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PREVIOUS FLOODS. 35 E8timated di8charge of_ C1hico Creek, .June 3--{;. 1921. Time. State. Approxl. matedis4 charge. I Stc.-/t. Junc3........................,................ Creek dry............ .......... .. ...... 0 June \:::':::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::: m!i~~::ii~~~I~:~~:: :::: :::::::::: ::::::::: .....o~:~ M,ldnfght..... ............. -....... '.... 7.'i per cent otcrcst flow................. ..~. 'I 21,000 Jon.5,: f,: ~t::::::::::::: :::::::::::::: ::::: .~.l~~.l.?~~::::::: ::::: ::::::::::::::::::: :::1 ~;~ June 6,6p. m........................ .......... Creck dry.............. .....................1 0 - . The total discharge was abotlt 36,000 Bcre~feet. PREVIOUS FLOODS." FLOOD O:F INDIAN :LEGEND. .As the permanent settlement of Pueblo and the upper Arkansas Valley began about 1859, records of floods prior to that time are not available. Reports were common among the early settlers of an In- . , dian legend regarding a flood occurring: before the whites came, in which, it was stated, the water reached from bluff to bluff. The truth or falsity of this legend can be determined only by circumstantial evidence. One of the early settlers of Pueblo, a Mr. Proffitt, who passed through the Arkans!ts Valley on his way to the Mexican oWar in 1846, stnted that he saw evidence of a former flood along the river below the site-'of the present city ,of Pueblo. The cottonwood trees along - the river were tipped downstream and still bore drift in their branches. The flood causing this must have occurred prior to 18!6, as Oliver (" Old Scout") Wiggins, an early settler of Colorado, who testified to the early flow of Arkansas River in the Kansas-Colorado water Emit, stated that in that year there was a great drought, during which all the buffalo perished or left the country. This statement is substantiated by Ruxton, an English Army officer, who visited the region in 1847 and recorded (".Adventur,es in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains") that there were no buffalo but many skeletons. In writing of Fremont County, Rockafellow 11 states that the first white settler was a French trader named Maurice, who lived near the mouth of .Adobe Creek. Maurice told the pioneers that 4 feet of snow fell all over the valley in 184:4 and lay there three" moons." He fixed the year as that of the great flood at St. Louis, which was 1844. Mllurice did not mention a later flood, but authentic history records 10 Based chiefly on data furnished b.,. :\Ir: .-\. .T. "t>ston. of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Co. :u History ot Arkansas valley, Chica.go, O. L. Baskin. & Co., 1881.