Pueblo pizzeria Angelo s is thriving on the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk chieftain.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from chieftain.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
The Riverwalk in downtown Pueblo, on Wednesday, May 26, 2021. The Riverwalk grew out an area of the city destroyed the Arkansas River when it flooded in 1921. In the aftermath, the city redirected the Arkansas around the city to the south.
A century ago the Arkansas River flowed through Pueblo in the channel that is now the HARP, or the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk of Pueblo. In 1921, swollen by rain and snowmelt, the river overtopped its levees and roared through the low-lying areas of downtown Pueblo, taking the lives of hundreds of people, leaving a 300 square mile swath of destruction and changing the course of the city’s history.
When Pueblo leaders speak about the effects of the Great Flood of 1921, they tend to repeat one word: resilience.
“Pueblo has a proud history. It was built by people who came all over the world to make the steel that built the American West,” Mayor Nick Gradisar said during an event commemorating the anniversary along the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk on June 2.
“They were frugal, hardworking people and just as they were beginning to accumulate many of the new things that they’d left behind when they came to Pueblo to build a new life for themselves, they were wiped out by the 1921 flood.