In the late nineteenth century, when Boulder newspaper reporters were hard up for news, they wrote about residents recently committed to the Colorado State Mental Hospital, in Pueblo. Marinus Smith, one of Boulder County’s earliest and most prominent settlers, was one of them.

After the May 31, 1894, flood, the Camera called him a “raving maniac,” and the county court declared him insane. The flood pushed him over the edge.

Sixty hours of continuous rain on top of an unusually heavy snowpack had transformed Boulder Creek into a raging river. Water rushed down Boulder Canyon and twisted the Fourth Street railroad bridge into a semicircle. Wedged timbers in the debris blocked the flow of the stream causing floodwaters to submerge low-lying neighborhoods.

These flood waters completely filled the first floor of Smith’s home, built in 1860 on the north side of Boulder Creek at Grove and 16th streets. Originally from New York state, Smith had arrived in Boulder during the Colorado gold rush, but he wasn’t a miner. Instead, he used his surrounding land to raise fruits and vegetables.

Early in June 1894, after the rains had stopped, the then 75-year-old widower was seen sitting by a second-story window in his frame house. When two men waded up to their necks to save him, he refused to leave.

Fearing for his safety, the Boulder County Sheriff and a party of volunteers then succeeded in forcing Smith out of his house. Afterward, the sheriff placed him in the “insane cell,” in the county jail, located in the basement of the former Boulder County courthouse.There, Smith went on a hunger strike and refused to see his friends. Two days later, he was released, pending a sanity trial.

On June 12, the Camera reported that the court had convened, with the county attorney appearing for the people and a judge representing Smith. His daughter, his physician and the sheriff were witnesses.

After the jury was seated, a reporter noted that Smith had “lucid intervals” where he “laughed just at the right time” and “chuckled intelligently when some of his alleged insane tricks were detailed.”

But, the following day, the jury found him “so distracted in mind as to be unsafe to remain at large.” He was, however, allowed one more day in his home.

When officials knocked on his door, they found him stripped to a loincloth and fearing that he would be crucified. He was returned to the “insane cell” where he constructed a make-shift altar.

Smith did spend a few years in the mental hospital, then was returned to Boulder and allowed to live out his final days in his old home.

Surprisingly, it had survived the flood, and the surrounding property had blossomed into “a wild paradise of shrubbery, fruit, and shade trees.”

Smith died in 1901 and is buried next to his wife in Boulder’s Columbia Cemetery.

His house was torn down in 1934. Today, nothing remains, even of his gardens, although Marine Street is named in his honor.

Those who study the origins of words know that the name “Marinus” and “Marine” are derived from “of, or pertaining to, the sea.” Marinus Smith was, after all, a survivor.