Pueblo-based professor Jonathan Rees searched for the answer to the perpetual question of just how many deaths the Great Flood of 1921 had caused. What he came away with was even more important: a sense of the flood’s impact in shaping the city of Pueblo, even to this day.

Editor's note: As many communities around Colorado reexamine how our public buildings and places are named, we take a look at one man who left his mark on Pueblo. Richard Corwin was an advocate for eugenics and an outsized personality with one of the state’s largest employers. This story is excerpted from Making an American Workforce: The Rockefellers and the Legacy of Ludlow, edited by Fawn-Amber Montoya (University Press of Colorado, 2014).