The Rivers Through Town

Two rivers run through Estes Park, and if you live here long enough you learn to read them the way farmers read the sky. The Big Thompson River comes down out of Rocky Mountain National Park and runs through town on its way east to the plains. The Fall River runs through the north side of town. They are not scenery. They are the reason the town is where it is, and they set the rhythm of daily life.

On an ordinary day, the rivers are background music. You hear the Big Thompson from the Riverwalk downtown, where the water runs past the backs of the shops on Elkhorn Avenue. Anglers stand in it in the early morning. Kids throw rocks from the bank. In spring, the runoff swells the river with snowmelt and the sound gets louder, and people who live near the water check the level the way other people check the weather. In late summer, the river drops low and clear, and you can see the stones on the bottom.

Lake Estes sits on the Big Thompson at the east edge of town, held back by Olympus Dam. It is where the town walks, fishes, and watches the light change in the evening. The lake does more than give the town a place to stroll. In a flood it acts as a buffer, holding back water before it reaches the canyon below. That buffer mattered in September 2013, and even then it had its limits.

The flood began with rain. A slow moving storm stalled over the Front Range in the second week of September 2013, and in some places nearly a year's worth of rain fell in less than a week. The rain started on September 9, and by September 11 the rivers were rising fast. On September 12, the governor declared a disaster emergency in 14 counties, including Larimer County.

In Estes Park, both roads out of town to the east were destroyed. U.S. Highway 34 through Big Thompson Canyon and U.S. Highway 36 through Lyons were torn apart by the water, and for days the only way in or out of town was over Trail Ridge Road through Rocky Mountain National Park. Highway 7, the Peak to Peak Highway, was closed for days as well. Hundreds of residents were cut off in their own neighborhoods when sections of Fish Creek Road washed out and all nine crossings over Fish Creek were destroyed. Broken sewer lines sent raw sewage into Fish Creek and down into the Big Thompson.

Statewide, eight people were killed and one person was never found. More than a billion dollars in damage was done across Colorado. In Larimer County alone, more than a thousand homes were destroyed or damaged. The state set an ambitious goal of having all the roads open again by December 1, 2013, and crews worked around the clock to meet it.

The rivers were changed by the flood, and not just in the places where the roads were rebuilt. In Big Thompson Canyon, the river was re-cut into a straighter, rock lined channel to get the road open quickly, and biologists have said ever since that the river lost much of what made it a living stream. In town, the Coloradoan reported that the trout population dropped from about 2,200 fish per mile to nine fish per mile after the flood and the rebuilding. The fish have come back slowly since then, and so has the river, but anyone who fished here before 2013 will tell you the water is not the same.

Estes Park had been through this before. On July 31, 1976, the Big Thompson Flood killed 144 people when a wall of water came down the canyon after 12 inches of rain fell in three hours. That flood is part of the town's memory in a way the 2013 flood is becoming now: a date everyone knows, a story everyone has heard, a reminder that the river that gives the town its beauty can also take it away. In July 1982, the Lawn Lake dam failed above the town and sent a flood through downtown that damaged or destroyed 177 buildings and reshaped the Riverwalk area. Three campers were killed. The town rebuilt then, too.

That is the pattern of life beside these rivers. They are generous most days and dangerous on a few, and living here means respecting both. People who live in Estes Park keep an eye on the water in spring, know which roads flood first, and know the sound of the river when it is rising. The rivers are not a backdrop. They are neighbors, and like all neighbors in a small mountain town, you learn their moods and you look out for them.

Go with a guide

If you would rather go with someone who knows the trails, the sky, and the seasons, our guides lead trips in Rocky Mountain National Park and around Estes Park every day. See the guided tours and pick the one that fits your trip.