Monday, November 9, 2026

Florence Rena Sabin is born in a Central City mining camp and eventually makes Colorado’s politicians explain themselves

1871 · Central City

Born November 9, 1871, in Central City to a mining engineer and a schoolteacher, Sabin becomes the first woman full professor at Johns Hopkins, the first woman in the National Academy of Sciences, and, after retirement, the force behind the Sabin Health Laws that drag Colorado’s public health out of 1876.

Florence Rena Sabin arrives on November 9, 1871, in a frame house on a hillside in Central City, Colorado Territory. Her father is a mining engineer; her mother is a schoolteacher who dies of puerperal fever on Florence’s seventh birthday. The girls bounce between relatives and boarding schools in Denver, Chicago, and Vermont, then Smith College, then Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where she is one of fourteen women in a class of forty-five.

She becomes the first woman to hold a full professorship at Hopkins (1917), the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1925), and the first woman to head a department at the Rockefeller Institute. Her work on the lymphatic system and tuberculosis is the real thing, not a participation trophy.

She retires to Denver in 1938 to live with her sister. In 1944 Governor John Vivian asks the “innocuous little old lady” to chair a health subcommittee, apparently hoping she will smile and go away. She visits all 63 counties, finds people dying at twice the rate of other states from preventable causes, and notices the health laws have not been meaningfully updated since statehood. She works the legislators’ spouses, refuses to let a snowstorm cancel a speech, and gets the Sabin Health Laws through in 1947. The laws professionalize public health, expand tuberculosis beds, and take the subject out of pure political patronage.

She later serves as Denver’s manager of health and charities, donating her salary to research. She dies in Denver on October 3, 1953. Colorado puts her statue in the U.S. Capitol. The state still has the Sabin Health Laws. Not a bad haul for a birthday that started in a mining camp with a water tank and two barrels.

If you are in Central City today, the hillside is still there. The house is long gone. The idea that health should not be left entirely to politicians is still around, which is either comforting or deeply ironic depending on the week.

Sources: Wikipedia: Florence R. Sabin · Denver Public Library: Dr. Florence Sabin · Colorado Encyclopedia

November 9 in Denver: 77°F in 2019, 0°F in 1950, and 7.7 inches of snow in 1946

2019 · Denver

Denver’s all-time high for the date is 77°F (2019). The all-time low is 0°F (1950). Most snow on the date is 7.7 inches, which fell in 1946 as the second punch of that month’s legendary early storm.

November 9 is one of those Denver dates that refuses to pick a personality.

In 2019 the high reaches 77°F, the warmest ever recorded on the date. In 1950 the low hits 0°F and the high only manages 15°F. Most precipitation is 0.57 inches (1985); most snow is 7.7 inches (1946).

That 1946 snow is the encore. The big storm of November 2–5 has already dropped roughly 30 inches downtown and 31 at Stapleton. Then on the 9th another 7.7 inches arrives over downtown, the second heavy fall in less than a week. Schools are closed, cars are abandoned, and secondary roads stay blocked for days. It is the kind of November that makes people check the calendar twice.

Average for the date is a high near 55°F and a low near 28°F. The chance of snow is real but not guaranteed. In other words: dress for the version of November 9 that shows up, not the one you planned for. Colorado has been doing this since at least 1872, and it has not gotten bored yet.

Sources: Extreme Weather Watch: Denver November 9 · Thornton Weather: This Week in Denver Weather History