USA > Colorado > Arapahoe County > History of the city of Denver, Arapahoe County, and Colorado > Part 25
USA > Colorado > Denver County > Denver > History of the city of Denver, Arapahoe County, and Colorado > Part 25
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Hundreds of men, however, worked like heroes, tearing down the light frame buildings, dashing water upon others that were too large to admit of removal in season to escape the advancing flames, and otherwise doing all they could to avert the calamity.
Their efforts were not altogether fruitless, and about daybreak the fire was got under control, after about seventy buildings had been burned, involving a loss of about a quarter of a million dollars-not a very big sum for the Denver of to-day, but all too large for the Denver of 1863. The loss of provisions was very great, and prices advanced very materially in consequence of the fire.
Says a local chronicler : "In two hours' time, the best part of the city was reduced to ashes, and very many who had retired, on the previous night; full of the comfort that independence or opulence gives, awoke, on the morrow, impover- ished or beggared."
As a matter of interest, the following partial list of sufferers by the " great fire" is given. Many of them, as will be seen, are still in business here, and others are well known to our people :
W. S. Cheesman, Pickett & Lincoln, Campbell & Jones, B. L. Ford, Voorhees, Hawkins, Nye & Co., II. J. Brendlinger. Col. R. E. Whittsitt, George Tritch, D. O. Wilhelm, Daniels & Brown, Brennan & Mittnacht, J. Ruffner, J. A. Cook, J. P. Fink, B. L. Honore, Dixon & Durant, Sherwood & Bro., S. A. Rice, C. A. Cook & Co., Arbour, Clark & Fitchie, "Elephant Corral," " City Bakery," Frederickson & Jackson, D. All- man, Heatley & Chase, M. Walker, A. D. Towne, J. Richards, Maj. Fillmore, Belden & Co., J. J. Reithmann, Wilson, Stebbins & Porter, B. F. Mason, T. Palmer, A. Newman, T. W. Lavin, Broadwell & Cook, Baldwin, Pogram & Co., B. Wood, Piler, Rohlfing & Co., A. J. Mickley, D. Dougherty, Lancaster & Co., McGee & Co., A. Jacobs, J. Gotlieb, H. Hiney, M. Mesfield, H. Poznanski & Co., W. T. Roath, J. H. Hodges, J Douglass and J. H. Gamhart.
It is a high compliment to the pioneer business men of Denver, that so many men and firms, who lost their all in the fire of 1863, are now among our most "solid" citizens. Messrs. Cheesman, Brendlinger, Whitsitt, Triteh, Daniels, Brown Bros., Fink, Rice, Fillmore, Reithmann, Rohlfing, Jacobs and others, are now, or have been, leading citizens.
They lost no time in bemoaning their bad luck, but, like the people of Chicago, after their great fire, the Denverites were up and doing, bright and early the next morning. Scarcely was the wreck of the burnt district cleared away, before a new era in building was commenced, and the structures erected and occupied were of that dur- able eharacter befitting a city of such commercial importance as Denver had become. Combustible pitch-pine buildings were tabooed, and brick buildings, of two stories, took their place, so that the fire was an actual benefit, as far as the future appearance of the city was concerned. These building operations occupied the entire year, but, by Christmas, the burnt district was substantially covered with new buildings, and business was going forward with unusual activity. Indeed, the winter of 1863-64 seems to have been exception- ally busy in all departments of industry. The Lawrence Street M. E. Church was built about this time, and, being by far the finest church edi- fice in the Territory, attracted a good deal of attention and many compliments. Although since eclipsed by more pretentious church buildings, it is still creditable to its founders, especially whenit is considered that they began and finished the work at so early a period in Denver's history.
The first considerable defalcation in Denver occurred February 13, 1864, when James D. Clarke, a "tony" young man, employed as pay clerk at the mint, embezzled about $37,000 in gold and treasury notes, and lit out for parts unknown. The city was stirred to its profoundest depths by the daring robbery, more particularly because young Clarke was the last man to be
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suspected of such a disreputable act. He was a bright and shining light in religious as well as social circles-in fact, pretty much such a man as Angell, who robbed the Pullman Palace Car Company, in Chicago, recently. A reward of $1,000, offered for his arrest and the recovery of the money, brought him back to Denver in July of the same year, in custody. He was captured at a stage station on the overland route, on the mountains beyond Laporte, and, strange to say, nearly all the stolen property was still in his possession, and was recovercd. After lying in jail several months, he made his escape, and was never again re-captured. This was the first and last defalcation at the mint in Denver, the officers of which have since been particularly watchful.
Early in February, 1864, the third session of the Colorado Legislature adjourned from Golden, where it had met and organized, to Denver, where it fin- ished its labors, adjourning sine die March 11. During the three years of Territorial existence, the Legislature had been migratory, the capital having been located once at Colorado City and again at Golden, but the Legislature always adjourned from the State capital de jure to the
de facto capital at the mouth of Cherry Creek. Amusing stories are told of the migrations of the Second Legislative Assembly. It met at Colorado City, then a mere collection of log cabins. For the want of suitable accommodations, the mem- bers adjourned to Denver, taking up their line of march over the divide in wagons and on horse- back. The cavalcade encamped the first night at a station, known far and wide in those days as " Dirty Woman's Ranche," and reached Denver the second day, where the business of the session was resumed. During, the session, a delegation of Golden people, headed by Hon. W. A. H. Love- land, then a merchant of Golden, çame down and took the members of the Legislature ou an excur- sion to the foot-hills town, then a great rival of Denver. The result of this little excursion was the location of the capital at Golden, but the effect was the same, the next Legislature only met there to organize, and then adjourned to Denver, where all subsequent meetings have since been held.
Washington's birthday was grandly celebrated at the Langrishe Theater. The Colorado Semi- nary, chartered by the Legislature of 1864, was organized on March 15, of the same year.
CHAPTER VII.
THE GREAT FLOOD OF 1864.
T THE most noted cvent in the history of Denver was the great flood in Cherry Creek, May 19, 1864. In order to fully understand the devas- tation wrought by this rush of waters, one must first picture to himself the status of affairs at that time, which was essentially different from that of the present day. There being but a little water in the creek at any time, it came to be looked upon as a dry stream, and little attention was paid to it as a water-course, while many buildings were planted on piles in the very bed of the creck itself. The bridges of the period were low wooden structures, also raised on piles, a little above the
sands, just high enough to obstruct the passage of the torrent which came down, and to spread it far and wide and high, in its devastating course.
Old residents affirm that the flood of 1864 was by far the heaviest ever seen in Cherry Creek, since the settlement of Denver. It certainly was the most destructive, but the writer has always doubted whether it was greater in actual volume than some which have been recorded since, notably the flood of 1878. In 1864, the obstructions in the channel no doubt caused an accumulation of water absolutely frightful, even if the wave was
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not, as some assert, " thirty feet high." Even in 1878, the greatest damage resulted from obstruc- tious in the channel, but these were a few bridges only, elevated on piles high above the sands of the creek. If the channel had been clear, and if the waters had been permitted to flow " unvexed to the sea," as they did after the bridges went out, the flood of 1878 might possibly have passed off as a rather small and inexpensive affair. Who knows, positively, that the great flood of 1864 would not have left Denver unharmed, if Denver had not obstructed its passage ? Nevertheless, it was undoubtedly a wild deluge of waters, and it came down with most appalling force and sudden- ness upon the slumbering city, about the hour of midnight of the day and date first written.
The author offers no apology for introducing here the only succinct and comprehensive account of the flood at his command, from the pen of Prof. O. J. Goldrick, an eye-witness of the awful scene. It was published in the Commonwealth a few days after the affair, and its accuracy is unquestioned as far as the actual facts are concerned :
" About the midnight hour of Thursday, the 19th inst., when almost all in town were knotted in the peace of sleep, deaf to all noise and blind to all danger, snoring in calm security, and seeing visions of remoteness radiant with the rainbow hues of past associations, or roseate with the gilded hopes of the fanciful future-while the full-faced queen of night sheds showers of silver from the starry throne down o'er fields of fresh- ness and fertility, garnishing and. suffusing sleep- ing nature with her balmy brightness, fringing the feathery cottonwoods with luster, enameling the housetops with coats of pearl, bridging the erst placid Platte with beams of radiance, and bathing the arid sands of Cherry Creek with dewy beauty-a frightful phenomenon sounded in the distance, and a shocking calamity presently charged upon us. The few who had not retired to their beds broke from their buildings to see what was coming. Hark ! What and where is this ? A torrent or a tornado ? And where can
it be coming from, and whither going? These were the questions, soliloquized and spoken, one to the other. Has creation's God forsaken us, and has chaos come again ? Our eyes might bewilder and our ears deceive, but our hearts, all trembling, and our sacred souls soon whispered what it was-the thunders of Omnipotence warn- ing us 'there's danger on the wing,' with death himself seeming to prompt our preparations for the terrible alternative of destruction or defense. Presently, the great noise of mighty waters, like the roaring of Niagara, or the rumbling of an enraged Ætna, burst upon us, distinctly and reg- ularly in its sounding steps, as the approach of a tremendous train of locomotives. There was soon a hurrying to and fro in terror, trying to wake up one's relatives aod neighbors, while some favored few, who were already dressed, darted out of doors and clamorously called their friends to climb the adjacent bluffs and see, with certainty, for themselves. Alas! and wonderful to behold-it was the water engine of death, dragging its destroying train of maddened waves, that defied the eye to number them, which was rushing down upou us, now following its former channel, and now tunneling, direct through banks and bottoms, a new channel of its own. Alarm flew around, and all alike were ignorant of what to think or say or do, much less of knowing where to go with safety, or to save others. A thousand thoughts flitted o'er us, and a thousand terrors thrilled us through. What does this mean? Where has this tremendous flood or freshet-this terrific tor- rent-come from? Has the Platte switched off from its time-worn track and turned its treasures down to deluge us? Have the wild water-spouts from all the clouds at once conspired to drain their upper cisterns, and thus drench us here in death ? Have the firm foundations of the Almighty's earth given way, and the fountains of the great deep burst forth on fallen man, regardless of that rainbow covenant which spanned, in splendor, you arc of sky last evening ? Is the world coming to an end, or a special wreck of matter impending ?
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These, and thoughts like these, troubled the most fearless souls.
" Now the torrent, swelled and thickened, showed itself in sight, sweeping tremendous trees and dwelling-houses before it-a mighty volume of impetuous water, wall-like in its advancing front, as was the old Red Sea when the Israelites walked through it, and volcano-like in its floods of foaming, living lava, as it rolled, with maddened momentum, directly toward the Larimer street bridge and gorge, afterward rebounding with impetuous rage, and, striking the large Methodist Church and the adjoining buildings, all of which it wrested from their foundations and engulfed in the jaws of bellowing billows as they broke over the McGaa street bridge. Like death, leveling all things in its march, the now overshadowing flood upheaved the bridge and the two buildings by it. Messrs. Charles and Hunt's law offices, in the lat- ter of which C. Bruce Haynes was sleeping, whom, with the velocity of a cataract, it launched asleep and naked on the watery ocean of eternity, to find his final, fatal refuge, only in the flood-gate port of death. Poor Haynes! Your summons came, but 'twas short and sudden, after and not before you had " wrapped the drapery" of your humble couch about you and had laid down to " pleasant dreams." Precipitately and in paroxysms, the tempestuous torrent swept along, now twenty feet in the channel's bed and bridging bank to bank with billows, high as hills piled upon hills-with broken buildings, tables, bedsteads, baggage, bowld- ers, mammoth trees, leviathan logs, and human beings buffeting with the billow crests and beckon- ing us to save them. But there we stood, and then the new-made banks and distant bluffs were dotted with men and families, but poorly and partly dressed, deploring with dumb amazement the catas- trophe in sight. The waters, like a pall, were spreading over all the inhabited lower parts of town and town site. Nature shook about us. The azure meads of heaven were darkened as in death, and the fair Diana with her starry train, though defended by the majesty of darkness all
around her, and by batteries of thick clouds in front, looked down on shuddering silence dimly, as if lost in the labyrinth of wonder and amazement at the volume of the vast abyss into which we all expected to be overwhelmed. Next reeled the dear old office of the Rocky Mountain News, that pioneer of hardship and of honor which here no- bly braved the battle and the breeze for five full years and a month, regularly and without inter- mission or intimidation, and down it sank, with its Union flag-staff, into the maelstrom of the surgiog waters, soon to appear and disappear be- tween the waves, as, wild by starts, in mountains high they rolled and rolled, as if endeavoring to form a dread alliance with the clouds and thus consummate our general wreck.
" Before this a few moments, one of the propri- etors, Mr. J. L. Dailey, and four of the young gentlemen employes, who had been asleep in the building, awoke to realize the peril of their criti- cal situation, and without time to save anything at all in the whole establishment, not even their trunks at their bedside, or watches on the table stands, they fortunately escaped, by jumping out of a side window, down into the eddy-water caused by a drift which had formed against the building, and thence, by the aid of ropes and swimming, struck the shore on the instant of time to see the sorrowful sight of their building, stock, material, money, all, even to the lot on which it stood (for which all $12,000 would have been refused a few hours previously ), uptorn and yet scattered to the four winds of heaven, or sunk, shattered in sand banks between here and the States.
" Higher, broader, deeper and swifter boiled the waves of water, as the mass of flood, freighted with treasure, trees and live stock leaped toward the Blake street bridge, prancing with the violence of a fiery steed stark mad :
"' Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell.'
"Great God! and are we all 'gone up,' and is there no power to stem the tide, was asked all around. But no; as if that Nature demanded it, or there was need of the severe lesson it teacheth to
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the citizens of the town, the waves dashed higher still, and the volume of water kept on eroding bluffs and bank and undermining all the stone and foundations in its rapid course.
"The inundation of the Nile, the Noachian deluge, and that of Prometheus' son, Deucalion, the Noah of the Greeks, were now in danger of being outdeluged by this great phenomenon of 1864.
"Oh! it was indescribably and inconceivable awful to behold that spectacle of terrible grandeur, as the moon would occasionally shed her rays ou the surges of the muddy waves, whose angry thundering drowned all other noise, and to hear the swooping of the death angel as he flew o'er the troubled surface, suggesting the idea of death and destruction in the wild tumults of the torrent.
" Previous to this had gone toward the ocean- like delta of the creek and the Platte, the Blake street bridge. Gen. Bowen's law office, Metz's saddlery shop, F. A. Clark's and Mr. McKee's stores, the City Hall buildings and jail, together with Cass & Co.'s old bank, Stickney's brick and Felton & Co.'s adjoining brick emporium, all with a crash and speedy disappearance in the current Statesward bound, and with not a few people as passengers aboard. Now we see a youth, white with wan despair, and a child stiff in the cramps of death, popping his head up stories high on the river's surface only to be struck senseless by an overtaking tree or solid sheet of water, thereafter thence, when the roaring of the raging elements, exemplifications of the Almighty's voice and power, will toll their only funeral knell as calami- ty's sad corpse on sorrow's hearse is carried to its watery grave, with a watery winding-sheet and melancholy moonlight for its shroud ! Verily, 'the Lord giveth and taketh away,' yet 'shall mortal man be more just than his Maker ?'
" For four or five hours, up to daylight, the floods, in Cherry Creek and in the Platte, were growing gradually, spreading over West Denver and the Platte bottoms in the eastern and western wards of town, divided by Cherry Creek, and
bounded westerly by the then booming Platte. For squares up Cherry Creek, on either side of its old channel and along to its entrance into the Platte, the adjoining flats were inundated and the buildings thereon made uncomfortable, if not unsafe, by the amount of water carpeting their floors to a depth of from one to five feet deep. Blake street was covered to a foot in depth with mire, and the basements of many of its stores were solid eisterns of muddy water. From the Buffalo House to the site of F street bridge, on the East Denver flats, was one shining sea of water. Most of the settlers had to leave their homes and household goods, and make up-town, to escape the inundation. The same was the case with the majority of the citizens on the West Side also. There it was still deeper and more danger- ous, and there, too, it proved more destructive to the residents and residences.
"Scores and scores of the families from Camp Weld, along down the foot of Ferry street, and thence south westerly to the old site of Chubbuck's bridge, were surprised in their sleep and sur- rounded by an oceanic expanse of water from the overflowing Platte. Many found their floors flooded from three to six feet deep with water before they knew it or had waking warning to escape for their lives, and gladly leave the frame structures, and their furniture and fixtures, to float down with the flood. 'Twas here that the most severe and serious losses and privations were encountered. 'Twas here, West Denver, along Front street, Fifth street, Cherry street and Ferry, as well as all over the streets of the southwestern bottoms, that the gallant officers and men of the Colorado First, together with several of the citi- zens, showed their timely presence and their truly great assistance, rescuing families from their flooded homes and returning them, on horseback and otherwise, to distant dwellings, high and dry.
" During this time, which lasted a few hours, commencing about daylight's dawn, the scenes of sorrow and of suffering should have been seen to be appreciated, to draw forth due gratitude to the
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rescuers for the self-sacrifice they showed. Many of the families, women and children, had to flee in their sleeping habiliments, having neither time nor inclination to squander in search of their 'good clothes.' Thanks and remembrances eternal to all those active, noble souls on the several sides of towo, who worked from the noon of night to the next noonday, assisting the sufferers and aiding the citizens in all good efforts and good works.
"'Twas not till daylight that the choked-up Cherry Creek completely spread itself and formed independent confederations, one stream running down Front street deep and impetuous enough to launch a good-sized building from its foundation ; another down Cherry street, conclusively gutting the street and blockading the dwellings' doors with 'wood and water,' up almost to their very lintels. On Ferry, a lively river flowed, five or more feet deep, with a current strong enough to make a Hudson River steamer hop along its waves. The Ferry street and F street bridges fell early in the flood, and the erosions in the estuary at the latter entirely changed the river's bed, form- ing a new cycloidal channel nearly an eighth of a mile to the westward. The same freaks were ex- hibited by Cherry Creek during its twelve-hour lunacy, leaving the old-time bed and breaking another farther north, by undermining the bluffs and excavating and upheaving old alluvial mounds without ceremony. Now this celebrated creek re- sembles a respectable river, with a prospect of a perpetual flowing stream throughout the year, in- stead of selfishly sinking in the sands some miles above, as heretofore. Its having defined its posi- tion and established its base for future operations will prove a good thing to the town eventually, notwithstanding it falls heavily on hundreds for the present.
" For a few days previous, there was an abnor- mal fall of rain at the heads of Cherry Creek and Plum Creek, along the water-shed range of the divide, so much so that it terrified tillers of the soil and threatened their cultivated fields with failure. On Thursday afternoon, it rained there
incessantly, so that the natives knew not whether the cistern-clouds had lost their bottoms or had burst asunder altogether. It would shower hail- stones as large as hen's eggs one hour, and during the next hour it would literally pour down water- spout sheets of rain from reservoirs not over two hundred feet above, while a few minutes more would wash the hail away and leave four feet of water on the level fields. And this ponderous downpouring was so terrible that it instantly inun- dated and killed several thousand sheep and some cattle that were corraled at ranches in that region. This phenomenon will plausibly prepare us to believe that the 'Dry Cimarron' beyond Bent's Fort, the Ocate, the Pecos, and large but partially dry aroyas of New Mexico were formerly what the 'exaggerating' mountains have heretofore assured our infidel minds were but stubborn mat- ters of fact. Even at this present writing, and in our own immediate neighborhood, it will not be believed what startling changes have been made by the alluvial deposits of last Friday, unless you have your auditors accompany you to the theater of the tempestuous flood, on Cherry Creek and elsewhere, so that secing becomes believing.
" The spirit of departed day had joined com- munion with the myriad ghosts of centuries, and four full hours fled into eternity before the citizens of many parts of town found out there was a freshet here at all! Whether it was caused by ' deep sleep falling upon men,' or by the concen- trated essence of constitutional laziness, .there were many made aware of the awful risk they ran by sleeping, sluggard-like, after frequent rousings, not only later than the hour of dying twilight after the advent of the goddess of the morning, but even after Sol's bright beams had dispelled the dark and shown the awful escapes that all had run from the delugic danger. Some sons of men and women will not be made to move unless folks, Gabriel-like, will blow a trumpet through and through their ears, bedress them in their beds and bewilder them into the belief that an ocean of old rectified poison will encircle them if they don't start.
Hugh Dueler
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" To show how prolific they are of prophets, it is only necessary to cite the hundredth part of the number of those people who volunteered to inform the public, the day after the flood, that they had prognosticated, a few days previously, every parti- cle of the things that happened, full well know- ing, as they generously informed us, that there was a freshet coming just about the time it did. Prophetic souls, how envious you do make us, and how fortunate you were in not building your new houses ' on the sand.' Were it not that, knowing this aforetime, you probably have pre-empted them ahead of us, we would immedi- ately take up a mill site and go ground-slnieing on the creek, considering you are all ' in with us' in the ' dividends.'
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