Disasters

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 unlike any other in the last fifty years. Today,...

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 motive for arson, as valuables had gone missing...

One of the most destructive wildfire s 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 inferno racing northeast through Grand Lake and...

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 provide. On the other hand, periodic...

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, because flammable structures and almost...

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 overexertion while trying to recover the bodies...

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, even as coal was an essential industry for...

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 the abrupt collapse of the silver industry...

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

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 Poudre River , to rise thirty feet beyond its...

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 one of Colorado’s busiest mountain mining towns...

“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 also called this weather event “The Big Die-...

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. Reconstruction efforts began almost...

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 blaze, hot, dry, and windy conditions...