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"On the first day of June 1844, I stuck my stake on a claim in the val ley. . . . At that time the streams were all very high." altitudes and an enormous volume of water laden with drift- wood, poured into the already swollen channel, and the sullen r08r of the rushing stre8m as it burst out of the canyon was heard for a long distance. On reaching the plains, the water spread out and submerged the bottom lands from bluff to bluff to a depth of several feet. The storm occurred in the afternoon and the raging torrent. . . swept down through the soldiers' camp (at Laporte) in the night almost without warning the campgrounds were completely submerged and only the roofs of the cabins were visible . . . Fortunately, no lives were lost, but there were severa I narrow escapes by the sett I ers on the bottom I and s. " -FLOOD DESCRIPTIONS Many floods along the Cache la Poudre River In the Fort Collins to Gre'eley vicinity have done little damage and have gone unreported. Al- though it Is known that severe flooding occurred In the basin in 1844 as a resu]t of heavy snow cover and Intense ra"infall, the area was so sparsely settled at that time that no accurate record was made of the effects of the flooding In the lower basin. One description of that flood was in a letter written by Antoine Janis, a French trapper on the river near the present site of Laporte. He wrote: June 1864 - An extra heavy snowpack augmented by a rainstorm on 9 June 1864 resulted In further flooding on the Cache la Poudre River. Historian Ansel Watrous wrote of the 1864 flood: May 1876 - The Greeley Tribune of 24 May 1876 reported the local river bottom all under water from record rains. "Fort Co II ins . . . . owes its or I gin and first p I ace on the map to the Intervention of a flood In the Cache la Poudre River. This flood occurred on the last days of May and first days of June 1864 and is said to have been the worst known by white men. The water. . . . inundated the valley from bluff to bluff with a torrent that carried every- thing not firmly attached to the soil with It. June 1884 - The Boyd farm northwest of Greeley was said to be entirely under water for the first time from a combination of snowmelt runoff and rainfal I. June 1891 - A dam failure In the upper basin washed out the stream gage so no accurate discharge could be determined. "It carried out the toll bridge at Laporte at a time when the movement of emigration westward stalled on the bluffs south of Laporte On the 9th of June, an extraordinary rainstorm set in on the watershed of the upper part of the river, melted the snow In the higher May 1904 - Flooding In the study reach on 20 and 21 May 1904 resulted from rains of "cloudburst Intensity" In the foothi lis at about 7,000 feet elevation on the headwaters of the North Fork Cache la Poudre River and Boxelder Creek. Damage was heavy at Fort Coil ins and Boxelder Creek, downstream from Fort Collins, contributed high flows. The Greeley Tribune stated: "The Boxelder, a small stream ordinarily only a few feet wide, was tearing down through a fertile valley fll led from bluff to bluff with a sheet of water a mile wide, carry i ng bu II dings and br I dges away " 21 22