Colorado history

Saturday, September 12, 2026

Boulder sets a rain record that does not fit in a rain gauge, a Pueblo depot cases its colors after 82 years, and Colorado gets its first Michelin night.

Boulder measures 9.08 inches and breaks a 94-year-old rain record

2013 · Boulder

On Thursday, Sept. 12, 2013, Boulder's official gauge caught 9.08 inches of rain in a calendar day. The old wettest-day mark was 4.80 inches, set July 31, 1919. One Thursday in September nearly doubled every other September Boulder had ever recorded.

The storm had already been sitting on the Front Range for days. On the 12th it refused to move. Matt Kelsch, a NOAA cooperative observer, read the stick at the official Boulder station and wrote down a number that looked like a typo. The previous September record for an entire month was 5.50 inches, in 1940. Thursday alone beat that.

Streams that were already bank-full took the extra water personally. Boulder Creek's evening peak downtown topped the 1969 flood. Flash flooding jumped from the foothills into Aurora and northeast Denver. Overnight, an 80-year-old Lyons resident died when his truck was swept into the St. Vrain. Later on the 12th a 79-year-old woman in Cedar Point was lost trying to climb out of her house.

By Friday the rain would ease and the helicopters would start. Sept. 12 is the day the water set the record. The rest of the week was cleanup, airlifts, and a disaster declaration. The gauge still has the number.

Sources: NCAR/UCAR — Inside the Colorado deluge · NWS Boulder — Sept. 2013 flood briefing · Colorado Encyclopedia — September 2013 Floods

Pueblo cases the depot colors after 82 years of mustard rounds

2024 · Pueblo Chemical Depot

On Sept. 12, 2024, Col. Rodney McCutcheon, the 40th and last commander of the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot, cased the colors. The 23,000-acre post had stored mustard-agent munitions since the early 1950s. The stockpile was gone. The mission was over.

The depot opened in World War II as a supply dump on the plains east of Pueblo. In the 1950s the mission shifted to keeping 2,613 tons of mustard agent in about 780,000 artillery shells and mortar rounds — earth-covered igloos you can still pick out from the International Space Station. Under the Chemical Weapons Convention the Army built a pilot plant on the grounds and started destroying the rounds in 2015. The last munition was gone June 22, 2023.

A year later the Army held a public casing-of-the-colors. McCutcheon handed the site to Chemical Materials Activity-West. PuebloPlex, the local reuse authority, already had thousands of acres for civilian redevelopment. Closure work on the destruction plant continues.

Southern Colorado spent eight decades next to a weapon the country later agreed not to keep. Sept. 12 is the date the flag came down and the igloos became real estate.

Sources: U.S. Army — depot deactivation · Pueblo Chieftain — colors cased · Colorado Public Radio — 82 years

Colorado gets its first Michelin night, in a RiNo room built for bass

2023 · Mission Ballroom, RiNo

On the night of Sept. 12, 2023, the Michelin Guide held its first Colorado ceremony at Mission Ballroom. Five kitchens left with one star: Beckon, Brutø and The Wolf's Tailor in Denver, Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, and Bosq in Aspen. Nobody got two.

Inspectors had been eating anonymously across Denver, Boulder, Aspen, Snowmass, Vail, and Beaver Creek. Chefs packed the RiNo room with the kind of posture you get when a French tire company is about to rearrange your reservation book. Gwendal Poullennec, the guide's international director, called five stars on a debut list an impressive feat and pointed at the Green Stars — sustainability marks for Brutø, The Wolf's Tailor, Blackbelly, and Bramble & Hare.

Kelly Whitaker's group took the loudest night: a star each for Brutø and The Wolf's Tailor, plus a Bib Gourmand for Basta. Frasca, nineteen years into Friuli-by-way-of-Boulder, got the star and the outstanding-service award. Duncan Holmes at Beckon said he wanted to be first to two.

Forty-four places made some tier of the list. Colorado had been cooking without the red book. Sept. 12 is when the book showed up and admitted the state had been doing this for a while.

Sources: Denver Post — five stars · Michelin — first Colorado stars · Axios Denver — Mission Ballroom ceremony