THE LIBRARY THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF COLORADO 200 Fourteenth Avenue, Denver 80203 Name of ·donor: &t ft~ Address'. ~Ft. l/r.5~ Descr1pt1oh of g1ft: 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 inc uding all literary and property rights, the property described a~ove. Date;j , r: · - ,;:( /, / CJ / Signature J/ c/? ~it/ RECEIPT Accepted for the Society by: Date ---------------- Signature------~---- Restrictions noted ---------- Title ------------- M· This is an interview with Mr. Bill Wells. I'm at his inn in Glen Haven, the date is August 21, 1976, and my name is David McComb. Well, let's kind of start at the beginning. It started raining down here. And how you didn't ... the river might have been rising, but when did" you first realize there was going to be some major flooding? W: First, I'd gone into town }n the evening . after the dinner hour started ... to pick up some things for the restaurant, Came back, about, what was it, Ted? About 6:00, 6:30, and I was sitting here at the desk doing some work, and just suddenly the rain just came down. I mean, it was not pouring or anything. When I had driven into town, it was a sunny, partly cloudy day. That's all it was. M: Was it unusua 1 for this country for something 1 ike· that? W: Oh, no, no, because when it started to rain, we thought, 11 Well, here's our little shower. 11 M: The afternoon shower. W: Right. And we've had heavy rains before, but the last five minutes at the most and go on, you know, just sudden downpours, mostly what's normal up here is a shower every afternoon in the summer when the sun goes down, or it'l1 even rain when the sun's shining. So I didn't pay too much attention to it, and it's coming in awfully hard, and Ted [Hanes] came through and said, 11 Hey, it's raining, 11 and I said, 11 You're kidding, 11 and I just looked out, and he said, 11 No, it's raining in here. 11 The water was starting to come through the roof up there, and we went and looked out the back door and it was really coming down, and I think Ted said, 11 I love rain, 11 or something like that. And I was just really, raining in the mountains, and then it just kept going, and it just kept raining and 2 raining and raining. Well, Ted w.ent back to the kitchen, and started cooking, and pretty soon the water started coming in the floor in there, and I think you asked me to take over while you went up to see if we could divert the water that was coming down, and it was really coming down. And then we mopped u~ the floor, and it stopped for a minute, or rather the water stopped coming in for a minute, and we went on cooking, and the girls kept on serving and taking orders, and then the water started coming in again, only this time it just poured in, every place it could pour in. M: Was it coming through the walls? W: Yes. M: Ceiling? Under the doors? W: No, it was coming through the walls. And we got a rug vacuum and started pumping the water out of the food preparation area back there, and pretty soon we couldn't keep up with the vacuum, and two of us, three of us were down in there with measuring cups and saucepans trying to dip this water up as-it was coming in, then it started coming in through the walls here in the office., Now this was the water from the hillside behind us. M: Washing down hitting the back of the inn. W: Right, and so I thought I'd better check upstairs, and I went up in the apartment, which is on the south side of the building, and the rain was not only coming down in torrents, but the wind was blowing. It was lashing against the house, and we'd never had that before, of rain and wind to­ gether. So when we came back down, we could see that the water was starting to come up in the stream, and then it was coming through so fast in the walls, in the kitchen, just like faucets opened up, and Ted went over to get a . ~~ 3 ..} hose. We thought maybe we could catch it and put in into the drain, and that didn't work and then finally Doris [Wells' wife] came through and said, "I'm gonna seat somebody else," and I said, "Don't until we get this water out of here," and she said, 11 lf we don't seat them, you're gonna be here all night,'' and she didn't know what was going on; the guests didn't know what was going on. Except that it was raining outside. Well, then the electricity went off, and we had to stop what we were doing. We couldn't keep up with the water, and we looked out, and here was the river in the street already. And then it just kept going higher and higher and higher, and roaring. We got the .•. then we knew it was more than just a rainstorm. Ex­ cept we didn't know how bad it was, 'cause there was no lights, you know, the phone was out, the power was off, and we saw the water coming into the front entry, so we got laundry bags and linens and stuff and tried to stop up the door, and that worked until someone decided they were going to leave. And they opened the door and let the river carrie roaring in. But it was it was roaring out there so loud, you know, you just could hardly hear, it was just a roar.· M: Was it a steady roar? W: Just a constant roar. M: Rolling roar or was it like thunder, or ... ? W: Well, then the thunder arid lightning was along with it. Like a strobe light going, you know, out there, and great huge crashes of thunder, and then we saw the gas tank go and crash into the garage, and then our two cars were parked together over across at • M: Is that a propane tank? W: Yes, right, p.ropane tank, and then we saw our two cars come loose, and float maybe 25 feet and then they got hooked together, and mine got hooked 4 on the fence, and then the next thing we knew, his car was gone, and another car down the street went, and we finally were brave enough to step out- side and then we saw the Town Hall had moved down and crashed into the grocery store, and it was just a roaring, roaring river. I've never seen such power that this water had when it was going. It was just unbelievable, the speed that it was going through in here. Well, then the guests got a little panicky when they could smell the gas; we lit candles in here, you know, and we had the ... teasing them; somebody went over and played the piano and 11 Stormy Weather, 11 of all things (laugh­ ; ng). M: How many guests did you have? W: Oh, there \.-Jere between forty and fifty in here; it was the house guests and dinner guests. M: Is that a full house for you? W: Well, yes, I'd say it was. Pretty near. OW: Later in the evening, people came in off the street after the road had .. W: Yes, the refuge, we even had two dogs in here in the corner. You know, I remembered, Tippy came downstairs that night, and she didn't pay any atten­ tion to those dogs at all. M: You mean these are dogs that just . ? W: You know, with the owner, they were out and so they came in, they spent the night. Sitting up. We put everybody to bed that we could. Because when we went out then, after the rain had let up, and it had calmed down a little bit out there, and we started to walk up the road and there you were walking up like four or five feet of silt right in the middle of the road. And we looked at the parking lot, and all the cars in the parking lot were covered with silt that had washed down from the hill up here. M: You mean, literally covered, in four or five ... ? 5 W: Yes, they were just covered, and inside and everything .... M: Under the windshields. W: Yes, and well, that came down from Piper's Meadow up here, there's a ravine that comes right down from up there, and that hit up here with a roaring waterfall coming down there, joining with West Creek, right out here in front. And we think the main force was between the inn on this side of the hill and then our cabins over across rather than in the river itself, which was on the other side of the cabins. ·Because it came right through here, and that's how it 1 ifted the Town Ha 11 up, and pushed it over. And picked up, Ernie's car was on this side of the road, wasn't it? And it picked it up as it swirled this way, and went on down, and it was a van.