The Great Pueblo Flood

         Multi-story mural seen along Main St & 2nd in Pueblo, Colorado - signed Refic Strescino 2013

   Pueblo, Colorado is approx. 110 miles south of Denver, and is in an odd area geographically. It is situated at the confluence of the Arkansas river and Fountain creek in a region referred to as the Banana Belt of Colorado, which is a bit warmer and drier than the majority of the state, and gets very little precipitation of any kind - approx. 12 inches of rain & snow combined annually.

   Which makes the fact that there was a huge flood in 1921 that nearly wiped out the entire town quite an exceptional freak occurrence.

   The mural above looks like an exaggeration of the event's scale & scope, but from what the Southern Colorado Heritage Museum has on record, it is not.

   The horse stuck in the tree was not a real horse - it was a life sized papier mache horse, and it was found stuck way up in a tree 15 miles east of where it was originally located, R.T. Frazier's Saddle Shop, which was in the building that the mural was painted on until 1958. 

   When the papier mache horse was found (after the floodwaters had subsided), the only noticeable damage was to the horse's ears. That damage was repaired by Kittie Frazier, R.T.'s wife. 

   The horse was put back into service as a display model for saddles and other tack after the repairs were completed. When the Frazier's shut down their store, Fred McConnell bought the horse and featured it in his store, Mack's Saddlery. A fire destroyed the building housing Mack's Saddlery in 1989, and the papier mache horse survived that, too.

   The horse can currently be see at the Southern Colorado Heritage Museum in Pueblo. The name of the horse? Lucky, of course.