I moved to Boulder from my home town of Louisville, Kentucky in the summer of 1973, one year out of college and restless to see the West. For some, 35 years here makes me an “old-timer,” but for others who’ve experienced much more of Boulder’s 150 years of history, I guess I’m still just a young “whipper snapper.
Boulder has packed in a lot in 150 years, starting with a group of Nebraska prospectors, led by Captain Thomas Aikins in late 1858. His party was headed to Cherry Creek but viewing the mountains near what is now Boulder, he said, “The mountains look right for gold, and the valleys look good for grazing.”
Their men set up camp in the red sandstone cliffs at the mouth of Boulder Canyon, as the story is told in “Red Rocks to Riches” by Boulder historian Silvia Pettem. They called their camp Red Rocks. Today, you can still hike and climb through that scenic formation, with a great view of the city below. North of them was a camp of the Arapahoes, Boulder’s first residents.
Among Aikins’ men, who built several small cabins to hold over for the winter, was Alfred A. Brookfield. It wasn’t long until Brookfield and a group of 56 shareholders established the Boulder City Town Company on Feb. 10, 1859, laying out more than 4,000 city lots priced at $1,000 each, a price that later was reduced.
When I volunteered to help the Boulder Sesquicentennial Celebration Committee, I didn’t realize how much I would enjoy learning more about the city’s history.
I picked up several books, like “Western Yesterdays” by Forest Crossen and “The Boulder Story” by Maurice Frink, in local used bookstores. I ordered the out-of-print mining history by Pettem from Amazon and bought her newest book packed with now and then photos, “Boulder, Evolution of a City.”
When the Business Report asked me to write an introduction for this Sesquicentennial special issue, I knew I couldn’t even scrape the surface of stories of early stagecoach stops in the canyon, the dreams and heartbreaks of early gold and silver miners, not to mention the University of Colorado’s colorful history here since it accepted its first students in 1877 and Boulder’s post-World War II history of business growth, spurred by the 1954 opening of the National Bureau of Standards (now National Institute of Standards and Technology.)
We’re fortunate in Boulder because so much of the city’s history still surrounds us, including the stately homes in the Mapleton neighborhood (1019 Spruce St. is considered the city’s oldest house.) If you’ve never attended the annual home tours by Historic Boulder, you’re missing some great architecture. On a sunny afternoon, consider a weekend bike ride or drive through the historic mining town of Wall Street up Four Mile Canyon. In the summer, you can visit the historic James F. Baily Assay Office museum there.
Recently, Peter Pollock, former Boulder city planner who’s now planning events for the Sesquicentennial, lent me his collection of hundreds of vintage Boulder post cards.
As I looked through the folders holding them, I realized much of Boulder’s history, and especially its well-known landmarks, was captured in these color and black and white cards. Some had been mailed to relatives back home with notes like a 1951 card showing “Boulder Cañon”: “I really like it here. I guess am going here this fall, too.” Each card is a 3 ½” by 5 ½” inch piece of the city’s timeline.
Many of the cards show places that no doubt you take family or visitors. Boulder Falls, the Flatiron formations, the panoramic “birds-eye” view of the city from Flagstaff Mountain. Like early residents who enjoyed the scenery and hiking, too, there was the annual public hike sponsored by the Chamber to Arapaho Peak and Glacier.
The early post cards of Chautauqua are striking. The Chautauqua, now a national historic landmark, opened on July 4, 1898 for its first summer season, with the auditorium and dining hall the first buildings; those traveling to the Chautauqua, some from as far away as Texas, stayed in 100 tents on the grounds before cottages were built.
Today, the dining hall is a year-round favorite of locals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, especially the seats on the wrap-around porch. A full season of concerts, silent films and sing-alongs pack the nearby auditorium. Colorado Chautauqua today is one of only three remaining chautauquas in the U.S.
One post card shows a paved highway coming in from the east, with the view of the snow-covered Indian Peaks and Longs Peak above the foothills. It’s views like these, and the easy access to wilderness areas and Rocky Mountain National Park, that have made Chief Niwot’s words, or curse as some say, so real. “People seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay.”
Old post cards offer glimpses of early downtown Boulder and many of its historic buildings. There’s a night scene of the Boulderado with a full moon, and another showing a large sign with the hotel’s name on the top floor of the southeast corner. Post cards have artists’ drawings of the original Victorian-style Boulder County Courthouse, built in 1882 but destroyed in a fire in 1932.
Its walls were torn down to make way for a new Art Deco-style courthouse, built in 1933. Today it presides over the Pearl Street Mall, its lawn a gathering spot where drummers play on summer afternoons for tourists. The Art Deco-style Boulder Theater, which opened in 1936 and is home to concerts and Boulder’s Etown radio show, was inspired by the courthouse architecture.
I enjoy taking friends to Boulder’s downtown pedestrian mall, completed in 1977, to watch street buskers vying for attention on summer evenings, so I enjoyed the cards of early downtown Pearl Street scenes and businesses. Model T’s parked in front of stores, with American flags flying from downtown rooftops.
The University of Colorado, of course, is home to so much Boulder history, from its first female professor, Mary Rippon, in 1878, to its first Nobel Prize winner, Tom Cech, who shared the prize for chemistry in 1989.
One post card shows the ornate Macky Auditorium, completed in 1922 after 13 years of construction, with the flatirons in the backdrop. Now we’re entertained there by the Boulder Philharmonic, the travel film series and numerous events and performances. I briefly taught a class at Macky in the mid-‘80s when the journalism school was housed there.
The post cards, of course, show many of Boulder’s historic churches downtown – First Congregational, First Presbyterian, First Methodist, First Baptist and Sacred Heart. Until I looked over the cards, I hadn’t really thought about how important it is to be “first.”
There are other “firsts” I’ll always associate with Boulder history, particularly in my years here. The first Red Zinger bike race in 1975; the Danish Plan in 1976, one of the first cities to actually limit growth; the first Bolder Boulder in 1979; Boulder was the first city in Colorado to enact a smoking ban in 1996; and all of us pet owners became the first pet “guardians” in 2000. I remember 1980, when Newsweek published “Boulder: Where the Hip Meet to Trip.”
Boulder’s Sesquicentennial gives all of us an opportunity for a yearlong history lesson, and schools will be adding special lessons on the city’s past. Information and a calendar of 2009 events, including the July 4 Sesquicentennial Stroll, are online at www.Boulder150.com. You can even purchase Boulder 150 merchandise, everything from t-shirts to Frisbees and an informative 2009 calendar with past and present photos of downtown landmarks, from the Web site.
Comments