The Blizzard of April 1920

The Blizzard of April 1920 hit Berthoud and its northern Colorado neighbors hard. Following the storm the Berthoud Bulletin reported, “Beginning early Saturday morning and raging all of Saturday, Saturday night and Sunday, and intermittently Sunday night, the worst April snow storm in thirty-five years put practically all of northern Colorado under from two and one-half to three feet of snow—and for two days almost paralyzed traffic. The work of ‘digging out’ started as soon as the storm ceased, and by Monday afternoon things had begun to move once more. The 4:27 train got as far north as Longmont Saturday, and was blocked there till Monday afternoon, when a snow plow, backed by three locomotives, drove through from Denver to Fort Collins and released it. Saturday afternoon’s train, southbound, was able to come out Monday afternoon.  A train direct from Denver reached Berthoud about eleven Monday night, bringing a big lot of mail.

“The roads leading into town were almost impassable, but a few hardy souls bucked the drifts on horseback. The high winds made some huge drifts around the town—especially on Massachusetts Avenue, from the Grand View to the depot corner. In places the piled snow was better than seven feet deep. Plenty of pictures have been made of the deep cut through the bank between May & Pollock’s and the Davis-Brown-McAllaster store—souvenirs of the biggest snow storm ever seen by the present generation—and surpassed only by the snow of December, 1913, which was four feet deep on the level, but it was not drifted so badly…”