# # Big Thompson Flood 1976 Archives - coreyshead

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Posts Tagged ‘Big Thompson Flood 1976’

A Flood of Memories – Part 3 of 3
The Big Thompson Flood of 1976

September 9th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards

Big Dam circa 2010

The present “view” at Big Dam (circa 2010)

(continued from: A Flood of Memories – Part 2 The Big Thompson Flood of 1976)

The river changed for me after the flood and, to this day, it is not the one I remember from my early childhood. The river we ice-skated on in the winter and that I caught my first fish from, on a piece of black thread with a rusty, found hook is long gone. A hazy but persistent memory that continues to define a very distinct and distant period of my life.

Floods update the shape and course of the rivers they spring from. The rushing water carves new beds from old banks, uproots foliage, rolls boulders, and deposits new layers of mud and sand where before, perhaps, there was none. Floods remove old landmarks and create new ones. Floods destroy human built landmarks and redefine how and where it is wise to place them.

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A Flood of Memories – Part 2 of 3
The Big Thompson Flood of 1976

September 2nd, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards

Big Thompson River Canyon, 1976 flood.

A car peeping out from its impromptu grave – Ernie Leyba/Denver Post File

(continued from: A Flood of Memories – Part 1 The Big Thompson Flood of 1976)

The next day dawned and, from my perspective, nothing was different – but it was.

We had no power and there was a queer smell in the air, a smell of mud and propane. After being told of the evening’s events, my mom allowed my brother and I to walk down to the corner above the falls with the stern admonishment to avoid the edge of the washed out road. We were to go no further than the falls.

Later that day we learned why my mom had been so adamant that we explore no more than what we could see from the road: two of of our neighbors had investigated the scene below the falls already that morning and had reported finding, among other things, a nude woman asleep in the silt.
Except, of course, she wasn’t asleep.

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A Flood of Memories – Part 1 of 3
The Big Thompson Flood of 1976

August 26th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards

Big Dam Falls at Chasteen's Grove

Big Dam Falls at Chasteen’s Grove

In the summer of 1976, when I was 7 years old, the river I lived near – The Big Thompson – suffered a flash flood of unheard of proportions. 143 people lost their lives in the rushing waters, five of whom were never found. My family, though living in the affected area, suffered little but inconvenience and shock as the human world around us reeled from one of nature’s little hiccups.

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