Colorado history

Wednesday, September 2, 2026

A little engine leaves Golden for the mines, Bear Creek takes Morrison after supper, and Denver invents a September that feels like July with worse manners.

Colorado Central starts regular service into Clear Creek Canyon

1872 · Golden to Big Hill, Clear Creek Canyon

On Sept. 2, 1872, the Colorado Central put regular trains on a new 12-mile run from Golden to Big Hill. The day before, the first train had reached Forks Creek. Golden was trying to beat Denver to the gold camps. The canyon had other ideas, but the timetable held.

William Austin Hamilton Loveland wanted Golden, not Denver, to be the town the mines had to pass through. The Colorado Central was his argument in iron.

West of Golden the line went narrow-gauge, three feet of track and two secondhand tank engines with the unsubtle names General Sherman and General Sheridan. Crews had graded with 500 men that spring and laid rail with horses when the locomotives were late, which is a very 1872 way to build a railroad. On Sept. 1 the first train made Forks Creek, 13.3 miles up Clear Creek, where the water splits toward Black Hawk and toward Georgetown. On Sept. 2 the company stopped treating the canyon like a construction site and started treating it like a schedule: Golden to Big Hill, twelve miles, regular service.

Black Hawk got rails by December. Georgetown got the Loop a dozen years later. Denver kept the capital and most of the later glory. What survived is the habit. If you drive U.S. 6 up Clear Creek today you are following a corridor that first became a daily thing on a Monday in September, with two worn-out engines and a town that refused to stay a mill stop.

The mines are quieter. The canyon is not.

Sources: Mid-Continent Railway Museum — Colorado Central chronology · Wikipedia — Colorado Central Railroad · American-Rails — Colorado Central

A six-foot wall of water hits Morrison after dark

1938 · Morrison and Bear Creek Canyon

On the evening of Sept. 2, 1938, a cloudburst near Genesee Mountain dumped nearly eight inches of rain in six hours. Mount Vernon Creek and Bear Creek arrived in Morrison together around 7 p.m. The crest at the Morrison gage still ranks second only to the 1933 flood. At least six people died in the canyon.

Morrison sits where Bear Creek and Mount Vernon Creek agree to share a street. That is a charming civic fact until both creeks show up at once.

The storm parked on the divide near the top of Genesee. Residents measured rain in whatever buckets they had. The National Weather Service later called it nearly eight inches in six hours just north of town. Mount Vernon Creek peaked first, a little after 7 p.m. Bear Creek followed about half an hour later. Together they put a six-foot wall through two blocks of buildings along the creek and three to seven feet of water down main street. The Morrison gage hit 10.6 feet — still the second-highest crest on record, behind only July 7, 1933.

A car between Morrison and Kittredge was swept off the road. Jefferson County later listed seven dead along Bear Creek Canyon that night, including two children who had been expecting a weekend in Evergreen. Statewide, the Sept. 1–3 cloudbursts isolated resort towns from Morrison to the Wyoming line. Hydrologists still put the 1938 footprint next to 2013 and shrug that September is not the quiet month the calendar pretends.

Red Rocks was already there. The flood control came later. The creek did not wait for either.

Sources: NWS / ThorntonWeather — Sept. 2, 1938 cloudburst · NOAA — Bear Creek at Morrison historic crests · CIRES — 1938 and 2013 Front Range floods · Historically Jeffco — 1938 Bear Creek deaths

Denver hits 100 in September for the first time anyone bothered to write down

2019 · Denver International Airport

On Labor Day 2019, Denver International Airport reached 100 degrees just before 4 p.m. It was the first official September triple-digit day in the city's climate record, and the latest 100-degree reading of any calendar year, beating Aug. 16, 2002. The average high for the date is 84.

Sunday had already been rude. Sept. 1, 2019, hit 98 and tied, then passed, the old September monthly record of 97 from 1995. Labor Day decided that was not enough personality.

The official thermometer lives at the airport, which is a long, honest slab of prairie with nowhere for the heat to hide. It broke the daily record before noon. It touched 100 just before 4 p.m. Lamar got to 104. Rocky Mountain Arsenal unofficially saw 101. The city still counts the airport, because that is how climate records keep from becoming arguments in the comments.

The previous latest 100-degree day had been Aug. 16, 2002. September had never done this. The average high for Sept. 2 is about 84, which is the temperature at which a Coloradan will still wear a fleece in the shade and call it fall. Eighteen years earlier, on Sept. 3, 1961, Denver had measured 4.2 inches of snow. That is the same calendar and the same city, and it is why locals pack both sandals and a scraper and refuse to apologize.

If your tomatoes are still going, enjoy them. The hogback has seen both versions of this date.

Sources: Denver Post — first September 100-degree day · Extreme Weather Watch — Denver Sept. 2 records · CPR — Sept. 1, 2019 monthly record