The Impact of The Great Pueblo Flood of 1921

While our Centennial State of Colorado celebrated 150 years just weeks ago and a month earlier our nation celebrated its 250th birthday, "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," still a month earlier, Colorado's oldest city marked 105 years since the Great Pueblo Flood of June 3, 1921. 

View of Union Depot in the aftermath of the 1921 flood in Pueblo, Colorado, shows debris and destruction. Piles of timber and beams are stacked against overturned railroad passenger cars. Mud and debris from the receded flood waters extends to the railroad station platform of Union Depot. Empty and loaded railroad baggage carts are next to a group of men.
Denver Public Library Special Collections, X-10846

My favorite PBS program (at least since 3-2-1 Contact was taken off the air) Colorado Experience showed the glory of Pueblo in 1921, the height from which she fell and the ways in which she never really recovered. Who better to tell us all than the children of those who lived through it?

Of particular interest, the interspersed details of what this flood did to shape the future of railroads in Colorado. While I did know that four railroads converged on Pueblo, Including the Denver & Rio Grande, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, the Missouri Pacific and the Colorado and Southern, I was surprised to hear that the Rio Grande was disproportionately affected by the flood,  Did you know that public reaction to this flood paved the way for Denver and the Moffat Road to become the primary railroad hub for the 20th century and beyond? To create a district with the power to build the Pueblo flood-proof barrier on the north side of the Arkansas River, state legislators had to trade votes allowing Denver to create the Moffat Tunnel Improvement District. Pueblo still profited from the levy in the form of lower insurance rates for the next 100 years for the businesses of Pueblo's historic downtown. But Denver got her direct connection with Grand Junction and Colorado's western slope communities. Who profited more? I wonder.

Of course, this episode rightly focuses on the human cost of the tragedy. Perhaps the most difficult of all the facts is that we still do not know how many families and individuals were swept away by the floods. Not knowing who was lost and struggling to piece together lost lives shows that we still do not value human life, all human life no matter the color, income bracket, creed or vocation. That should change. It must change, but I wonder if it will. ⚒