The Blackest Week: A pandemic comes to Colorado's high country--in 1918

The "Spanish Flu" killed 10% of Silverton's population

Editor’s Note: I was really hoping this piece, excerpted and adapted from River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster, would lose its relevance. But as each successive wave of the COVID pandemic crashes down on the globe, and as the politicization of public health grows ever more egregious, it becomes clear t…