Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
The Riverwalk in downtown Pueblo, on Wednesday, May 26, 2021. The Riverwalk grew out an area of the city destroyed the Arkansas River when it flooded in 1921. In the aftermath, the city redirected the Arkansas around the city to the south.
A century ago the Arkansas River flowed through Pueblo in the channel that is now the HARP, or the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk of Pueblo. In 1921, swollen by rain and snowmelt, the river overtopped its levees and roared through the low-lying areas of downtown Pueblo, taking the lives of hundreds of people, leaving a 300 square mile swath of destruction and changing the course of the city’s history.
Lucky, a hemp mache horse, survived the 1921 Pueblo flood. The torrential waters carried him out of the saddlery where he served as a model miles down stream and into a tree where a farmer found him. In the 1980s, he survived a fire. He now amuses guests at the Pueblo Heritage Museum.
Mary Shinn/The Gazette
Courtesy Pueblo Public Library
A view looking north on Main Street at 3rd Street in Pueblo after the Arkansas River flooding in 1921.
One hundred years ago raging waters unleashed by torrential rains and snowmelt broke through Pueblo’s Arkansas River levees, causing one of the deadliest and most destructive floods in Colorado’s history.
Local historian John Korber’s father worked for the railroad back then. Korber wasn t born yet, but he tells his family’s story of what happened on the evening of June 3, 1921 when his dad finished his shift.
“He was on one of the last trains that came in from Salida,” Korber said, “and when he arrived in Pueblo the water was already up almost knee deep.”