On Nov. 11, 1918, Denver’s closures due to influenza were lifted for much of the city and communities across the United States celebrated Armistice Day. Thousands of Denverites thronged the streets, hotels, and other buildings, celebrating the war’s end. Over 8,000 attended a celebration at the city auditorium alone.

Health authorities realized that such crowding was likely to result in a new surge in influenza cases. They also acknowledged that there was little they could do to prevent it. In the days after the Victory Day celebrations, physicians reported increasingly large daily tallies for new cases. A week after the event, Denver was experiencing a hundred new cases and a dozen or more deaths per day.