From the Douglas County News May 10, 1973:

Storm Hard on Roads and Bridges
The heavy rain on Saturday night May 5th, and Sunday May 6th, on top of land that was already saturated from winter snow melt caused lots of personal problems. Almost everybody you talk to was affected in some way, ranging from difficult driving conditions to no phones, no electricity, wet basements or actual flooding.

Schools had problems because buses couldn’t get to students or the schools had no electricity or no fuel.

The worse damage occurred on roads and bridges and many in the county were rendered useless. Electricity was out in the Franktown area for almost 20 hours and there was flooding of fields and homes in the low living areas.

When I was out taking pictures of bridges, I ran caross a young couple on Haystack Road trying to carry groceries home. The road around the bridge was gone but the guard rail still crossed the area so the husband was doing a neat balancing act across the top of the guard rail.

We have a small creek that runs across our road that we normally drive across with no problems since it is about three feet wide and three inches deep. Today it is 30 feet wide and 3 feet deep. We have a car on each side, but the only way across is to wade and hope you don’t fall down in the soft sand.

These examples are not unusual and there are a lot of unsung heroes in the county including the line men who had to work during the storm to try to restore electricity and the road crews who are just starting to replace all the broken pavement and lost bridges.