Water Swirled Through Morrison Without Warning, Witness Says
By ROY DENBOW As Told to George Burns, News Staff Writer
Rocky Mountain News, Sept 3, 1938, pages 1-2
MORRISON, Sept. 2. 1 was standing in front of the Morrison Garage when the very heavy rain started. It wasn’t so bad at first so I stayed there and watched it. All of a sudden the water started rolling down in waves from Mount Vernon Canon.
Before I knew what was happening, I was out in the middle of the street and up to my hips in water. There were about eight or 10 persons standing in front of the Mount Morrison Cafe. I hollered to them to run.
I don’t know what they did or what happened to them because the water kept getting deeper and I found I was in it up to my chest. Things started coming at me. An auto trailer, three automobiles, and a truck came pouring out at me on a wave of water that swept through the rear of the garage and out the front.
I was so busy dodging the cars and trucks and stuff that I didn’t have any time for the logs and boulders that were tumbling in the water. Then I saw a gasoline truck come rolling out of the garage with Jim Walpool trapped in the cab.
So Bob Smith and Gilbert Lusce [Luce], who were near the garage, and I waded through the water and pulled Walpool out of the cab just a second before the truck was swept across the road toward raging Bear Creek. Walpool was about half drowned. We high-tailed it to high ground back of the town.
It was 30 minutes before the water went down enough for us to come back to town. I was in the flood in 1933, but this was three times as bad. I was eating supper in my home during the 1933 flood when a wall of water came down Bear Creek and poured into the house. I didn’t waste any time that night. I just beat it right up on the Hog Back and waited for the water to go down. But this flood was far worse than that one.
Morrison History 