At the height of the flood of May 31, 1894, Colorado governor Davis Waite could not be found. The flood washed out railroad tracks all along the Front Range, and the governor’s train, bound from Florence to Cripple Creek, got stranded at an unknown location in the mountains. His absence was particularly alarming because of an active miners’ strike at Cripple Creek; armed union men patrolled the mountains, and there was no telling what kind of danger the governor might have fallen into. Not to worry; Waite resurfaced, unharmed, the following day when the tracks were cleared.

The episode illustrates how seriously the flood disrupted travel and communications in Colorado. In Pueblo, the Arkansas River inundated the train depot. Floodwaters washed out train sidings and irrigation ditches at Florence, while Fountain and Ruxton creeks rose to unprecedented levels at Manitou Springs. The waters submerged mine shafts in Idaho Springs, collapsed a dam in Loveland, and destroyed several bridges in downtown Denver. A group of Coxeyites there encamped at the city’s riverfront, preparing for a voyage down the South Platte to prove it a navigable stream. They got more than they bargained for when the flood destroyed their staging ground and sent them packing.

Despite all the havoc the disaster inflicted, the state government was in no position (quite literally, in Governor Waite’s case) to offer aid. Nor was it inclined to do so. Disaster response in the late nineteenth century was generally considered a local matter; communities looked after their own victims and repaired their damage, using as much money and resources as they could muster from their own citizens and businesses.