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I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I After World War II, many veterans who had been stationed in the area, either at Camp Hale at Pando, Colorado or the Naval Hospital in Glenwood Springs, joined the hometown veterans in beginning to develop the valley, both commercially building and subdivisions of homes. Mud and debris flows were unknown to many and they enjoyed the huge red rocks decorating their yards, never wondering how they got to the site. The old polo grounds that had become a golf course now became a site for new homes. The owners had never seen the ditch hazards filled to the brim with mud and rocks from mountain storms. The area where the Glenwood Ditch was a metal flume suspended on wooden trestle legs because of continuous washes to the ditch was also developed. New buyers did not realize the potential for flooding they were living in. On July 24, 1977 an unusually heavy thunderstorm spawned debris flows - water, mud, rock, tree limbs - that inundated about 200 acres of the city. In 1981, the event was repeated, with several areas getting hit at different times in the summer and fall. Some areas were hit again in 1984, and intermittently heavy storms cause sporadic flooding in some areas of the city every year or so. Engineering reports state that in the future, bigger and more debris flows are likely to occur, with losses at least as great as those already experienced. Since most of the high hazard zones include residential neighborhoods, a large percentage of the population is subject to damage or injury, Most of the city is built on broad slopes - debris fans - that descend from the mountainsides down to the valley bottoms. At least 18 debris flows and floods have occurred in or near Glenwood Springs in this century. The Cemetery Hill Gulch flooded the original townsite four times between 1936 and 1943 alone. In the 1950's and 60's there was little debris flow activity.