Laserfiche WebLink
<br />Boxelder Creek has a long history of flooding. Floods of record occurred in 1904,1909,1922, <br />1930,1933,1937,1947,1961,1963,1965,1967, and 1969. There is no official gaging station in <br />the watershed and no known flows have been measured. <br /> <br />The flood of 1904 is documented in a newspaper account which stated that "in the Boxelder <br />Valley near Wellington there was a cloudburst alld Coal Creek, Indian Creek, and the Boxelder <br />went into a rampage, flooding a good deal ofland in the lower part of the valley. A.L. Clark's <br />farm was pretty much under alld he had 200 chickl:ns drowned. The North Poudre CompallY <br />claims to have caught 600 million feet in the Douglas, Clark, alld Indian Creek reservoirs, the <br />latter being completely filled; it had just been completed. In Fort Collins little damage was done. <br />A good mallY cellars were filled, and Linden Street at the foot of College Avenue alld at Walnut <br />was like a lake." <br /> <br />Another newspaper account of the 1904 flood stat<<::d that "the Boxelder, a small stream ordinarily <br />only a few feet wide, was tearing down through a fertile valley filled from bluff to bluffwith a <br />sheet of water a mile wide, carrying buildings and bridges away in its mad rush." <br /> <br />The flood of June 1961 is documented in newspaper accounts. The estimated discharge for the <br />1961 flood was 500 cfs. <br /> <br />In general, information on past floods is based on newspaper accounts and interviews with <br />residents of the area. Out of the total drainage area of 251 square miles, approximately 176 <br />square miles of the basin are controlled by Soil C<mservation Service's flood control dams B,2, <br />B-4, B,5, alld B-6 near Wellington, Colorado, whtch is about 8 miles upstream from Fort <br />Collins. <br /> <br />Boxelder Creek has four tributaries. They are Sand Creek, Rawhide Creek, Indiall Creek, and <br />Cooper Slough. Cooper Slough flows on the eastl:rn edge of Fort Collins alld crosses Colorado <br />State Highway 14 just east of the Interstate. Therl: is no available documented history of flooding <br />on these tributaries. <br /> <br />Dam Failure <br /> <br />Darn failure poses another threat to Fort Collins. Larimer County has 45 Class I (high hazard) <br />alld 42 Class II (moderate hazard) dams, more thl\n allY other county in the state of Colorado. <br />Horsetooth Reservoir, with its four dams located just west of the city is the closest potential <br />hazard. One of the largest historic floods on the t'oudre River that occurred on June 9,1891, had <br />a peak discharge of21,000 cfs associated with the failure of the Chambers Lake Dam. <br /> <br />Urban Flash Flooding <br /> <br />Urban flash flooding is a flood hazard in Fort Collins. Major historic rainfall events (year of <br />occurrence in parentheses) in Fort Collins include 1.71 "(1899),6.22"(1902),4.03(1904), <br /> <br />14 <br />