Higher, broader, deeper, and swifter boiled the waves of water, as the mass of flood, freighted with treasure, trees, and live stock, leaped towards the Blake street bridge, prancing with the violence of a fiery steed stark mad:

“Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell.”

Great God! and are we all “gone up,” and is there no power to stem the tide was asked all round. But no; as if that nature demanded it, or there was need of the severe lesson it teacheth to the citizens of town, the waves dashed higher still, and the volume of water kept on eroding bluffs and bank, and undermining all the stone and foundations in its rapid course.

The inundation of the Nile, the Noachian deluge, and that of Prometheus’ son, Deucalien, the Noah of the Greeks, were now in danger of being out-deluged by this great phenomenon of ’64.

Denver Flood of 1864 - Larimer Street Looking West

This noted event in the history of Denver, commenced at midnight on the nineteenth of May, 1864. Professor Goldrick gave a somewhat verbose, yet withal, truthful account of the affair in the Commonwealth, on the twenty-fourth inst., five days afterwards. The flood having totally destroyed and carried away the office building and material of the Rocky Mountain News, on which paper the Professor was employed, accounts for his version appearing in the Commonwealth. We adopt the text without change from its peculiar style, as it shows the rare versatility and genius of the writer:
–
“About the midnight hour of Thursday, the nineteenth instant, when almost all in town were knotted in the peace of sleep, deaf to all noise and blind to all danger, snoring in calm security, and seeing visions of remoteness radiant with the rainbow hues of past associations, or roseate with the gilded hopes of the fanciful future–while the fullfaced queen of night shed showers of silver from the starry throne down o’er fields of freshness and fertility, garnishing and suffusing sleeping nature wither balmy brightness, fringing the feathery cottonwoods with lustre, enameling the housetops with coats of pearl, bridging the erst placid Platte with beams of radiance, and bathing the arid sands of Cherry creek with dewy beauty–a frightful phenomenon sounded in the distance, and a shocking calamity presently charged upon us. The few who had not retired to bed, broke from their buildings to see what was coming. Hark! what and where is this? A torrent or a tornado? And where can it be coming from, and whither going? These were the questions soliloquized and spoken, one to the other. Has creation’s God forsaken us, and had chaos come again? Our eyes might bewilder and our ears deceive, but our hearts, all trembling, and our sacred souls soon whispered what it was–the thunders of omnipotence warning us “there’s danger on the wing,” with death himself seeming to prompt our preparation for the terrible alternative of destruction or defence. Presently the great noise of mighty waters, like the roaring of Niagara, or the rumbling of an enraged Etna, burst upon us, distinctly and regularly in its sounding steps as the approach of a tremendous train of locomotives. There was soon a hurrying to and fro in terror, trying to wake up one’s relatives and neighbors, while some favored a few who were already dressed, darted out of doors, a clamorously called their friends to climb the adjacent bluffs and see with certainty for themselves. Alas, and wonderful to behold ! it was the water engine of death dragging its destroying train of maddened waves, that defied the eye to number them, which was rushing down upon us, now following its former channel, and now tunneling direct through banks and bottoms a new channel of its own. Alarm flew around, and all alike were ignorant of what to think, or say, or do, much less of knowing where to go with safety, or to save other. A thousand thoughts flitted o’er us, and a thousand terrors thrilled us through. What does this mean? where has this tremendous flood or freshet, this terrific torrent come from? Has the Platte switched off from its time-worn track and turned its treasure down to deluge us? Have the wild waterspouts from all the clouds at once conspired to drain their upper cisterns, and thus drench us here in death? Have the firm foundations of the Almighty’s earth given way, and the fountains of the great deep burst forth on fallen men, regardless of that rainbow covenant which spanned in splendor yon arc of sky last evening? Is the world coming to an end, or a special wreck of matter impending? These, and thoughts like these, troubled the most fearless souls.

ITS PROGRESS OF DESTRUCTION.

Now the torrent, swelled and thickened, showed itself in sight, sweeping tremendous trees and dwelling houses before it–a mighty volume of impetuous water, wall-like in its advancing front, as was the old Read Sea when the Israelites walked through it and volcano-like in its floods of foaming, living lava, as it rolled with maddened momentum directly towards the Larimer street bridge and gorged afterwards rebounding with impetuous rage and striking the large Methodist church and the adjoining buildings, all of which it wrested from their foundations and engulphed in the yawn of bellowing billows as they broke over the McGaa street bridge. Like death, leveling all things in its march, the now overwhelming flood upheaved the bridge and the two buildings by it, Messrs. Charles & Hunt’s law offices, in the latter of which C. Bruce Haynes was sleeping, whom, with the velocity of a cataract, it launched asleep and naked on the watery ocean of eternity, to find his final, fatal refuge only in the flood-gate port of death! Poor Haynes! Your summons came, but ’twas short and sudden, after and not before you had “wrapped the drapery” of your humble couch about you, and had lain down to “pleasant dreams.” Precipitately and in paroxysms the tempestuous torrent swept along, now twenty feet in the channel’s bed, and bridging bank to bank with billows high as hills piled upon hills–with broken buildings, tables, bedsteads, baggage, boulders, mammoth trees, leviathan logs, and human beings buffeting with the billowcrests, and beckoning us to save them. But there we stood, and there the new made banks and distant bluffs were dotted with men and families, but poorly and partly dressed deploring with dumb amazement the catastrophe in sight. The waters like a pall were spreading over all the inhabited lower parts of town and townsite. Nature shook about us. The azure meads of heaven were darkened as in death, and the fair Diana with her starry train, though defended by the majesty of darkness all around her, and by batteries of thick clouds in front, looked down on shuddering silence dimly, as if lost in the labyrinth of wonder and amazement the volume of the vast abyss into which we all expected to be overwhelmed. Next reeled the dear old office of the Rocky Mountain News, that pioneer of hardship and of honor, which here nobly braved the battle and the breeze for five full years and a month, regularly without intermission or intimidation, and down it sank, with its union flag staff, into the maelstrom of the surging waters, soon to appear and disappear, between the waves, as, wild with starts in mountains high, they rose and rolled, as if endeavoring to form a dread alliance with the clouds, and thus consumate our general wreck.

Before this a few moments, one of the proprietors, Mr. J. L. Dailey, and four of the young gentlemen employees, who had been asleep in the building, awoke to realize the peril of their critical situation, and without time to save anything at all in the whole establishment, not even their trunks at their bedsides, or watches on the table-stands, they fortunately escaped, by jumping out of a side window, down into the eddy water caused by a drift which had formed against the building, and thence by the aid of ropes and swimming, struck the shore, on the instant of time to see the sorrowful sight of their building, stock, material, money, all, even to the lot on which it stood, (for which all $12,000 would have been refused a few hours previously), uptorn, and yet scattered to the four winds of heaven or sunk, shattered in sand banks between her and the States.

Higher, broader, deeper, and swifter boiled the waves of water, as the mass of flood, freighted with treasure, trees, and live stock, leaped towards the Blake street bridge, prancing with the violence of a fiery steed stark mad:

“Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell.”

Great God! and are we all “gone up,” and is there no power to stem the tide was asked all round. But no; as if that nature demanded it, or there was need of the severe lesson it teacheth to the citizens of town, the waves dashed higher still, and the volume of water kept on eroding bluffs and bank, and undermining all the stone and foundations in its rapid course.

The inundation of the Nile, the Noachian deluge, and that of Prometheus’ son, Deucalien, the Noah of the Greeks, were now in danger of being out-deluged by this great phenomenon of ’64.

Oh! it was indescribably and inconceivably awful to behold that spectacle of terrible grandeur, as the moon would occasionally shed her rays on the surges of the muddy waves, whose angry thundering drowned all other noise, and to hear the swooping of the death angel as he flew o’er the troubled surface, suggesting the idea of death and destruction in the wild tumults of the torrent!

Previous to this had gone towards the ocean-like delta of the creek and Platte, the Blake street bridge, General Bowen’s law office, Metz’s saddlery shop, F. A. Clark’s and Mr. McKee’s stores, the City Hall buildings and jail, together with Cass & Co.’s adjoining brick emporium, all with a speedy disappearance in the current stateward bound, and with not a few people as passenger aboard. Now we see a youth, white with wan despair, a a child stiff in the cramps of death popping his head up stories high on the river’s surface, only to be struck senseless by an overtaking tree or solid sheet of water, thereafter thence, when the roaring of the raging elements, exemplification of the Almighty’s voice and power, will tell their only funeral knell as calamity’s sad corpse on sorrow’s hearse is carried to its watery grave, with a watery winding-sheet and and melancholy moonlight for its shroud! Verily, “the Lord giveth and taketh away,” yet “shall mortal man be more just than his maker?”

Denver Flood of 1864, From Chamber of Commerce Looking North

MORE ABOUT THE FRESHET.

For about five hours, up to daylight, the floods in Cherry creek and in the Platte were growing gradually, spreading over West Denver and the Platte bottoms in the eastern and western wards of town, divided by Cherry creek, and bounded westerly by the then booming Platte. For squares up Cherry creek, on either side of its old channel, and along to its entrance into the Platte, the adjoining flats were inundated, and the buildings thereon made uncomfortable if not unsafe by the amount of water carpeting their floors to a depth of from one to five feat deep. Blake street was covered to a foot in depth in water with mire, and the basements of many of its stores were solid cisterns of muddy water. From the Buffalo House to the site of F street bridge, on the East Denver flats, was one shining sea of water. Most of the settlers had to leave their homes and household goods, and made up town to escape the inundation. The same was the case with the majority of the citizens on the west side also. There it was still deeper and more dangerous, and there, too, it proved more destructive to the residents and residences.

Scores and scores of the families from Camp Weld, along down the foot of Ferry street and thence southwesterly to the old site of Chubbuck’s bridge, were surprised in their sleep, and surrounded by an oceanic expanse of water from the overflowing Platte. Many found their floors flooded from three to six feet deep with water before they knew it, or had waking warning to escape for their lives, and gladly leave the frame structures and their furniture and fixtures to float down the flood. ‘Twas here that the most sever and serious losses and privations were encountered. ‘Twas here, West Denver, along Front street, Fifth street, Cherry street, and Ferry, as well as all over the streets of the southwestern bottoms, that the gallant officers and men of the Colorado First, together with several of the citizens, showed their timely presence and their truly great assistance, rescuing families from their flooded homes, and removing them on horeseback and otherwise, to distant dwellings high and dry.

During this time, which lasted a few hours, commencing about daylight’s dawn, the scenes of sorrow and of suffering should have been seen to be appreciated, to draw forth due gratitude to the rescuers for the self-sacrifice they showed. Many of the families, women and children, had to flee in their sleeping habiliments, having neither time nor inclination to squander in search of their “good clothes.” Thanks and remembrances eternal to all of those active, noble souls on the several sides of town who worked from the noon of night to next noonday assisting the sufferers and aiding the citizens in all good efforts and good works.

‘Twas not till daylight that the chocked up Cherry creek completely spread itself and formed independent confederations, one stream running down Front street, deep and impetuous enough to launch a good-sized building from its foundation; another down Cherry street, conclusively gutting the street and blockading the dwellings’ doors with “wood and water” up almost to their very lintels. On Ferry a lively river flowed, five and more feet deep, with a current strong enough to make a Hudson river steamer hop along its waves. The Ferry street and F street bridges fell early in the flood, and the erosions in the estuary at the latter entirely changed the river’s bed, forming a new cycloidal channel nearly an eighth of a mile to the westward. The same freaks were exhibited by Cherry creek during its twelve hour lunacy, leaving the old time bed, and breaking another farther north, by undermining the bluffs, and excavating and upheaving old alluvial mounds without ceremony. Now this celebrated creek resembles a respectable river, with a prospect of a perpetual, flowing stream throughout the year, instead of selfishly sinking in the sands some miles above, as heretofore. Its having defined its position and established its base for future operations, will prove a good thing to the town eventually, notwithstanding it falls heavily on hundreds for the present.

ORIGIN OF THE FLOOD.

For a few days previous, there was an abnormal amount of rain at the heads of Cherry creek and Plum creek, along the water-shed range of the divide, so much so that it terrified tillers of the soil, and threatened their cultivated fields with failure. On Thursday afternoon it rained there incessantly, so that the natives knew not whether the cistern clouds had lost their bottoms, or had burst asunderal together. It would shower hail-stones as large as hen’s eggs one hour, and during the next hour it would literally pour down water-spout sheets of rain from reservoirs not over two hundred feet above, while a few minutes more would wash the hail away, and leave four feet of water on the level fields. And this ponderous downpouring was so terrible that it instantly inundated and killed several thousand sheep and some cattle that were corraled at ranches in the region. This phenomenon will plausible prepare us to believe that the “dry cimarron” beyond Bent’s Fort, the Ocate, the Pecos, and large but partially dry aroyas of New Mexico were formerly what the “exaggerating” mountaineers have heretofore assured our infidel minds were but stubborn matters of facts. Even at this present writing, and in our own immediate neighbor hood, it will not be believed what startling changes have been made by the alluvial developments of last Friday, unless you have your auditors accompany you to the theatre of the tempestuous flood, on Cherry creek and elsewhere, so that seeing becomes believing.

ITEMS AND INCIDENTS.

The spirit of departed day had joined communion with the myriad ghosts of centuries, and four full hours fled into eternity before the citizens of many parts of town found out there was a freshet here at all! Whether it was caused by “deep sleep falling upon men,” or by the concentrated essence of constitutional laziness, there were many made aware of the awful risk they ran by sleeping sluggard-like, after frequent rousings, not only later than the hour of dying twilight after the advent of the goddess of the morning, but even after Sol’s bright beams had dispelled the dark and shown the awful escapes that all had run from the delugic danger, Some sons of men and women will not be made to move unless folks, Gabriel-like, will blow a trumpet through and through their ears, bedress them in their beds, and bewilder them into the belief that an ocean of old rectified poison will encircle them if they don’t start!

To show how prolific they are of prophets, it is only necessary to cite the hundredth part of the number of those people who volunteered to inform the public the day after the flood, that they had prognosticated a few days previously, every particle of the things that happened; full well knowing, as they generously informed us, that there was a freshet coming just about the time it did! Prophetic souls, how envious you do make us, and how fortunate your were in not building your new houses “on the sand!” Were it not that knowing this aforetime, you probably have pre-empted them ahead of us, we would immediately take up a mill site and go ground-sluicing on the creek, considering you are all “in with us” in the “dividends!”

Of the thousands and one incidents, actual and exaggerated, that have been borne on the breeze of rumor since the flood, we shall mention here but few, since they would not prove of any special interest to our readers at a distance, for whose satisfaction this cursory sketch was scribbled. The fortunate finding alive of the you man Schell after buffeting the billows for three miles, the heroic and happy escape of Martin Wall, after encountering the distress of a deck passage on the jail roof for and equal distance, and the remarkable presence of mind and power of perseverence show by the colored woman, Mrs. Smith, while tossed on the waters with her family of five children for a couple of miles, afterwards effecting a safe landing place for them and her till morning, are deserving the pen of an Irving to only do them justice. The perilous condition of Mr. Wm. N. Byers and family, also, together with the considerate coolness displayed by them while dangerously surrounded, would deserve no less congratulatory mention than the kind efforts of Gov. Evans, Col. Chivington, and those skiff-constructing soldiers would demand a corresponding complimentary one. Of the various persons who proved themselves kind and humane to assist, it would be invidious to individualize, where each did all he could.

DEATH AND DAMAGES.

The number of persons drowned, as well as the amount of property, real and personal, that was lost and damaged has been variously estimated by varying approximations. Some think there has been about a million dollars worth of goods and property laid waste and lost, in the city and the country surrounding, and between fifteen and twenty lives lost, or at least that many persons started Statesward via the Platte. Not knowing for certain the number of transient folks in the town, or those in the upper ranches, who are missing, we will waive expressing an opinion at present on the latter, but doubt not for a moment that a few hundred thousands worth of loss and damage was sustained by our merchants and citizens of town and country. The following are the fatal effects, as far as heard from up to date:

C. Bruce Haynes, late of the Quartermaster’s office, Gumble Rosebaum, clothier, Otto Fisher, (four years old), Henry Williamson, who herded stock for General Patterson down the Platte, a woman and two children from up Cherry creek, a woman and two children from Plum creek, and a Mr. and Mrs. I. R. Tyson and two children. August Metz, of Blake street bridge, who was carried along with the torrent eighteen miles to Henderson’s Island, is the only person found whom we have yet heard of. Among the heavy sufferers in property are Byers & Dailey, publishers of the Rocky Mountain News, who lost their entire all, with the building and the lot it stood on, A. E. & C. E. Tilton, house, lot and $6,000 worth of goods damaged; also, F. A. Clark, Gen. Bowen, Wm. McKee, Mr. Charles, Messrs. Hunt, Metz and others, lost all they had in store or office, together with the buildings, and sand substracted lots on which they stood. Esquires Hall & Kent lost nearly all of their office books and papers. The probate records, city records, commissioner’s court and the city safe itself, all, all are gone, and whither the deponent saith not.

In the country, Messrs. Gibson, Arnold, Schleier, Lloyd and Stoner, ranchmen, and scores of others, lost stock, and had their well-trimmed farms desolated into wastes of sand and gravel. D. C. Oakes lost his saw mill, part of which was impelled down the current for a few miles. Messrs. Reed, Palmer and Barnes lost, collectively, over four thousand sheep off their ranches up Cherry Creek. _ There have been portions of the heavy machinery of the News office found fast and deep in sand-bars, several miles down the Platte. The strangeness of the fact of machinery moving so far distant in a watery current, will be lessened by remembering that.

Several sacks of flour which floated down the Platte, have been discovered lying high and dry on sand bars, four to six miles from the city; also, may things that were given up as lost, were yesterday found, and free from damage by the action of the watery element or by the (far worse) action of the wandering thieves that practiced prowling around for days past, seeking what they might pick up and pilfer. In some of the storages of town there was an amount of clothing and dry goods drenched, so that the owners might materially make more money selling it by the pound avoirdupois, than by the yard-stick lineal measure. But we must beg an apology of our distant readers, for our tediousness this time, and will conclude this column with the following, as Men are mere cyphers in creation; at least, the chattels of the elements, and the creatures of circumstances and caprice. While worldly fortune favors, they think of nought but self, care little for the laws of nature, and care less for nature’s God! Providential warning will alone affect them, when their well-being and their wealth are affected at the same time. As “the uses of adversity are sweet,” so the interpositions of the Almighty are found eventually salutary and gracious. That the great clouds and eternal fountains are the Lord’s, and will obey his fixed laws forevermore. That his kind purposes are as high above our selfish comprehensions, as are those of the physician above the understanding the infant he inoculates. Had we continued thickly settling Cherry creek as we commenced, and thoughtless of the future, see what terrible destruction would have been our doom, in a few years more, when the waters of heaven, obeying the fixed laws, would rush down upon us, and slay thousands instead of tens!”

One good effect of the flood was the washing away of all that remained in the shape of hostile or sectional feeling between the east and west divisions of the city. It also put a stop to all building on the treacherous sands of Cherry creek, and as West Denver being on the lowest ground suffered most, it subsequently led to the abandonment of many of its business houses, the proprietors establishing themselves in new places in the east division of the city, which rapidly acquired prominence and importance. Many frame residences for the three years following the flood were removed from the west to the east division of Denver.

The proprietors of the News office bought the office material and subscription lists of the Commonwealth and resumed the publication of their paper in about a month after the inundation. Their office was opened in the Murdock building, on Larimer street, now owned by Deitsch Brothers and occupied as a billiard room by Count Murat. Here it remained until the erection of the News building, near the corner of Larimer and G streets, in the fall of 1866, where the office is now permanently located.

B50 Note: O. J. Goldrick, commonly called “The Professor”, was Denver’s first schoolteacher and a writer for the Denver Rocky Mountain News. Photographs by J. Collier, from the collection of Byron Hooper.

Captain Silas Soule in 1865. Courtesy of Byron Strom.

Rocky Mountain News
April 24, 1865 p. 2 c. 1

The Homicide Last Night

Our city was thrown into a feverish excitement last evening by assassination of Captain S. S. Soule, of the Colorado First. The sad affair took place about half past ten o’clock, and was evidently coolly and deliberately planned, and as systematically carried out.

For some time past the Captain had been in charge of the provost guard of the city and neighborhood, and his duties in that capacity had, as a natural consequence, created many enemies. Threats against his life have been freely and frequently made – so we are informed – and no longer ago than yesterday he said that he was expecting to be attacked.

In the evening he and his wife were visiting at the house of a friend and returned home between nine and ten o’clock. Shortly after, a number of pistol shots were fired in the upper part of the city, evidently to decoy him out, and the Captain started to ascertain the cause. Whilst passing along Lawrence Street, Near F, and directly in front of the residence of Dr. Cunningham, he seems to have been met by the assassin, and the indications are that both fired at the same instant, or so near together that the reports seemed simultaneous. Probably the Captain, expecting to be attacked, was in readiness, and when the other man presented his pistol, he did the same, but the intended assassin fired an instant soonest, with but too fatal effect.

The ball entered the Captain’s face at the point of the right cheek bone, pressing backward and upward, and lodging in the back part of the head. He fell back dead, appearing not to have moved a muscle after falling. The other man, from the indications, was wounded in the right hand or arm; how severely is not known. His pistol was dropped at his feet and he immediately started and ran towards the military camp in the upper part of the city, leaving a distinct trail of blood where he passed along. When the shots were fired they were standing about four feet apart, face to face.

Within less than a minute after the fatal shot, one of the provost guard and Mr. Ruter reached the spot. The Captain was already dead, and his murderer had disappeared. They alarmed Dr. Cunningham, and a guard was sent for. A number of persons, soldiers and civilians, soon gathered around, and after a few minutes the body was removed to the building occupied by the officers of the Headquarters of the District.

The excitement this morning, when the facts became generally known, was intense. Hundreds of citizens visited the scene of the tragedy, and it has formed the burthen of conversation throughout the city all day. Patrols were dispatched in every direction, and it is hardly possible that he will escape more than for a day or two.

Probably he will be overtaken to-day. Of his identity we shall at present refrain from speaking, though there is scarce a doubt but it is clearly known. The cause is said to have grown out of an arrest made by the Captain in the discharge of his duty as Provost Marshal.

Captain Soule was highly respected by his brother officers, and beloved by the men in his company. He was married in this city on the 1st inst., and consequently leaves a young wife to mourn this terrible and untimely fate. It is the hope of all that his murderer and his accomplices will be speedily brought to judgement, and a punishment meted out to them such as the base crime deserves.

B50 Note: Silas Soule was assassinated in Downtown Denver (on Lawrence Street, between what is now 15th and 16th) on the evening of April 23rd, 1865, just three weeks after his marriage to Hersa (Coberly). Silas Soule is best remembered for his presence at the Sand Creek Massacre, where he refused to allow the men of his company to fire on the peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped there. He was also present at the Camp Weld Council, where he was photographed with Black Kettle, White Antelope, Amos Steck, Ned Wynkoop, and others.

Though no connection was ever proven, Ned Wynkoop maintained that Soule had been murdered in retaliation for his testimony against Colonel John Chivington in the congressional inquiry regarding Sand Creek. Both Silas Soule and his wife Hersa are buried at Riverside Cemetery in Denver.

For more biographical information on Silas Soule, visit Byron Strom’s site, silas-soule.com.

It says thusly:

This memorial is the property of the State of Colorado
—
This is the Southwest corner of
Camp Weld
established September 1861 for
Colorado Civil War Volunteers,
Named for Lewis L. Weld, first
Secretary of Colorado territory.
Troops leaving here Feb. 22, 1862
Won victory over Confederate Forces
at La Glorieta, New Mexico. Saved
The Southwest for the Union
Headquarters against Indians 1864-65
camp abandoned 1865
_

erected by
The State Historical Society of Colorado
from
The Mrs. J.N. Hall Foundation
and by
The City and County of Denver
1934

B50 Note: This monument is located at the corner of 8th and Vallejo Streets in an industrial section of Denver criss-crossed by highways and overpasses. Check out the “Drive By History” series of unnoticed monuments in Denver.

On September 28th, 1864, the Camp Weld Council was held at this location. At this meeting, territorial governor John Evans met with Cheyenne and Arapaho Chiefs, including Black Kettle and White Antelope. The Arapaho and Cheyenne left the council believing that if they returned to Fort Lyon (in what is now Southeastern Colorado) they would be able to live in peace with the white settlers. Two months later (on November 29th, 1864), their camp at Sand Creek was attacked and many were massacred by Colorado Volunteers under the command of Colonel John Chivington.

A transcript of the meeting is available on Kevin Cahill’s very informative site, kclonewolf.com. This photograph was taken following the Camp Weld Council, and includes many of the participants (photo courtesy of the Colorado Historical Society).

Camp Weld Council, September 28th, 1864. Standing L-R: Unidentified, Dexter Colley (son of Agent Samuel Colley), John S. Smith, Heap of Buffalo, Bosse, Sheriff Amos Steck, Unidentified soldier. Seated L-R: White Antelope, Neva, Black Kettle, Bull Bear, Na-ta-Nee (Knock Knee). Kneeling L-R: Major Edward W. Wynkoop, Captain Silas Soule.

Driving up 14th Avenue, you pass St. John’s Cathedral. You might have noticed it on your way to the Botanic Gardens, or seen its towers while waiting in line at the Fillmore. Maybe you are one of the lucky ones to have walked around this magnificent church or attended a service inside. St. John’s reflects the history of Denver, the nature of Colorado, the story of the Episcopal Church, and the architectural styles of multiple decades. The highlights of the Bible are carved in wood, blown in glass, and etched in stone. St. John’s has been an integral part of Denver’s history for the last 150 years.

Like some other institutions in Denver, St. John’s Church in the Wilderness, as it was first called, started off holding services in a tavern on Larimer Street between 14th and 15th street. While drinking and shopping in Larimer Square, close your eyes and conjure a service from 1861. The first cathedral church (at 20th and Welton) burned down in 1903; the cornerstone for the present Gothic masterpiece was planted in 1909, and so began dozens of great adventures for St. John’s.

Enter through the front doors and see a real Tiffany Window saved from the 1903 fire, stained glass dedicated to a child who had died. While in the narthex, you can examine a stone from Canterbury Cathedral; I like to pretend I’m on a mini trip into the world of Chaucer. Enter from the east doors and view a stained glass window hanging by chains, three angels playing musical instruments; it’s dark and gloomy color reveals smoke damage from the Welton Street church fire.

The stained glass windows of St. John’s rival the glass of European churches. Take a good look at the first window of the west aisle, “The Entrance of Sin,” a portrait of Eve in the Garden of Eden ready to make her fatal mistake while a “very English” lion stares at her. She started out as a naked blonde beauty, a clone of the Dean’s wife. Unfortunately, the prudish Edwardian congregation soon installed long golden locks and a rose bush obscuring her “loveliness.”

If you ever get to climb the spiral stairs to the choir loft you’ll see a window that World War I brought to Denver. It was finished in London in 1914, moved by boat, train and oxcart up to this north portal. In one corner, a miniature St. John’s in glass is a dollhouse dream, and the inscription “This great window finished and fixed in the year of the great Armageddon of the Apocalypse” – the first year of the Great War – sums up this glass “Last Judgement.”

Here are just a couple more treats from St. John’s: the carvings on the altar choir pews, a real walk in Colorado’s woods, from squirrels to deer to bears, and in St. Martin’s Chapel, often used for Sudanese and Somalian services, there’s an Art Deco altar that showers the church with eclecticism.

Next time those massive front doors are open, and the flags are blowing, treat yourself to a spiritual, beautiful experience.

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B50 Note: Contemporary images are courtesy of the author, historical images are courtesy of the Western History Department of the Denver Public Library. The author wishes to thank David Rote for his enlightening tour and to “Saint John’s Church in the Wilderness” by Robert Irving Woodward for it’s bounty of information. St. John’s Cathedral is currently raising funds to the restoration of the 1938 Kimball organ that has given the Denver community so many great concerts.

William H. Clark and the cabin he built in 1859 at 5041 Pearl Street.
Photo courtesy of Wilbur F. Stone, ed., History of Colorado, Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1918.

William H. Clark was a natural choice for the first mayor of Globeville, for he been there from the very beginning. Twenty-three-year-old Clark was one of the hoards of fortune seekers who descended on the territory when gold was discovered in Colorado in 1858. He traveled with a party of fourteen men across land that belonged to the Arapaho and Sioux, arriving at the collection of tents and shacks that would become Denver on October 28, 1858.

Clark built a small cabin in an area north of Denver, farming, prospecting and hunting wild game to survive. His neighbors were native Americans and a few other settlers. With other pioneers, he formed a “claim club”, an organization that held and protected the land on which they “squatted” until it was surveyed. He was able to purchase his property, about 40 acres, from the government for $1.25 an acre in 1863.¹

Homesteaders continued to move to the area, and Clark was active in the growing community. He served on the first school board, which was responsible for a little country school built in 1873 at 51st and Washington, which later became the Globeville School.

Clark had lived in the neighborhood 20 years when the region’s first smelter, the Boston and Colorado, was built in an area now occupied by Denver’s “Mousetrap” interchange. Two other large smelters, the Grant and the Globe, were constructed in 1882 and 1889, followed by railroads, brickyards, foundries and meat packing plants. Clark witnessed the evolution of the district from a rural outpost to an industrial area. He also observed a change in the area’s population from native-born homesteaders to that of Eastern-European immigrants. When the population voted to incorporate as the town of Globeville in 1891, Clark was chosen as the first mayor.

After his mayoral term ended in 1894, Clark returned to farming. He was known to everyone in Globeville as “Uncle Billy” and, at 59 years, was an old-timer by the standards of the day, recognized as a pioneer. Clark enjoyed receiving visitors and would share his memories with anyone who had time to stop and listen.²

A January 25, 1920, issue of the Denver Post proclaimed “‘Uncle Billy’ Clark, pioneer, still lives in squatter cabin” and is “hale and hearty at the age of eighty-four years.”

On June 26 the following year, he was found dead in his cabin of “advanced age” and laid to rest under the auspices of the Society of Colorado Pioneers and the Pioneer Ladies’ Aid Society at Fairmont Cemetery. There is no marker on his grave. A street sign between 47th and 48th Avenue in the Globeville neighborhood is the only known tribute to this pioneer.

-Mary Lou Egan
maryloudesign@comcast.net

Clark Place and 47th Avenue in Globeville

sources:
1 The Denver Post, January 25, 1920, “Uncle Billy” Clark, Pioneer, Still Lives in Squatter Cabin
2 Denver Post, June 27, 1921, “Uncle Billy” Clark, Pioneer of Pioneers, Dead in Rude Log House He Built in Days of ‘59”.

This is Bill Tall Bull’s digital story titled “This is my Home” from the Colorado History Museum‘s Imagine a Great City: Denver at 150 exhibit. This story was made in a workshop facilitated by The Center for Digital Storytelling‘s Denver office. Posted in conjunction with Mile High Stories.

For the past 10 years members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes have organized the Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual Healing Run as a way of bringing closure to this pivotal event in the history of the American west. The 10th annual Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual Healing Run is taking place November 27-29th, 2008. For more detailed information, download the event brochure.

The following letter was written by Captain Silas S. Soule, who was present at Sand Creek on the 29th of November, 1864. Soule was assassinated in Denver in April of 1865 (close to what is now the corner of 15th and Arapahoe), most likely due to his refusal to fire at Sand Creek and his subsequent testimony against Colonel Chivington.

Drawing of Sand Creek Massacre, courtesy Denver Public Library Western History Department

Silas Soule
December 14, 1864
Letter to Edward Wynkoop

Dear Ned,

Two days after you left here the 3d Reg’t with a Battalion of the 1st arrived here. They then declared their intention to massacre the friendly Indians camped on Sand Creek. As soon as I knew … I was indignant … and told them that any man who would take part in the murders, knowing the circumstances as we did, was a low lived cowardly son of a bitch. Chivington and all hands swore they would hang me before they moved camp, but I stuck it out, and all the officers at the Post, except Anthony backed me.

I was then ordered with my whole company to Major A with 20 days rations. I told him that I would not take part in their intended murder, but if they were going after the Sioux, Kiowa’s or any fighting Indians, I would go as far as any of them. They said that was what they were going for, and I joined them. We arrived at Black Kettles and Left Hand’s Camp at day light.

Anthony then approached to within one hundred yards and commenced firing. I refused to fire and swore that none but a coward would. for by this time hundreds of women and children were coming towards us and getting on their knees for mercy. Anthony shouted, “Kill the sons of bitches”. When the Indians found that there was no hope for them they went for the Creek, and buried themselves in the Sand and got under the banks and some of the bucks got their Bows and a few rifles and defended themselves as well as they could.

By this time there was no organization among our troops, they were a perfect mob every man on his own hook. My Co. was the only one that kept their formation, and we did not fire a shot. The massacre lasted six or eight hours, and a good many Indians escaped. I tell you Ned it was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized. One squaw was wounded and a fellow took a hatchet to finish her, she held her arms up to defend her, and he cut one arm off, and held the other with one hand and dashed the hatchet through her brain.

One Squaw with her two children, were on their knees, begging for their lives of a dozen soldiers, within ten feet of them all firing – when one succeeded in hitting the squaw in the thigh, when she took a knife and cut the throats of both children, and then killed herself. One old Squaw hung herself in the lodge — there was not enough room for her to hang and she held up her knees and choked herself to death. Some tried to escape on the Prairie, but most of them were run down by horsemen.

I saw two Indians hold one of anothers hands, chased until they were exhausted, when they kneeled down, and clasped each other around the neck and were both shot together. They were all scalped, and as high as half a dozen taken from one head. They were all horribly mutilated. One woman was cut open and a child taken out of her, and scalped.

White Antelope, War Bonnet and a member of others had Ears and Privates cut off. Squaws snatches were cut out for trophies. You would think it impossible for white men to butcher and mutilate human beings as they did there, but every word I have told you is the truth, which they do not deny.

I expect we will have a hell of a time with Indians this winter. We have (200) men at the Post – Anthony in command. I think he will be dismissed when the facts are known in Washington. Give my regards to any friends you come across, and write as soon as possible.

Yours, SS
(signed) S.S. Soule

—-

At 8am on Saturday, November 29th, there will be an honoring ceremony at Riverside Cemetery in Denver, where Soule is buried. The healing run then continues on for an 11:00am presentation at the Colorado State Capitol and a noon reception at the Colorado Historical Society, 1300 Broadway, Denver. Everyone is welcome to attend this event.

1.

Denver is a square, proud, prompt little place, surrounded by immensity.
–Demas Barnes (Denver visitor, 1865)

Denver is the unlikeliest of cities; there’s no port, no access to an ocean or a major river, nowhere to get to (easily) between here and there. Compared to other urban centers, it came late to the party, and unnaturally, forced on an unwilling landscape. Started by claimjumpers and promoted with false claims of easy money, there was never any gold at the confluence, but there was an opportunity to set up a transportation hub in one of the less explored and exploited regions of the country.

In the first two years, 100,000 people came through looking to find a fortune; by 1864, the city had less than 5,000 residents and was practically destroyed by flood and fire. For those still here, isolated in “this god-forsaken place,” it may as well have been the end of the world. It was touch and go until the railroad came in in 1870, setting off one of the first of Denver’s booms.

Maybe it was the boom and bust cycles, or the latecomer status, or the distance from centers of culture, but for much of the city’s history it’s been better known as a place to go through, rather than a place to stay.

2.

You may thank your stars that you left this country when you did, for it is deader than it ever was. The fact is I am getting damn sick of this God-forsaken place.
–Silas Soule (1861)

One hundred twenty years later, in the late 1980s, the oil bust wreaked havoc on the Denver’s economy; people were jumping ship for wherever they could make a living, and mostly anywhere was better than here. Downtown was sleepy and lonely (especially after hours), and the skyscrapers that had been built in the 70s emptied out as fast as they went up. The good news? Parking was plentiful and free.

One of the many odd jobs I had at that time involved emptying the offices (cubicles and desks mostly) from the Arco Tower on 17th Street in Downtown. For weeks, we loaded the furniture on carts and rolled them onto semi-trailers destined for warehouses in Texas. The wealth (and jobs) that had been imported left town when times turned tough.

Looking at the empty storefronts in the Arco Tower, my buddy Ray and I proposed to the property manager that we install a series of temporary artworks that would show the space off while also having a sense of humor. Our proposal? Cows. Denver, we thought, should embrace its traditions, and engage in a fun dialogue to encourage people to come back downtown.

It sounded good to us. But not to the property manager. Anything but cows, he said.

3.

…the rare beauty of the accidental location, the grandeur of the region, the charms of the climate, and the enormous permanent resources of the country became fixed in the minds of the people…
–Jerome Smiley, History of Denver (1900)

From its founding 150 years ago, Denver’s residents have described the city with a combination of self-deprecation and boisterous civic boosterism, sometimes with more than a touch of defensiveness. But along the way, something has changed, and there is a bit of self-confidence that doesn’t seem so out of place; there’s a willingness to embrace both the city’s frontier roots and its urban existence.

Denver is no longer so oddly placed in the middle of the frontier. The world has changed. Denver was an accidental city, but now it has grown to become a metropolitan center. Maybe now we can look back with some pride and just a little bit of nostalgia for our cowtown past.

Hugh Graham
23 November 2008
hughgrahamcreative.com