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" . PREFACE Floods in Boulder County usually have not disrupted the lifestyle in the communities or changed the traditional social habits and values of the citizens, but the floods certainly have interrupted the pace of living at least teMporarily. Boulder, Lyons, Longmont and other cOfTlmunities have been isolated for days at a time during flood events in the last one hundred plus years. Some individual losses have been substantial enough to cause a change in occupancy of the floodplain, but in general, the way of life has not changed dramatically in fTlost of Boulder County's towns. People have rebuilt their homes and businesses in the floodplain and resumed their early routines. Within a few weeks after most of the flood occurrences, newspaper headlines have returned to stories about baseball games or local politics. . A study of natural events should attempt to reconstruct the social history of the period of time surrounding each event. This helps answer the questions raised in connection with short-term and long-term effects of floods, for instance, on the citizens of the County. Short-term concerns about the type of action people took, how reconstruction was managed and financed, and any physical relocation floods may have caused are as important as the scientific aspects of the floods. The long-term social effects, however, can be even more significant. For exafTlple, the 1894 flood helped stimulate the formation of the Boulder City Improvement Association in 1903. That organization hired Frederick Law Olmsted in 1910 and Metcalf and Eddy in 1912 to study and propose ifTlprovements to Boulder's floodplain and water system. The puzzling problem, nevertheless, which continues to remain unsolved, is why, in the face of terrible loss, people have rebuilt (for the most part) in the same locations and have continued to encroach on the floodplain. .