THE LIBRARY THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF COLORADO

Transcription

1 THE LIBRARY THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF COLORADO 200 Fourteenth Avenue, Denver Restriction (time or use): DEED OF GIFT I hereby give to the State Historical Society of Colorado, for its use and benefit, without restrictions as to use or dispostion {except as noted above), and including all literary and property rights, the prop;rt_y described above )11" 4-c ~'--"( /Jj, }Jf t'1-~~ 4F'-- Date J -L?5:-- /k S2gnature _ /, 0 Estimated Value RECEIPT Accepted for the Society by: y t12.<- r 'l12o--z.,f!tzi'7 / ') 'J/7/J -C/.. 7 / / t<r----la)-~1._ C Z"rdf/?' ( r (/ Date Signature Restrictions noted Title

2 Mr. George Morgan August 23, 1976 Park Terrace Motel Interviewer: David McComb M: This is an interview with Mr. George Morgan, and I'm in his motel near Cedar Cove--l don't know whether you call it Cedar Cove or not. GM: He actually go by the Park Terrace Motel. M: Okay. GM: Cedar Cove area. M: The date is August the 23rd, 1976, my name is David McComb. Basically, what I want to find out about is what happened during this Big Thompson Disaster. And I suppose that sometime saturday night you begin to be aware that something was going on. So wha( happened? GM: Well, that Saturday evening, we had some people come driving into the driveway, and they said there was a big flood coming down the Big Thompson. Course, we didn't; it was hard for us to-realize that there was a flood, because it wasn't raining here and everything \'{as rather quiet. But we did notice before that they was getting a very heavy rain up in the Estes Park area. So we decided that if they're getting rain there, it won't be long till we'll be getting rain here. Then vje, this family came in, and they said that {Jhere waij the big flood, and they hoped that they was ahead of it, and they was also hoping that they was high enough to not be in the flood. They thought possibly they were still in the path of the flood waters. M: But you're pretty high above this river. GM: We're very high, and I kept trying to tell them, we told them, "Look, we're rather high. That water's this high, it is awfully high to be able to get us. 11 But they were so excited and so beside themselves because.of the amount of water that they had already saw coming through Drake that they went right up the side of the mountain, a man and his wife and their four

3 2 children. There's a mountain right back of our motel, and they just took right off up the side of the mountain. They was up there for some time before they finally come back down. M: That must have been the McGees. GM: The McGees, yes, they, but we just didn't, we didn't get too excited about it, because of our position on the side of the mountain, but, oh, a little after nine, then, oh, probably ten after nine, our daughter came in who was about the last person that they let through the Narrows that are located just east of our motel, she came through just a little after nine, and she came right on in saying, "There's a terribly, a big flood coming, the waters are awful high going through the Narrows right then." And about then it was about ten after nine, about fifteen after nine, when we got to hearing the roar of the water, coming through the area in the bottom of the canyon at Cedar Cove. \~e got to hearing the roar of the water. It got rather loud, we could hear some trees breaking; nine-thirty the lights went out, and then we figured this water must have got high enough that it completely wiped out the hydro plant that's about a mile and a half west of our place. ~1: That's where you got your e 1 ectri city. GM: That's where our electricity was supplied by the hydro plant, and when it went out, just exactly nine-thirty, then it got to the roar of the water became even greater in the Cedar Cove area. More trees, and we saw houses be i n g crumbled. M: You got out in the road and looked, then? GM: Then after the McGees had told us that the water was coming, and it was

4 3 very high, I thought before I would go around and alert everybody in the motel, tourists that we had already bedded down for the night, before I'd go around and wake them up and get them excited, that I'd just go ahead and watch the water, and if it come up above the road, then I would be doing some alerting. Well, we stood on the corner, not too far from the water, the water had rose to about, oh, I'd say fifteen foot from the highway. And the only way we could really tell anything because of the darkness, was whenever there was lightning. If it would lightning, then we could see something. And while I was standing there, I saw one car come around the corner, just, there was nothing in it that I could see, all I could see was just probably, oh, six inches of the top of the car. This was probably getting close to ten o'clock by now. Quarter to ten. \ Bout this time in there. R: I saw a big house just come right down. I thought, 11 Boy, what if it doesn't make that curve? 11 And so I went back on the other side of the road, and it made the curve, but it was heading GM: This is my wife, Rachel talking. R: It was heading right for the, right for the corner, you know, where the river turns there. GM: So in the darkness, we could hear people hollering and carrying on, and propane bottles that was breaking loose from their mooring and when the pipe would break, then they would sizzle and make a terrible racket, hoping that they wouldn't explode. Then while we was there, we'd see people corning up and coming and standing on the highway, really wondering what to do. And so in the course

5 4 of the night, I just kept going out in my truck and I'd drive up and I'd see, oh, a group of people standing there, and I'd tell them, "Go on up to the Park Terrace Motel and get you some coffee, and get in out of the rain." By then it had started raining a pretty good rain, and I said, "Get in out of the rain, and get you some coffee and find you a place to set down," so the most of the evening, my, what we done, we just kept driving around and telling people to come on to the Park Terrace Motel, they was out in the rain; they'd lost their houses, was nothing they could, but they just stood there wondering what to do, and so we give them the invitation to come up to the Park Terrace and spend the night. We bedded down families in some of our houses, some young people who had lost their automobile; they was visiting in the Canyon from Greeley; they'd lost everything, and they didn't know what to do, and so we told them to go ahead, and we showed them some beds, we give them beds for the night. When I got up in the morning, there was people just all over everywhere. They was laying on the floor, laying on blankets, laying on rubber mats, anyplace they could find a place to lay down they was all over our office, which is really our house, also. In our beds upstairs, they was just every~ where. There was nothing else they could do. M: About how many people do you estimate you had? GM: Oh, hundred. R: Oh, I'd say, well, not right in the house, we had.,.. GM: I'd say, all told, not counting the tourists, just the people that was pushed out of their home, I'd say we had fifty, sixty. I'd say we had at least that many because we had some of them out in the, out in some of our houses. R: Some stayed in cars, just to get on high ground.

6 5 GM: Some just slept in their cars, also. R: Then we had some tourists in about four cabins that weren't even aware of it. Slept right through it. GM: They didn't even know what was going on. They, of course to them, being in a strange neighborhood, they didn't know but what this was the kind of noises that would be carried on at night, anyway (laughing). Some of them, one family, they was, they had spent the night; they was from Louisiana. They got up in the morning at four o'clock, and it was dark, didn't have no lights, but they got ready and went out and got in their car. They had a ~an; there was nine of them, two families, nine people, and they started the car up, and one of the 1 adi es went down and says, ''~ie ll, where you going?" "Well, I was going into Wyoming today." She says, "vjell, you may as well forget it. The road's washed out on both ends." And they said, ah, they wouldn't hardly believe it. She said, "Yes, we had a big flash flood come down through the Big Thompson, and the road's washed out." So they shut their car off and waited until a little later; they vtalked down to see. Another young couple that we had in one of our motels, they didn't even know about it. The number two motel right beside us. They got up and there was a car parked in front of them and they went down and said, "Sir, would you move your car?" And so he fired it up and backed his car up, and they started theirs up, too, and was setting there, and I went over and I said, "Where you young people going?" and they said, ~~~~ell, they was leaving.'' I said, "You can't get out." They wouldn't hardly believe it, either. I said, "Yes, the lights went out, and everything went dark around here. We had a

7 6 flash flood that went through the Big Thompson.'' Well, they didn't believe it so much that they got out and took a walk off down the highway here about three-quarters of a mile, just to see for themselves that the road was completely gone, absolutely nothing left. So then they decided that they'd leave me their car key and take a helicopter flight out, and they flew and went on back to Greeley. M: Is that what happened to most of your tourists? GM: \>Jell, a lot of our tourists left that day. We had three families that stuck around till Tuesday, just kind of wondering what to do. When they got out of here, they didn't know where they would be going, because of their automobile having to be left at the Park Terrace Motel. So, in the course of the time, why we got well-acquainted with these people, because we was kind of mutual, everybody was helpless, didn't have any lights all day on Sunday and Sunday night. Then the Red Cross, the Red Cross did bring in some food for us; on Tuesday, I think, we got our first Red Cross food, didn't vve? real swift in getting some food in here, what we was needing. But they vvas One of our tourists from New York, Mr. and Mrs. Pucci, we found out later, they'd signed up and got them a place and they said, where was a good place to go eat? and I told them, well, we had two places here in the area, one was at the Canyon Inn Restaurant, and the other one's at the Covered Wagon restaurant, and they picked the Canyon ' Inn, and ate there and came back, and was getting ready to go to bed, and was getting ready to close up for the night, and when the lights went out, and all this propane escaping into the air, she thought maybe she had a leak in the stove in one of the units.

8 7 And I knew what the problem, was but I didn't want to excite them. I just thought, "If I go in and say there's a terrible flood," and being strange people in the neighborhood, wondering what to do, I didn't think I needed any more problems than we already had, so I went in ~nd I checked the stove, and I told her, I said, "No, it would be okay, just a little bitty gas leak." And so on my way out, she says. "I was just plugging in my hair dryer, do you think I knocked the electricity out?" And I said, "No. ma'am, you didn't knock the electricity out." So I, of course, at that time, I didn't know that the whole power plant was completely wiped out, but she thought maybe just plugging her dryer in (laughing). R: And then during the night... GM: And so they went to bed, and it was dark, didn't have no lights, and she got up during the night and she pulled the curtain back, and she saw people coming and going and cars coming in and going out and flashlights and people walking in the dark and walking around in the rain, and being a stranger here, she couldn't imagine what was going on. So she told her husband, she woke him up and says, "Joe, do you think these folks are having orgies or something out here. Because she didn't know us, but she couldn't imagine what in the world was happening out there in the dark. That Saturday evening, when we had some friends visiting with us from Illinois, and they had came in on Friday night and they spent the night. And then on Saturday they took their family and drove all around through the Rocky Mountains, seeing all the sights, came back and had supper

9 8 with us and their two boys, they had a boy fourteen and one seventeen, and our seventeen-year-old boy, they wanted to go up to Estes Park. So about seven 0 clock or a little after seven on a Saturday night, the night of the flood, 1 Greg, our youngest boy, and these two people s boys, by the name of Monroe, 1 Kendall Monroe and Brent Monroe, got in our car and started for Estes Park. And on the way up, why, Greg and his two friends run into a pretty heavy rain. I'll let Greg have a little bit to say about the damage that he saw by the rain that he had... Greg? G: Well, first we were, we left here and it was just kind of sprinkling. And it wasn t heavy, it was just more like a mist. 1 And it v~as dark, and we was, got up close to Drake, and it started raining pretty good, and we got on through. By the time we got to the other side of Drake, it was coming down real good, you know, it was coming down real hard. M: You were heading up the main canyon, then? G: Yes, heading for Estes Park. M: Yes. G: Well, we got on a little bit of ways, and there v.jas a total of about fortyfoot visibility, you know, in front of your car. M: Right. G: And, well, we was going up, the rocks go right up from the side of the road, and the water would wash out, you know, all the dirt from around the boulders. And those were coming down, they were landing pretty close to the car. M: You mean as you were driving along, you could see these rocks falling? G: Right, yes, big you know, big boulders. And so we drove on the other side

10 9 of the road and it didn't really help anything, because we saw them go skipping across the road, and well, we stopped for a bit and then wondered if we should go back. And we figured,"no, we're close," you know, "we're closer to Estes Park than we are to home," so we drove on through, there was places where the road had, you know, people's driveways had washed on right down the road. About two feet of, you know, soil and cement and stuff. So we hit those doing about 40 miles an hour, come along the other side, doing about ten miles an hour, it was really thick, and we don't want to get, you know, disabled, you know, that we couldn't get out. Because then we would have been, you know, vulnerable to the water. So we... M: Was the river rising by this time? G: Well, we couldn't really see the river. It was down off over to where we couldn't see it. GM: Raining that hard, too? G: Yes. So we got to Estes Park, and we found out that the road was closed. See, by the time we was coming out of the other side of the Canyon, going into Estes Park, they wentalready se.11d.ing police cars down into the Canyon. Just to evacuate people or whatever. And so we got in there, we was just going to play some foosball and that kind of stuff. M: But you got to Estes Park all right. G: Yes. M: You didn't get hit by a rock or anything? G: No. We was real fortunate, I think it was because my folks had prayed, and myself. M: But you got through a 11 right. And then the po 1 ice came in after you got

11 10 through and blocked it. G: Yes, yes. And we was trying to get some kind of word to my folks, you know, al.l the telephones were all wiped out. And v.je decided a lot of mud had washed onto the road, you know. So we spent the night in Estes Park, thinking we'd get back through on Highway 34. And we came in at about 4:00, we woke up about 4:30 and came down to where the Canyon starts at the end of Estes Park, and the cop said, "No, the road is washed away, 11 you know, ''it's not even there." So we went up through the St. Vrain Canyon on down through Lyons and Longmont route and came in and waited all day, there in Loveland, you know, see if my folks would come down, or my sister, or anyone. And my sister did come on down. GM: On a chopper. G: On a chopper, yes. M: So you waited in Loveland, then. G: Yes, we waited there all day. M: And you didn't,there wasn't any way to get messages in to your folks? G: No. R: We kept trying to get word from him. G: My mom had figured it all out that by, I guess it was by... GM: Sunday night, then after Greg had spent the night in Estes Park, on Sunday night we still hadn't heard from Greg. And, of course, we was so busy with everybody else's problems that we just had to set that aside and just felt like he was okay. But at night, when it got so dark, there was no light, no moon, no stars, not a thing, the wife, Rachel, she got to placing Greg and them two boys just right in the middle of the flood, sure they was washed down, "\tjhy haven't we heard from them?" and the only way we could keep our courage up was the fact that we did pray, and ask God to protect them, and I told

12 Rachel, I says, "Honey, I just \-1/0n't believe there's anything wrong with the boys until I hear for sure. 11 I'm going to have to believe they was in Estes Park, safe, and they're still in Estes Park, safe, they're on safe ground somewhere." Well, then we spent all night Sunday night in darkness, no lights, no one to really encourage us. Everybody had gone, and we were about the only ones in the house. M: You decided to stay. Why? You could have gone out. GM: We stayed, well, for one reason why we stayed is we got an awful lot of investment here. All of our houses was here, and we did have some families that said they wanted to stay, and the area here, people who lived here, they said, 11 If we do stay, where can we get water?" Being on high ground, and a deep well, and have a large reservoir of water on the side of the mountain, large reservation of water, well, we was able to encourage the people that we had plenty of water, we'd be able to handle them on the water end, and so everyone started bringing jugs to the Park Terrace to fill their water and to take baths. M: So you become kind of the town water supply. GM: We became the municipal water supply for Cedar Cove. We have a very large we 11, good \'later, and p 1 enty of water on hand, and... On sunday afternoon when the wife and I was setting in the truck, we was trying to get radio broadcasts to find out if we could hear Greg's name, "Greg Morgan's safe in Loveland, 11 "safe in Estes Park, 11 somewhere, we're sitting out in the rain, in the truck, listening, and a fellow came running.. up and said, Jim Elijah, who had formerly owned the Park Terrace and lived here, he had come in that Sunday afternoon and said, "I'm going to get you a generator, up to the Park Terrace,'' and I said, "Well, Jim, we could sure

13 use one, that's for sure, but if you can get one, how would you get it in?" He said, "Well, I'm going to get back to Loveland and I'll see if I can't 12 get one." Jim Elijah knew the Civil Defense man, Earl Denton, went to Earl and said, HI know where there's a generator in the post office of Loveland. I want it flev-1 in up to the Park Terrace." Earl and Jim got it out of the post office, got in on the Chinook, flew it into the Park Terrace, and so while we was setting out there, here come this guy running up and says, "Get your truck down there right quick; we've got you a generator." So I jumped in my pickup and went down, backed up to the Chinook helicopter, twin-prop job, and they rolled the generator out of it, onto my pickup. And we didn't get it set up that night because it was still raining, and we didn't get lights until sometime Monday. We finally dropped the loop in it, was coming into our house, and hooked it up to the generator and so we had juice in three of our houses, And then on a Sunday and Monday, the people in the valley realized that - we had electricity, or \o'jas going to have electricity, and they started bringing their deep freezes to the Park Terrace for us to be able to keep them frozen for them, not that we might spend more money trying to keep the electricity going than the food might be worth, but the fact that \ol/e cou 1 dn' t afford to let any of the food spoil. And we was going to have electricity anyway, and so for a long time we had six deep freezes that belonged to people, that we had hooked up around the Park Terrace here. We still got four. We've still got four deep freezes hooked up here to the Park Terrace that belong to people in the valley that come up and get meat,

14 13 and they told us that, "Eat the meat, hand it out to people, because we was gonna lose it anyway, no way would we be able to keep it very long anyhow,'' so they were just glad to bring ~t up and hook it on. So here we were with electricity now, from one generator, plenty of water in our reservoir, and people's deep freezes to eat out of. And in the meantime the Red Cross, I think, on a Tuesday morning, came flying in wondering what our needs were, Tuesday afternoon, they had a bunch of canned goods, items that we was needing, and they made, since we was going to be the municipal water supply, the bath houses, and all the electricity and running the deep freezes to keep the meat all frozen, they brought all the canned goods here, and we put it in one of our garages, and so we was disbursing food out to people and water to people and baths to people, and everything was going along fine for, under the circumstances that we was operating under. M: Okay, you know, you're a man in private business, and you've got all these people coming in. That's going to cost you, you know. Towels, power and water, and wear and tear, and so on. Do you charge people-for this? GM: We haven't charged anybody anything. Some of them have offered. And I know the ones that did offer, they just knew that they could come up because vje' d showed them friendship and neighborly and of being a neighborly service, and after, I told one man, I said, "After this is all r0o1er, we've still got to,v be friends and we've got to be neighbors here in the valley, and once the people know the Morgans, and they're up at the Park Terrace, they'll knovj they've got a friend," and most of these people, we've made friends and some of them we didn't even know, and they'd come up and would introduce themselves, and they could come up and take showers and get water. \

15 14 No, it's for sure that probably they cost, but at the meantime, right, we do have the sheriff of Larimer County, Bob Watson, he saw that we got a bigger generator, the other little generator wouldn't handle, so they brought in a great big Civil Defense, hundred-kilowatt generator, and he's been furnishing the electricity through this generator by bringing diesel fuel in. And one reason why he's doing this, not just for us,but he's doing it because we did open our doors to his deputies and those that was search and resg3e, and they had no place to sleep, they was going to have to sleep out on the ground, we told them, "Come on up, we don't have tourists, anyway. You might as well come on up and sleep in our beds." And we furnished beds and food and the towels and washrags and everything, tried to make it as comfortable for the search and rescue teams as possible. Then when Sheriff Watson flew in his deputies that was going to be around here for days, they automatically just came to the Park Terrace, and we just started putting them up. Now, then, Sheriff Watson is providing us with, well, the electricity through the generator. It's helping his men, but we're also getting help from it, too. If I need to pump water, I can pump water, and when we run out of propane, I told them that we had a need for propane, Sheriff Watson brought in a couple of big hundred-pound tanks of propane, we hooked it up, so now we've got hot water, and they're able to do some cooking. And in the process, we feel that it's going to help the Park Terrace in the long run, not only in good, neighborly service, but a lot of people have heard of the Park Terrace, and when they come back to the Big Thompson Canyon in years to come, why, they'll know about the Park Terrace, and possibly we'll get some tourists from it.

16 M: Speaking of costs, you're closed down, effectively. You say you're open, but there are no tourists out there, Roads are blocked, And August was your 15 GM: big month. So what's that going to do to your business, say, in the next year or so? You going to be able to come back all right? The thing of it is, at the present time, it does look a little bleak in the sense that August is the month that puts you over the top. Because almost every motel has a large payment to make, they make payments throughout the year, but they have a large payment that comes due September the 15th to October the 15th. Well, ours comes due October the 1st. And it's going to be a large amount of money, and we've went to the state, to see if we could get a grant, we went to the SBA, and we're hoping, we just have a belief that something is going to keep us alive here so that when the tourists do come back next year, the Park Terrace will be able to be run, we'll be here to run it. M: Okay. Any sort of problem with sightseers, looters, anything like that? GM: I can't say as we've had any. We've had people that come in and got water that we didn't know. that come along. And all, but, we was just being friendly to everybody If they was in any need at a 11, then we stood and offered them a 11 the Red Cross food that they would need, any water that they might need, although a moment ago when we was talking about the business being off, well, I'm sure that the tourist trade's gone for this year. But if they do get Highway 34 back in, get it through the Narrows, then we will be able to get renters, I'm sure, that live in the Loveland area now that want to live in our homes in the mountains. We'll be able to get renters back in here just as soon as they get Highway 34.

17 16 I went to a meeting, and I talked to them and I said, "All right, whatever you do, we've got to get that road built back just as quick as possible, because my livelihood depends on that road, and with it gone, I am sunk." I said, "There's no need of me coming down to a meeting here and talk what my neighbors need if I'm not going to be able to be there, if I don't get the highway opened. people can't get back to me, well, then, forget it. I'm gone down the road. I can't make Y"f\Y payments without it." So we feel that something's going to open up. That they can't let a business go down the drain just from this if they're helping others and there's grants being given to others, I'm sure that the Park Terrace deserves a grant, also. If we can qualify. M: Did this experience with the Big Thompson Rood and all, did that have any, oh, sort of negative sort of change in your outlook on life or anything else? That's kind of a difficult question, but it does affect people. GM: Well, not to my outlook on life, but I am concerned about some of the people moving back in, in their houses, where they one time sat. M: You mean in the low areas. GM: The low areas. That is a concern, but as an American citizen, and as a right for us to live, even though I may not see it exactly as my neighbors see it, where they want to set, I'll go to bat for them, because I feel that that's their right. M: If they want to rebuild, why... GM: If they want to rebuild and live under the fear that the water sometime or another will wash them out again, I, well, that's their prerogative. And even though I don't feel that I myself would want to be in that circumstance, if there are people that want to do that, then as an American citizen, and under the Constitution, they should be able to go back.

18 17 M: Did the praying strengthen your faith at all? Have any effect on that? GM: Well, one thing I should make mention. On a Friday night, before the flood, on a Saturday night, the wife and I had went to bed, and I said, "Honey, 11 course, in our prayers, sometimes in our conversation, we feel like the Lord is right here with us in our prayer. And I said, 11 Honey, I really don 1 t know why l 1 Ve got such a peace. I have a real tranquil feeling, in here. I know it 1 s the presence of the Lord, and I know it 1 s God, and I feel like the Lord is really here giving me a peace, and I don't know why I've got such a calm feeling, a real tranquil feeling, 11 and I expressed it to her, and she said, 11 Honey, I have that same feeling, I have a real peace that God is going to take care of everything." I said, 11 Even though I 1 ve got just as many problems, and things are bad, I said, "I don 1 t know v,rhy I should have such peace. 11 Not knowing that the next night the flood was going to come, wash a lot of our neighbors out, take a lot of their lives, there 1 s some of them lost everything. One man had his $75,000 house--gone, everything gone, many of them lost their lives, some of them I didn t even know, and I didn t knmv the business 1 1 was going to get bad the very next day. You know, it was on a Saturday, it was the 31st, then on the August the 1st when we was going to load up with reservations, we had people that was coming, you know, and we was working to get our houses all ready for the Sunday rush, and everybody that had signed up that Saturday, \r.je did load up with people for the night, but our main thrust was the reservations that we knew we was going to have to cover and the people that was coming and not enough units, and we was looking, and I told her, I said, 11 Man we al~e looking at one of the best Augusts that the Park Terrace has possibly ever had, 11 and it just looked

19 18 good. And on... R: We feel fortunate, because we didn't lose anything... GM: And on a Sunday R: Physically... GM: When the flood came through, it was all over, we didn't have those problems, no more, [aughin9]then our problmes all changed. But our faith in God, and I've got to say this, a faith in God is the thing that will bring a person through. You can't trust your money, because some of the people lost everything. You can't trust your bank account, because maybe you yourself may not be able to go down there. Some of the people lost their lives. They lost everything. So we're very fortunate in the extent that we never lost nothing in the way" of material other than finances. Our children were safe, and the Monday that I called my boy that lives in Berthoud, and I says, "HovJ's Greg?" and he said Greg was okay, this old dad bav-tled, tears come into my eyes, I said "I don't care what happens now," as 1 ong as I kne\"1 that boy was okay. Come back and told Rachel, and her and I just had us a big shouting good time. so good. M: I bet. Well, Felt GM: That was quite a lot of rambling on, wasn't it? M: Anything else we ought to put in here? GM: I don't th~nk of anything. M: Okay.

20 Draft materials not scanned See originals in folder Water Resources Archive Colorado State University Libraries