FLOOD07093

• County: Otero
• County: Pueblo
• Community: Otero, Pueblo Counties
• Stream Name: Arkansas River
• Basin: Arkansas
• Title: Arkansas River Channel Capacity and Riparian Habitat Planning Study
• Date: 8/1/2001
• Prepared For: CWCB
• Prepared By: US Army Corps of Engineers
• Floodplain - Doc Type: Project

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One of the most striking peculiarities of thes~ rivers is that they rise downward.
In April the Arkansas at Fort Dodge, is aisandy bed, a fourth of a mile in width,
and with possibly an average of three or four inches of water. In June, when the
mountains send forth their floods of melted snow, the river swells, the current
increases in power, and washes out long channels in the sandy bed. When the banks
show a rise of two feet the waters cut channels in the sand five or six feet deep, and
covering probably a full third of the distance from bank to bank. At these times the
current may be said to be a huge wave of sand surging, rolling, turning, and shifting
with incessant activity. Where there is six feet ofwaterin the morning, there may by
noon be a bar with but an inch. By night the bar may be gone and a deep channel in
its place. These channels are from ten 'to thirty feet wide, with generally
perpendicular sides. Some force will set a current in a particular direction across a
bar. In a few moments a channel from three to six feet deep is cut, through which the
water pours as in a mill-race. A shift or change above diverts the current to some
other direction, and in almost as few moments the recent channel is filled up to
within a few inches of the surface of the water:. As the currents by turns set in almost
every conceivable direction with reference to the general course of the stream, so the
channels may be parallel, oblique, or even peq,endicular to that general course. Even
leaving out of consideration the danger of quicksands, it can be readily seen that the
crossing of such a stream is no child's-play. A good place of entrance being found,
the horse and rider, stripped of every superfluous article, wade in. For a few paces
the horse steps along in water but a couple of inches in depth. Without a moment's
notice or preparatory deepening, his fore feet go down under him, and he plunges
head first into swimming water with a tremendous current. He has hardly recovered
the shock, and struck out fairly in swimming, ibefore his chest strikes a wall of sand,
on which, after many struggles and plunges, he finally succeeds in obtaining a
footing. Again he walks on in shallow water, again to be plunged suddenly into a
treacherous channel, again to scramble, plunge, and strain to get out of it. Imagine
this done over and over again for twenty or thirty times, and with an infinity of
variations, and an idea can be formed of the crossing of a plains river in high water.
All the streams which come from the mountains are the same in this peculiarity"
(Dodge 1877:22-23).

Coues (1895:435), while documenting Zebulon Pike's expedition of 1805-1806, gives
another account on river characteristics, from his observations in 1864, saying:

"Queer river that--a great ditch, choke full of grassy islets, stretching through the
treeless prairie like a spotted snake, some seasons so dry you can't wet your foot in it
for miles, and have to dig for a drink, sometimes a raging flood 200 yards wide."

This Coues quote was utilized as testimony as to the: character of the Arkansas River before the
U.S. Supreme Court in October 1904, in the interstate controversy of the Kansas - Colorado suit
(SteineI1926:215-217).

Even the earliest reported floods in the Arkansas Valley had impacts on the early
occupants. In 1866, a spring ice jamb in the river near William Bent's "New Fort" backed