
it goes on down the river. A number of weeks later, he gets a message from a
farmer out east of town about in the Avondale area. But he asked him, "Mr. Frazier, do you know
where that darned ol' horse of yours is, that one
that was in the shop?" And Frazier says, "No,
he's a total loss." We don't know where he is.
We haven't located him." The guy says, "I think you
need to come out to my place out here to Avondale." And darned, if that paper
mache horse wasn't caught up in a big old cottonwood tree. So they got block and
tackle and hoisted him down to the ground,
brought him back into town. His ears were missing,
his mane and tail were just clogged with mud. His glass eyes were gone and
he was pretty scraped up. - Frazier passed in the '30s and his wife continued
running the business. And then in the '50s, she
sold all of her inventory and Lucky went up for auction. And by that time, people
already knew kind of his story. And so another saddlery,
McConnell's Mack Saddlery bought the thing
from Kitty Frazier. And then in 1989,
the carpet factory next to Mack
Saddlery caught fire. And the firefighters, knowing
the story of this horse and how it survived the flood, before they turned their
hoses on or did anything, they were gonna pull the
horse out of the store. So yeah, we say survived
hell and high water. So the mural over
there on Main Street is done on Frazier's
old shop and it was done by Matte Refic and
Mike Strescino to
commemorate that event. - We saw that the call
for artists for that mural and both decided that we
definitely wanted to do it. It was such a big wall,
such a cool project. - [Spencer] It shows some
of the ruin of our city, some of the buildings
that got destroyed and it shows Lucky up
in the cottonwood tree with everybody kind of
staring up in awe at him having survived the flood. - Even after we were
done painting it, I would just see people
every single day stopping and taking pictures of it. And almost every
single person asked me why the horse is in the tree. So I don't think too many people were or are aware
of that story still. (gentle music) - But I do know in
the last 25 years, Lucky was actually
remodeled, spruced up, made to look a little
fancier by a local artist named Deanna Davis. And we found out a lot of
cool things about Lucky. Everybody says, paper mache,
he's actually a hemp mache. We also learned his midsection
is basically a wine barrel, that they mached over,
his legs are solid wood. So my theory is just
that he's super airtight. And when the floodwaters
came through, he was just really buoyant
and probably bouncing on the surface of the water. How he climbed the tree,
nobody's really sure. (laughs) - [Narrator] in the
aftermath of the flood, the cleanup effort
required everything that Pueblo could
muster, and then some. Volunteers were joined by
others who were motivated by law enforcement
officers who demanded, go to work, go to jail
or get out of town. Frank Cirullo was 14
years old at the time, and remembers doing his part
to contribute to the effort. - [Frank] Everyone went to
work to try and clean up the devastation
that the flood left. My dad had a crew of 200
men who shoveled the mud, clearing out and
around the Union Depot. My dad signed a release
for me to be hired as a water boy for
43 cents an hour. I was only 14 years old and
wore a yoke around my shoulders, and carried two buckets of
water from the other side of West 4th Street
Bridge to the Depot, just so the men could
get a drink of water. The men worked 10 hours a day. You can't even imagine
the dead cattle, horses and bodies we saw. Frank Cirullo. - [Narrator] Concerns over
looting led to the enactment of strict law
enforcement policies. Martial law was declared. 1500 local men were deputized, and state and national
troops were summoned to secure the business district. - I'm not sure who made the
decision to declare martial law, but it was made because
of the manpower issue. We had very few people
in the police department, the fire department, the
Sheriff's department. you needed more manpower. And that's when martial
law was declared. The National Guard
was brought in, the Colorado Rangers. I think even the
Army sent people in at one point in time. It was mostly for the manpower, to protect the properties
that were left devastated. - [Narrator] Meanwhile, the
world was waking up to news of the terrible tragedy
that had fallen on Pueblo. - Once the photographers were
able to shoot the destruction, it made headline news in most
of your major newspapers, both in the United
States and overseas. Once word got out, of
course in New York, the stock exchange,
everyone else looking at how did this impact steel? How did this impact the rail? How did it impact distribution? Because once things stopped and you couldn't
get through Pueblo, that meant that
industry was gonna be pretty much in a stalemate. - I don't know if it's as bad
as the San Francisco fire, but it definitely
crippled the city. And the neighborhoods
down in Union Avenue don't get fully restored
until the 1980s. Till the kind of the renaissance
that happens down there. So you have an entire
main, commercial, beautiful, historic district, that's really just kind
of devastated by that. And you have some business
come back, but really, a whole central portion of
the city just gets dislocated. Luckily because of
the progressive era, and because of this
idea of boosterism and wanting to create
this amazing city, we created these massive parks
and created these just regal, large parks and Mineral
Palace was one of them. So we had lots of public
space to kind of spread out and you see these
pictures of tons of linens and carpets and things being
laid out to kinda dry out. And another thing is that
there's this long period of people looking
for loved ones. - [Narrator] In addition
to dispensing food and medical care, relief
workers were given permission to distribute something else. Medicinal alcohol
to those in need. This was unprecedented
during prohibition, which for Colorado
had begun in 1916. Five dry years before the flood. - Almost immediately after
the flood, a call came from Washington, D.C. to
Denver, where the administration of the whole prohibition, they
actually authorized a lift. They cite that it's for
emergency health reasons to quell any type of disease
or anything of that sort. Of course, we all
kind of question whether Pueblo just
needed a drink, but apparently railway
cars were loaded with whiskey barrels and
they were brought to Pueblo, and this ban then was
lifted for 30 days. - [Narrator] As word
of the flood got out, help came from far and wide. Tulsa sent $6,300 and
Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which had suffered a tragic
flood in 1889 sent $2,000. Jewish congregations
from back east sent funds for the Jewish
community in Pueblo, as did many other
religious organizations. Once roads and rail
lines were restored, shipments of food
and clothing arrived at distribution centers
set up by the Red Cross, Elks Club and other
aid organizations. The military also
came to the rescue. - A long mule train came from
Fort Russell and Wyoming. And they used those mules and
the carts that they carried that they pulled
to put our mud in. Mud and debris and take
it back to the river. So those mules from Fort
Russell were excellent. - Today, we have payloaders,
we have skid loaders we have all kinds of equipment. Can you imagine cleaning
that mess up with a shovel? In their backs, that's
how they did it. - But they did put
many, many people, forced many men to work. And it wasn't a choice. If you were out of your
job because of the flood or you out of a job,
period, you were working on the streets, digging
mud, cleaning debris, and you weren't
asked, you were told. They had a shift they
called the drop shift. You worked until you dropped. So, everybody was
doing something. - In some aspects,
Pueblo never recovered. Economically, if you
look at statistical data, it's not until World War
II, where Pueblo sees the kind of growth that it
had enjoyed before the flood. It's not until the
1950s when you see the community really
start to have suburbs and spread out like
many other communities. A lot of businesses
here in the community, of course, never recovered. - [Joseph] They say within
three or four years, they had pretty
much cleaned it up. It was never what it was. Whenever you have that kind
of a catastrophic event, you're gonna lose things and you're not
gonna get them back. - [Narrator] It doesn't
take a 100-year flood to affect poor and
minority communities. In June of 1965,
stormwater overflowed the banks of Fountain Creek,
causing extensive damage to homes in Pueblo's
east side neighborhood. The 1965 flood was a reminder that economically depressed
areas near the river continued to bear the brunt
of extreme weather events. This flood covered an
area of 53 city blocks, and forced the evacuation of
more than 1,000 residents. Even then, it would
take more than 20 years for a levee to be
built on Fountain Creek to protect this neighborhood
from further devastation. The policy of red lining
started with the new deal in the 1930s, a decade
after the 1921 great flood. Some of Pueblo's still
struggling neighborhoods were classified as hazardous,
making them unable to qualify for loans, insurance and
other financial services. Maps of Pueblo from 1934 show
the ongoing damage imposed by red lining. Effects that are
still felt today. - [Jonathan] The
areas of those maps that have a lot of poor people and a lot of racial
minorities are shaded in red. The 1934 map from
Pueblo, all the red areas are the areas where
ethnic minorities and racial minorities
are still living, and all of them are
along the water. - [Narrator] Economic
segregation of neighborhoods was suddenly becoming
evident on a statewide level. As Pueblo's recovery
began to lag behind expanding communities
to the north. - In 1920, before
the flood happened, a lot of the people who
ran Pueblo had aspirations that this would be
the great economic hub of Southern Colorado. And it never was, because by
the time the recovery came in, there's another place
called Colorado Springs, which is attracting most of
the government investment during World War
II and afterwards. And we've lived in the
shadow of that expansion ever since it happened. - Prior to that flood, Pueblo was one of the
largest rail yards west of the Mississippi. After that flood, and after
everything that occurred after that flood, Pueblo
lost its prominence throughout the nation as one
of the largest rail yards and intersections of rail lines
in the whole United States. So that changed the commerce
in the United States. It changed the way people did
business in Pueblo, Colorado. - You're asking me, do I think that they've ever fully
re covered from the flood? Yes, I'm just gonna say, yeah,
I think they've recovered. I think the community
came together as a whole and did what they could, and I think they've certainly
recovered from the flood. I mean, it made a
huge impact, but yeah, I think they recovered
from the flood but it was a big
community involvement. I think they all came
together to help one another. - But I think in some
ways people enjoy that and they're kind of proud
of being in the town that fights back
that is still around. In some ways, some cities may
have actually kind of folded after some event like that, or really just, there's
steel mill towns that are now almost
defunct back east. And the fact that we still
would manage to gain population and grow in the '50s and '60s, I think is kind of a
testament to overcoming kind of one of the
worst disasters that's occurred in
the United States. - I really feel like
Pueblo responded very well to the flood, and I
think that was due to the people that were here. They were just very
determined to carve out a life for themselves
and they just pitched in and did whatever they had to do. - [Narrator] Once the
initial wave of relief got the city back on its feet, the citizens of Pueblo realized that they needed a
longterm flood solution, and it needed to be a
massive undertaking. - They wanted some guarantee this will never,
ever happen again. That was the first thing
that people wanted. And you think about it, there
is no FEMA at that time. There's not a lot of agencies
that have that type of money to build that type of concrete. - [Narrator] But
before they could begin to alleviate the threat,
Pueblo officials understood that they were going to have
to lobby state politicians to rewrite the
rules that governed how cities respond to a
disaster of this magnitude. They wanted the
Colorado legislature to give the city of Pueblo, the autonomy to create
a conservancy district and begin a flood
control project, but it would require
old-fashioned horse trading and a sacrifice. - The Denver legislators,
they wanted something too. And they had wanted it for a
significant amount of time. They wanted a tunnel
through the Rocky Mountains for rail traffic out
of Denver, going west. And the pebble
legislators for years had been able to
block that proposal. - [Narrator] Prior
to the mid 1920s, all rail traffic heading west
over the Colorado Rockies had to travel through Pueblo. From Denver's perspective,
that was a 173-mile detour. But now Pueblo faced
a difficult decision. In order to get the Colorado
legislature to pass a bill allowing for the creation of the Pueblo
Conservancy District, Pueblo had to support
Denver's building of the Moffat Tunnel. - Pueblo was on a
level with Denver as far as a number
of legislators. So we were very
strong in state house. But when the flood occurred,
Pueblo needed the votes to set up all the flood
controls that came after, and they had to
trade those votes for the bond issue
for the Moffat Tunnel. - [Narrator] At over six miles, the Moffat Tunnel
was at the time the longest railroad tunnel
in the Western hemisphere. This engineering marvel
would open up rail traffic west of Denver, eventually
allowing railroads to completely bypass
Pueblo, changing everything. - I believe today, railroad
employment in Pueblo County is about 500 people. And probably in 1921, it
probably was more like 2,500. So a big impact. - The legislation that
these attorneys created was presented to the legislature and both houses
unanimously passed it. There was quite a struggle. And the reason
there was a struggle is because the
Pueblo community felt it needed legislation
so powerful that it could move railroads. So powerful that it
could move streets. So powerful that it
could subdivide property. So powerful that it
could condemn property, and so powerful that
it could raise money through a mill levy. There wasn't a district
in existence at the time that was that powerful. The main purpose of the
Conservancy Law of Colorado, flood control is flood control. It's to keep downtown
from being flooded. - [Narrator] The newly
appointed directors hired an engineering firm
out of Dayton, Ohio, the Morgan Dayton Company, which had recently completed a massive flood control
project in Ohio. Their engineers created a
number of different proposals to address Pueblo's
flooding issue. - Finally, the plan
that was adopted is called the Bluff Plan, and that was to move the
river next to the bluff and build a levy
to form an Eastern or Northern bank to the river. It was controversial. A lot of people in town, a
lot of the business leaders felt it was way too expensive. The levy itself is,
if you think about it in Pueblo history is probably one of the biggest
construction projects the community ever saw. - [Narrator] One advantage
provided by the conservancy is that downtown businesses
are now protected by the two and a
half mile levee, making flood
insurance unnecessary. - And the businesses
that are in the area that are paying the
highest assessment, all recognize this
is less expensive than flood control insurance. - [Narrator] The Conservancy
District also oversaw the reconstruction
of seven bridges that were destroyed
by the flood. Another significant component
was the construction of the Rock Creek barrier dam, several miles
upstream of Pueblo. - [Michael] The logic
behind the Rock Canyon dam was that it would help slow
water coming down the Arkansas, which was the major
flood component in 1921. - [Lawrence] The Rock Creek
dam, by the way, is still there. It's underwater
behind Pueblo dam. - That was a serious
effort to contain it, which of course has worked
that and in conjunction with the big barrier dam, which
now holds back Lake Pueblo. Why, that should protect
us from any more flood. - [Narrator] The Historic
Arkansas River Project, or HARP, was built where the old
river channel used to flow through downtown Pueblo. Referred to locally
as the Riverwalk, this is a future for
the Arkansas River that would have been
hard to imagine in 1921. - I think the HARP, the
urban renewal project and the Riverwalk
project is the other kind of source of pride
of Pueblo-ans. We go anywhere, we always
talk about our Riverwalk. And I think people don't
even put one and two together that that was literally
the actual river. And so Pueblo
doesn't even respond to the effect of the flood until they gather the
Riverwalk project, and which is now kind of
our main success story. It was a artifact of the flood. - We're taking a
bad piece of history and turning it into
a positive place. So that would be a
thing to tell people about Pueblo's flood. Come see what we've
made of the disaster. Come see the beautiful
Riverwalk we have today. - [Narrator] After
the failure of levees during Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency required recertification
of flood control structures across the country,
including Pueblo's levee along the Arkansas River. This requirement actually
provided an opportunity for the Pueblo
Conservancy District to reevaluate the
90-year old levee, and design a new structure that would continue to
provide protection for Pueblo, while opening up access to new
recreational opportunities. - We did a lot more than
just replace the levee. We made it safer. We made it more
available for the public. We did a lot of things
that had to be done just to mechanically
fix the levee. And again, we're talking about
a 2.5 mile long earth levee with a concrete face. So it was a pretty significant
construction project. - When it was originally
designed, it was 40 feet tall. Since the construction
of the Pueblo dam, that reduced that overall need from 110,000 cubic
feet per second down to the range of 60 to
70,000 cubic feet per second. - [Narrator] the newly
designed levee has a wider top that will serve as
a pedestrian path, with increased access
for cyclists, joggers, kayakers and river surfers. - [Donald] The levee will be
a two and a half mile long bike path, jogging
path, walking path, right through the center of
the city with no intersections. - There's two bridges planned. One at 4th Street and
one at Main Street. That provides huge access from
a trail head at 4th street across to the levee. People right now could
take their lawn chairs and sit there and watch. But eventually there'll
be some stadium seating inbuilt into the
face of the levee, so you can hold events
at that drop one where the wave
shapers plan to go, and you could hold
national events. It's a central facility
for the city of Pueblo, to prevent it from
being flooded, but at the same time,
it was an opportunity to take advantage of it and create another
recreational component to the city of Pueblo. - I think we're a community
where we're not afraid to roll up our sleeves
and meet the challenges that the future will bring up. And I think that started
with the 1921 flood. - [Narrator] In remembering
the great flood, we remember the lives lost during a catastrophic weather
event in June of 1921. The loss of lives included
natives and immigrants, rich and poor, and too often
those who found themselves on the margins of society. - We lost, probably a
lot more people died in the Pueblo flood than
will ever be documented. Whole families were washed away. And so sometimes we have
no record of those people. So in that respect,
it's horrible, and then it's also horrible
because we don't even know what we lost in some ways. And we'll never know. - [Narrator] But in
remembering the loss, we also celebrate the
resilience of people who found the strength
to get back up and rebuild stronger. To the victims lost to the flood and the survivors
who rebuilt Pueblo, we honor your memory. (gentle music) (gentle music)
Cool, i love watching these. Awesome watch.