In late 1918, the Spanish flu advanced towards the farming and mining town of Gunnison, Colorado. The town was afraid because two railroads connected it to Denver and other population centers that were hit hard. “The flu is after us” the Gunnison News-Champion warned in October. Town officials declared “a quarantine against all the world” and erected barricades, sequestered visitors, arrested violators, closed schools and churches, and banned parties and street gatherings. The lockdown, which lasted four months, worked. Gunnison emerged without a single case. Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore (1917-1925), a tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family (see NOVELS).
