University History - 1997 Flood

Academic Offices Annihilated

Published July 2007

Directly east of the library, water inundated the Eddy Hall and Education Building basements from floor to ceiling. At Eddy offices of two academic departments — Philosophy, and Foreign Languages and Literatures — were annihilated, including a newly equipped, computerized language laboratory.

Photo of bicyclist riding through flood water west of Eddy buidlding.

Water surrounds the Eddy Building on July 29, 1997.

Irreplaceable materials lost

Some faculty lost irreplaceable teaching and research material compiled over a professional lifetime. Asian philosophy Professor Jim Boyd lost audio recordings of Buddhist devotional chants, videos of Shinto rituals, painted tapestries, and wood musical instruments collected over many years during travels to Morocco, Iran, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Turkey, India, Tibet, and Japan. "When students stepped into my office, they knew they were in Asia," he said.

Floor-to-ceiling destruction

Boyd’s colleague and friend in the philosophy department, Ron Williams, incurred perhaps even greater losses: "Some people wondered how I could possibly have stored 2,200 books in my office, but I made special floor-to-ceiling bookshelves for them," he said. "About 80 percent of my books submerged in the flood are out of print. Others were large-format art books with color plates."

Also destroyed were three filing cabinets filled with decades of teaching and research notes, and student files.

More about the flood

Historical accounts in this series of articles, were compiled and edited from Democracy's University - A History of Colorado State University 1970-2003, written by James E. Hansen II (University Press of Colorado, 2007).

To order a book, call (970) 491-6198, e-mail Resource.Center@ucm.colostate.edu or visit 115 General Services Building on Colorado State’s main campus. Cost is $27, not including tax or shipping. The books are also available at the CSU Bookstore in the Lory Student Center.