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10 <br />afterthought, a us eless irritation.” Denver’s founders gave it no great respect – the <br />offices of the Rocky Mountain News originally were built on stilts in the muddy bottoms <br />of Cherry Creek as it emptied into the Sout h Platte, its editor remarking in 1860 that he <br />was “not yet inclined to believe the Indian claims that the whole settlement is subject to <br />11 <br />flood.” By 1864, he was convinced. That su mmer, the newspaper’s 3000-pound press <br />was swept downstream, along with the entire bui lding and most of downtown Denver, in <br />a massive torrent that killed twelve people and wreaked perhaps a million dollars worth <br />12 <br />of property damage. Such volatility characterized not only the river itself, but also <br />helped create the giant aquifer beneath it. <br />Roughly a million years ago, the ancestral South Platte developed drainage <br />patterns similar to those evident today. Followi ng a general continental uplift, the ancient <br />river began to carve deep channels into the Te rtiary sediments of the high plains east of <br />the Rocky Mountains, down to the bedrock shal e deposited by inland seas more than 80 <br />million years prior. These channels – some times many miles wide and hundreds of feet <br />deep in places – gradually filled with cla y, sand, and gravel, called alluvium. Over time, <br />erosion caused the river’s slope to decr ease, and more materials were gradually <br />deposited. These were washed and rewashed as Ice Age glaciers froze and melted high in <br />the mountains, leaving behind relatively clean beds of sand and gravel along the course <br />of the South Platte and its ancient tributarie s. By these processes, the geologic structure <br />13 <br />of an alluvial aquifer was formed. <br />10 <br /> James, A. Michener, Centennial (New York: Random House, 1974) 65. <br />11 <br />Rocky Mountain News , 1 August 1860. <br />12 <br /> Robert L. Perkin, The First Hundred Years: An Informal Hi story of Denver and the Rocky Mountain <br />News (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1959), 209-225. <br />13 <br /> L.J. Bjorklund and R.F. Brown, Geology and Ground-Water Resources of the Lower South Platte River <br />Valley between Hardin Colorado, and Paxton Nebraska (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1957); Morton <br />7 <br />