The worst flood in the history of Pueblo, and one of the worst in Colorado history, struck on June 3–5, 1921. Between 150 and 250 people died in the deluge along the Arkansas River. The flood caused more than $25 million in damage, leading the entire…

HIV/AIDS represents one of the greatest public health crises of the latter half of the twentieth century and the first half of the twenty-first century. The disease affects thousands of families in Colorado alone and has motivated a public response…

Avalanches are quite common in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. They can occur anywhere there is a sizeable amount of snow and steep slopes, meaning most of Colorado’s High Country (from 10,000 to 13,000 feet) is prone to avalanches. The massive snow slides…

On September 8, 1908, a fire broke out on the second floor of Denver’s Belmont Hotel, claiming as many as fifteen lives and injuring several others in one of the city’s deadliest fires. After the fire, authorities suspected that theft may have been a…

The 1894 Boulder flood was a natural disaster that reshaped the landscape of Boulder County, wiping out some communities and forcing others to come together to rebuild. Like other extreme weather events, the 1894 deluge played an integral role in the…

In April 1896, the mining town of Cripple Creek was devastated by two fires within four days. Frigid winter winds and scant water supply caused both fires to spread rapidly and created difficulty for volunteer firefighters who attempted to extinguish…

One of the most destructive wildfires in Colorado history, the East Troublesome Fire began on October 14, 2020, in the central Rocky Mountains east of Troublesome Creek in Grand County. A week later, high winds whipped the fire into a 100,000-acre…

Ellison Onizuka (1946–86) was an astronaut for the US Space Shuttle program who earned degrees at the University of Colorado in Boulder before perishing in the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster. Onizuka was Colorado’s highest-profile astronaut and is…

Coloradans have maintained a complex relationship with the natural process of flooding. On one hand, inhabitants of the arid West—from early indigenous communities to current metropolitan populations—have been attracted to the many resources floodplains…

Around 10:30 am on August 5, 2015, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) crew ruptured a plug of rock and soil at the Gold King Mine north of Silverton, releasing an estimated 3 million gallons of contaminated wastewater. This water ran into Cement…

In the early morning hours of April 19, 1863, a fire raged through Denver, reducing much of the town’s business district to ash. As in most frontier towns of the American West, fire had been a concern for Denver citizens since the town’s founding in 1858…

On August 19, 1895, a steam boiler exploded in Denver’s Gumry Hotel, killing twenty-two people and injuring dozens. Hotel fires were not uncommon in nineteenth-century Colorado, but the Gumry explosion was the worst hotel disaster in Colorado history and…

The Hastings Mine Explosion was the deadliest mining disaster in Colorado history. Caused by the misguided striking of a match in the Hastings coal mine north of Trinidad on April 27, 1917, the blast killed 121 coal miners; one other worker died of…

Ignited by lightning in early June 2012, the High Park Fire became one of the largest and most destructive wildfires in Colorado history, burning 87,415 acres along the Cache la Poudre River in the mountains west of Fort Collins. By the time it was fully…

On January 24, 1884, the Jokerville Mine outside of Crested Butte was full of methane gas and exploded, killing fifty-nine workers. As the third-deadliest mine disaster in Colorado history, the Jokerville explosion demonstrated the dangers of coal mining…

The Last Chance Fire started on June 25, 2012, when sparks from a motorist’s flat tire set the prairie ablaze near the town of Last Chance in eastern Colorado. The fire was 100 percent contained in nearly twenty-four hours, but in that time the wildfire…

The Panic of 1893 touched off a nationwide economic depression that lasted for at least three years, threw millions out of work, and caused banks and businesses to fail across the country. In Colorado and other silver-mining states, the panic was tied to…

Seeing them as public nuisances that bred sin, enraged citizens burned down several saloons and dance halls in Denver during the 1860s. One of the first and most significant of these attacks was the burning of the River House Saloon on Ferry Street on…

In September 2013, Colorado’s Front Range, from Fort Collins south to Colorado Springs, experienced some of the most dramatic and devastating floods in state history. In the hardest-hit areas, the rainfall beginning September 9 and ending September 16…

The South Platte River flood of June 16, 1965 was one of the worst natural disasters in Denver’s history. It was part of a statewide flooding event that claimed a total of twenty-four lives across the Arkansas and South Platte River basins. The flooding…

On July 28, 1997, the city of Fort Collins was inundated with the heaviest rains ever recorded in a Colorado urban area. During the peak of the storm, about six inches fell in an hour and a half. This caused Spring Creek, a tributary of the Cache la…

On March 23, 1895, a blaze at the St. James Hotel in Denver killed four firefighters, three of whom were black. Despite ongoing racial tensions that had intensified during the depths of an economic depression, the city mourned all four men together,…

On July 27, 1914, Telluride experienced several days of severe flooding following a cloudburst in the mountains above town. Remarkably, the destructive deluge killed only one person, and Telluride made a swift recovery, demonstrating the resilience of…

In the 1930s, eastern Colorado experienced the worst ecological disaster in the state’s history. Unsustainable farming practices and widespread drought transformed the once fertile Great Plains into a barren landscape, inhospitable to both humans and…

“The Great Die Up” is one of three nicknames for the winter of 1886–87, when hundreds of thousands of cattle across the Great Plains died in harsh weather. The event changed the cattle industry forever, ending the practice of open-range grazing. Ranchers…

In 1951, a B-29 Superfortress taking off from Lowry Air Force Base crashed in Denver’s Hilltop neighborhood.  As the smoke cleared, the deadly crash illustrated the need for better safety procedures at military bases near residential areas and the…

In 1894 a fire at Denver’s original Union Depot destroyed much of the building within an hour. The burning of the railroad station, which had been completed in 1881 and was regarded as one of the largest and grandest in the West, shocked Denver citizens…

Between 1896 and 1918, the Vulcan Mine in Garfield County exploded three times, killing a total of eighty-five workers. The successive blasts prompted action from labor unions and politicians to make coal mines safer. At the site of the Vulcan Mine today…

On June 22, 2012, the Waldo Canyon Fire ignited northwest of Colorado Springs, perilously close to neighborhoods and businesses in one of the most populated areas on Colorado’s Front Range. Although local and federal agencies immediately converged on the…

In early October 1970, a twin-engine aircraft carrying forty people associated with the Wichita State University football team crashed into Mt. Bethel along Colorado’s Continental Divide, killing thirty-one passengers. The crash spurred the Federal…