A People’s History of Louisville and Superior

Forged by fire and stone

There is a place where the wind eats the snow. The air is pressurized over the top of a colossal mountain range we call the Rockies before it is released down the other side. Wind gusts violently careen through the pine-forested foothills and crash out onto a land ocean we know as the Great Plains.

It’s the Chinook. This warm winter wind can bring the force of a hurricane down onto the flatlands. It uproots trees, stirs up dust storms, and sends backyard trampolines flying. It can also snap live power lines and breathe life into the dimmest of embers.

On December 30, 2021 the conditions aligned in this environment to create an almost unthinkable catastrophe. An exceptionally dry early winter had turned the grasses of Colorado’s High Plains into brittle tinder. On that late December day, wind gusts were clocked at up to 115 mph at the edge of the Rockies. Multiple ignition points were activated by the winds. Spot fires lit up like blinking Christmas lights and then erupted into wind-driven hell vortexes. Fire crews had no chance to stop the blaze, which seemed to erupt everywhere all at once.

As the winds gusted and shifted, embers darted to new targets, jumping over some homes and businesses only to set others ablaze. Heroic first responders frantically evacuated citizens with only minutes to spare. Some residents took to driving through fields ahead of approaching walls of flame and smoke.

When snow finally blanketed the smoldering neighborhoods the next day, over a thousand homes and seven businesses were burned to the ground. Two people lost their lives. The Marshall Fire was the most destructive in the history of Colorado. Almost all the losses were sustained in the beautiful Colorado towns of Louisville and Superior.