How do we know where we are? Just seeing our surroundings is not enough. Edward Said pointed out in Orientalism that assumptions unavoidably intervene between observation and meaning. If you assume that something you see is representative, you include it in your impression. If you assume it is not representative, you discount and discard it.
Almost every village in England has walking tours, with leaflets to tell you which path to take to see the dolmen and the ruined Norman keep, and the church has a leaflet telling you the history of the parish. London's blue plaques bring an interior past out and up to the surface of the street frontage. Signs along Boulder's creek path do the same kind of thing. But there can't be enough signs.
Boulder today is beautiful. It's not uncommon to meet someone who could live anywhere in the world, and has chosen Boulder. A good deal of the beauty is fundamental, like the sunlight, and owes nothing to people's actions other than restraint. But a good deal is historical, representing particular accomplishments or restitutions. The withering away of the rank growths of exploitive commerce, as well as of some things that are nostalgic for those who know of them, has been important. Most of this history can't be seen at all, or crops out only in small things, in places you have to know about to find.
I hope to help with this. To be helpful, my descriptions need to be accurate, and I will be very grateful for any corrections or suggestions for additions, sent to claytonhalllewis at gmail dot com.
Note: I intend to add to this Guide as time permits. Please forgive a few dangling forward references in this portion.
--Clayton Lewis, September, 2005
Start at Settlers' Park.
Settlers' Park is on the north side of Canyon Boulevard, near the west end of Pearl Street. (To orient yourself in Boulder, keep in mind that the mountains are to the west of town. If you face west, south is to your left, north to your right, and east behind you.) Walk uphill toward the base of the rocks, and look for a memorial plaque.
The first permanent European settlers in Boulder made camp here in the Fall of 1858. They were part of a party of gold seekers from Nebraska City, south of Omaha, who were headed down the South Platte to Cherry Creek, in what is now Denver, where gold had been discovered that summer. At Fort St. Vrain, about 30 miles northeast of here, Captain Thomas Aikins, one of the leaders, scanned the Boulder area through field glasses and thought it looked promising. He led about 20 of the party up the South St. Vrain river, and thence up Boulder creek to this site.
Just to the north was an encampment of Arapahoes, including Chief Niwot ("left handed", in Arapahoe, whence his English name "Lefthand"). Accounts vary as to the cordiality or hostility in the first conversations between Niwot, who could speak English, other Arapahoe leaders, and Aikins, who could speak some Arapahoe. The Arapahoe knew full well that the whites would kill game and start fires, but, as Aikins recalled, Niwot recounted a prophecy that the white men would soon be as numerous as the falling stars in a meteor shower, and felt that accommodation was necessary. He gave the party permission to stay through the winter, and anyway Aikins assured him his party had no intention of remaining permanently (very likely true at the time, as the ambition of the gold seekers was to get rich and go home.) Aikins and company laid on a feast of roast ox, and stayed.
The party built a cabin enclosing a spring near the rocks to ensure a defensible source of water if the Arapahoe changed their minds, and more cabins to live in along what is now Pearl Street, just to the east. And they began prospecting in Boulder Creek and its tributaries, panning for particles of gold. They found enough to be encouraged, and the following January they made a substantial find in Gold Run, near what is now Gold Hill, about ten miles west, up in the hills.
Gold in the streams is eroded from gold-bearing rock, and by spring the prospectors had located the first rich veins in Gold Hill. Boulder grew up here at the head of wagon navigation , as Albert Brookfield, co-leader of the original party of prospectors put it, to supply lumber, hay, vegetables to the mining towns that grew up at Gold Hill and many other sites scattered through the hills.
As you stand by the plaque and look to the south, the prominent hill in front of you is Flagstaff Mountain. You will probably be able to see the flag that is flown daily from a pole erected in 1918. You ll see a few houses on its lower slopes, and the Flagstaff House restaurant farther up. Building in this and similar areas is restricted by Boulder s Blue Line policy, which withholds city services from the area outside an imaginary contour. This policy, established in 1959, is one of many efforts to preserve at least parts of the natural setting that residents and visitors find so appealing.
Follow the path up the hill next to the rocks. Depending on the season, you may see or here a seep of water in the draw to your right, perhaps from the spring the settlers used. Continue climbing until you reach a bench at top of the slope beneath the main body of the rocks.
The Red Rocks themselves are part of the Fountain formation, forming an intermittent ridge running for many miles north and south just east of the foothills. Material eroded from an earlier edition of the Rocky Mountains, to the west, was deposited at the edge of the hills, and compacted by the vast weight of later sediments into a very hard rock layer. As mountains were pushed up again just to west, this hard layer, and softer ones below and above it, were broken and tilted sharply upward. The softer layers eroded away, leaving plates of the harder Fountain rocks exposed. Seen from the side, these rocks appear as pinnacles and spires, similar to those seen in postcards of the famous Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. But walking around them reveals their true slab form.
At hand and to the west you are seeing the characteristic flora of the foothills, dominated by ponderosa pines. Pasque flowers bloom near the base of the rocks in early spring, with other flowers brigthtening the scene most months of the year. High on the rocks you can see the white stain that marks a cavity in which birds nest.
In the populated view to the east nearly every tree is the product of human effort. Only in the creek beds do trees occur naturally in this setting, as old photographs attest. And most of these trees are ones that don't occur naturally here at all. In the whole gigantic state of Colorado, with its many life zones, there are less than a dozen species of native deciduous trees. If you stand just in front of the bench, to clear the pines, and look to the left (north), you can see Rabbit Mountain extending eastward from the main line of hills. Closer to you is Table Mountain, site of an antenna farm operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology as part of its research program in radio transmission. The conspicuous conical hill is Haystack Mountain, at the foot of which is Haystack Mountain Dairy, suppliers of delicious goats milk cheese.
The conspicuous chimney visible in the middle ground to the north is the former Colorado Sanitarium, founded in 1896, a branch of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, where Dr. J.H. Kellogg, the cold cereal exponent, was medical officer. The peak above is Mt Sanitas, or Mt Health , translating the Latin. The cool, dry air of Colorado made Colorado a place of refuge for people suffering from respiratory diseases, and one such visitor was Elder John Fulton of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. He was so favorably impressed by conditions in Boulder that he recommended to the church, the organization that created the Battle Creek Sanitarium, that it establish a branch here. The Church operated the facility, which was expanded into a full-service hospital, until 1989, when it was acquired by Boulder Community Hospital.
Apart from operating the sanitarium, the Seventh Day Adventists were and are active in the Boulder community. Amy Dartt, an Adventist temperance advocate, came to Boulder in 1871, and the first Adventist church was established here in 1879. In 1897 Adventists protested references to God in The American Patriotic Salute , then required in public schools; their children were expelled when they did not participate. The Adventists responded by creating their own schools, the last of which, Boulder Junior Academy, moved east to a new campus in Erie and became Vista Ridge Academy in 2004.
Directly to the east, straight ahead from the bench, you can see Valmont Butte. In the early days of Boulder the farming community at the base of the butte challenged Boulder for regional leadership; today an old school house in a scatter of houses remains to mark the village center. South (right) of the butte you can see Valmont Reservoir, which provides cooling water for the conspicuous power plant at its edge. Though the land there appears flat from here, there is a considerable hill just south of the reservoir, topped by Legion Park, which offers one of the finest views of Boulder and the mountains (the park entrance is on the north side of Arapahoe Avenue east of town.)
Further to the south is the diagonal stripe of Highway 36, climbing Davidson Mesa on its way to Denver. Built as a tollroad in 1950, and still often called the Boulder-Denver Turnpike, this is the main artery connecting Boulder to the metropolis. Good bus service eases the ordeal of many commuters on this route, and someday perhaps a rail system will again connect Boulder, Denver, and towns between, as it did from 1874 to 1967.
Between the reservoir and the highway you can see the red tile roofs of the University of Colorado campus. The roofs are part of the campus design guidelines, which call for natural stone facings and tile roofs, following the style of the hill towns of northern Italy. The style was proposed in 1920 by the architectural firm of Day and Klauder, who were retained by the regents of the university of prepare a collegiate gothic design for the campus, following the model of Mackey Auditorium, designed in that then-popular style in 1909 (but not completed until 1922). The lead architect, Charles Klauder, felt that the Italian style would better suit the setting, and posterity has been grateful to him.
As you return down the slope towards Settlers Park, the hill that looms above the Red Rocks to the west is Anemone Hill. A steep clamber up that slope, and an easier walk westward through the trees, will give you a view of the high peaks along the continental divide.
...by heading down the slope to the paved path at the foot. Turn right (west) along this path.
To your left you see the Farmer s Ditch, one of several built to carry the water of Boulder Creek out to farms to the east. The first of these was built in 1862, and under Colorado s system of water rights it is one of the most senior in the state. (When water is short in a stream it belongs first to the holders of the most senior, first-established rights; only when their claim has been filled, if there is enough water to do so, is any water available to holders of more junior rights.) The City of Boulder drew water directly from Boulder Creek in the early days, but mining activity upstream made the water unsuitable. In 1929 the city acquired the rights to the Arapahoe Glacier and nearby watershed, 20 miles to the west. A water fountain in the Boulderado Hotel downtown still carries a written reminder of this remarkable source.
Straddling the ditch is a green metal shed. This protects a ditch gate, a movable barrier that can be used to restrict flow in the ditch.
On your right is a plaque remembering Ray and Eunice Cornell, long-time residents of 101 Pearl Street, the property behind the plaque.
Notice what happens, or does not happen, to the ditch as the path descends to pass under Canyon Boulevard. You can see the ditch on each side of the path (if you investigate), but what happens in between? It must cross under the path in a siphon.
Pause on the bridge over Boulder Creek to enjoy the view of the water, ice, swimming dogs, and kayakers (depending on the season). While this may appear to be a completely natural scene (apart from the presence of the bridge itself), in fact the creek has been extensively reconfigured by people, most recently in the 1980's, when the creek bed was sculpted to improve conditions for kayakers and trout. In its natural state Boulder Creek did not have a well-defined channel, as it does today, but rather was a "braided stream", a network of many small channels flowing over a wide bed of easily-displaced gravel.
Cross the bridge and notice the plaque commemorating Eben G. Fine, for whom the park you are entering was named. Fine was an early-day booster for Boulder, who was sponsored by railroad interests in travels across the US, showing lantern slides of his photos of the beauty of the Boulder area. The park was originally the Auto Camp Ground, opened in 1921 to accommodate car camping, the popularity of which was growing at that time. Like many other Boulder amenities, the campground was a gift to the city from civic organizations. The two buildings were part of the Auto Camp, which included facilities for cooking and laundry.
Continue past the Eben Fine plaque and go straight ahead to the stone commemorating the Arapahoe improvement project. This project included rerouting Arapahoe Avenue, the street that passes the park on the south, making a segment of it one-way to restrict through traffic, and building the trail underpass you just used. The City Government responded to input from many residents and businesses along Arapahoe and diverted traffic onto Canyon Boulevard, now the major entry to town from the west. The signatures on the base of the marker include Mayor Leslie Durgin, then- State Senator Sandy Hume, long-time residents Ed and Joyce Heath, and former Olympic gymnast Sid Freudenstein, another long-time resident, who was one of the leaders of the citizen initiative.
Retrace your steps toward the creek and turn right (east) along the paved path.
While camping is no longer permitted, Eben G. Fine is still a major tourist destination, now drawing a regional rather than national clientele. People come from all of the Denver metropolitan area to enjoy tubing or for picnics of community or family groups.
As you approach the bridge at the east end of the park, notice the large boulders near the creek bank. In 1924 there was a foot bridge near this spot, giving access for the Auto campers to Pearl Street on the north side of the creek. Near this location, on the north side of the creek, was the Yount Flour Mill, rebuilt from a smaller predecessor structure in 1877. The Yount mill was operated for many years by Mrs E B Yount, a respected businesswoman. You may be able to see some blocks of masonry, perhaps from this mill, on the far side of the creek.
Take a moment to get your bearings from the map of the Boulder Creek Path, before crossing the bridge.
Cross the bridge. A short distance past the end of the iron railing, the unpaved footpath bears right, while the paved bike path continues straight ahead. Stop just BEFORE this fork in the path. Though only a few traces remain, you are now entering what was an active industrial area from the early days of Boulder until the 1920's. Under the trees on the creek bank to your right, look for the remains of a headgate, a structure that allowed water from the creek to be diverted into a canal along the north bank. This canal, now filled in, supplied water to a large complex of ore processing mills, extending for several blocks along the north side of the creek. The mill complex was also served by a railroad. The view at this spot, in 1900, could hardly be more different from what you see today, with the yuppie amenity of the creek path replaced by industrial canals and railroad spurs, and the park-like landscape replaced by large mills, with belching smokestacks. On the site of the green building visible across Canyon, and a bit to the west, now occupied by the Watershed School, stood the Luckie Two mill, with the Marshall mill to the west. Other mills lined the creek ahead, and spread over the level ground to the north. Take a moment to try to imagine the scene.
BEAR RIGHT on the unpaved footpath along the creek when the path forks. Continue across the second small bridge (unmarked, often dry; I think this is Sunshine Creek, which forms a real canyon west of Mapleton Hill) to a picnic table on your right. Across the creek, a little your right, and hard to see through summer foliage, is a house in Queen Ann style, old enough to be a historic landmark. It originally stood on Broadway in North Boulder, but was relocated here in 1989 to anchor a small upscale housing development, taking in the condos you passed upstream, and several new houses downstream. The development occupies the former site of the Trail s End Motel, one of some 13 motels that once operated along Arapahoe Avenue near the mouth of Boulder Canyon. Two motels are still in operation, including the attractive Foot o the Mountain, with its comfortable log cabins. Several others have been converted to other uses, but can still be identified if you look for them.
Before the Trail's End Motel was built this was the site of Bleecker and Company s luminous paint and time bomb factory. Here radioactive, luminous paint was manufactured for use on watch faces and the like. Radium salts, one of the county s mineral products, and originally a byproduct of processing other ores, were the active ingredient. The time bombs produced at the same site were lowered into oil wells, so that they would break up rock and increase the flow of oil when they exploded. The pre-time bomb method involved wires connected to the explosive charges, which often broke when the well casing was withdrawn prior to detonation. In 1934 the operation was moved to Tulsa, OK, to take advantage of generous incentives offered by that city, and to save freight for customers in the Oklahoma oil patch. Many newcomers and visitors to Boulder do not realize that this area has its own oil patch, located east of town (or that the county also had an important coal field, southeast of Boulder.)
Warren Bleecker, proprietor of Bleecker and Company, was active on many other fronts, as well. He invented a board game that he hoped would be the next big thing after the Mah Jong craze of the 20's (it didn't catch on) and a fluid for cleaning tobacco pipes. A 1903 graduate of the University of Colorado, who also studied at MIT, he taught science at State Prep, a precursor of Boulder High. He also was active in Republican politics, and served in the state legislature.
Continue along the path, and watch for a large boulder on the left, with eyelets embedded in it. Nearby, down the creek bank a little to the west, you can see a rusted girder extending toward the creek to a stone pier. These are remains of a framework that suspended a water main where it crossed the creek, carrying water to developments south of the center of town.
Continue along the path, watching for a bench on the right. Opposite the bench, on the north side of the path, notice the remains of a small orchard, with several apple trees. If you wish, you can walk between these trees, watching for an evergreen tree, next to a large boulder with a conspicuous stripe on it. About ten feet southeast of the evergreen, look amongst the grass for a strip of cement, just showing above the ground. Where you are now standing is the site of the Boyd Smelter, built by former coffin maker James Boyd. It was the first to operate in Boulder, starting around 1875. Its extensive foundations, and parts of its walls, still exist under the ground, and the site was given landmark protection in 1998 to preserve the remains for future archaeological investigation.
Go back to the path and take a seat on the bench. A little upstream, atop the high bank, is the author's back yard. Today, in this area where city meets foothills wildlife is abundant. Mule deer are a common, and to gardeners, irritating sight, even in broad daylight. Mountain lions, so rare twenty years ago that their presence in the area was considered doubtful, are now seen from time to time right in town, including in this yard. Black bears come to the apple trees in the yard when food is scarce in the hills. Foxes patrol the neighborhood on a regular schedule at dawn and dusk. Coyotes can sometimes be heard yapping on the lower slopes of Flagstaff Mountain, beyond the houses to the south of the creek. A hundred years ago the narrow gauge railroad ran through this yard, and spikes and lumps of coal turn up from time to time in the flower beds.
If you scan the creek bed in this area you may find some distinctive traces of the operation of the operations of the mills along here. Look for unusual dark stones, that on examination prove to have the smooth, symmetrical shape of the inside of a bucket or kettle. These are lumps of slag, created when molten waste material was poured into containers and left to cool and harden.
Boulder's mills processed a variety of ores over the years, first gold, then silver, and then tungsten from mines near Nederland. Many of the ores contained radioactive materials (whence the Bleecker luminous paint business), and it is said that the tailings that lie buried near the creek will still get a lively rise from a Geiger counter.
Residents of houses that back up to creek along here found that the creek bank was a convenient place to dispose of trash, and the south bank today consists of a mixture of rubbish and soil. This disposal practice was perhaps more understandable when the railroad ran along the creek, and the mills whose remains we are treading on were in full swing.
Remarkably, a farseeing visitor to Boulder in 1908 saw the mills and the rubbish and had a vision of a future scene much like that we enjoy today. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., son of the influential architect of Manhattan's Central park, was himself a prominent landscape architect and consultant who was twice retained to advise Boulder on its development. In his 1910 report, funded by the City Improvement Association of Boulder (one of those civic organizations to which Boulder owes so much), he wrote, Very likely people in Boulder have got so accustomed to thinking of the creek and its banks as a place to throw tin cans and rubbish that it may require too great a feat of the imagination to conceive of it as a pretty, shady spot with a clean, well-kept park running beside the murmuring waters, but as a matter of fact such an ideal is quite easily attainable (p. 68)." Although he did not realize how long it would take the citizens of Boulder to realize his vision, he did perceive the special disposition of Boulder people that eventually brought it to fruition: ...The main lookout of the citizens [of Boulder] is not how to make money as quickly as possible so as to go somewhere else to enjoy life, but how to get as much satisfaction out of life as they can in a very agreeable locality without the expenditure of more money than they are able to command while continuing to lead a satisfactory life (p. 5). Not all of Olmsted's suggestions have been adopted. In addition to the creek path, which we are enjoying, he recommended a drive along the bluff that rises to the south of the creek some blocks east of where we are now, on the edge of the University of Colorado campus. The view from this eminence is still there, but there is no drive from which to enjoy it.
Low on the creekbank, directly opposite the bench, and just above the water, you can see a row of large stone blocks. This was the southern abutment of a trestle that carried the narrow gauge railroad across the creek. The trestle crossed at a shallow angle, so that the abutment on your side of the creek was quite a distance downstream. I've not been able to locate it. The trestle, and much else, was destroyed in the flood of 1894 (see below), and rebuilt for another twenty-five years' service.
Continue along the path, watching for an opening in the trees on your left, leading to a plaque. This provides useful advice about living with mountain lions. You can continue along the paved path from here, or return to the unpaved path along the creek.
Whichever path you choose, you can see a wall running along to your left. This hides the rear parking area of the Boulder County Justice Center. While the Art Deco "courthouse" on the Pearl Street Mall houses many county offices, the active courts are actually in this building, erected in 1976 and expanded in 2004. The Justice Center is only the latest occupant of a site layered with succeeding uses. The Kilton Gold Extraction works occupied the west end of the site from 1885 until it burned in 1907, and the Mann fluorspar mill (producing a mineral with many uses) stood on the northeast corner of the site. During the depression years a camp of the Civilian Conservation Corps was here, housing workers who constructed the amphitheater and picnic shelters atop Flagstaff Mountain. By 1959 the property was in the hands of Allen Lefferdink, a University of Colorado graduate with big plans for a hotel, shops, ice rink, and convention facilities. He started construction on his Park Allen Motel, and the foundations were in place when Lefferdink ran out of money, later being convicted of mail fraud. In 1969 a hostel was proposed for the site because hippies and runaways camping in Central Park (downstream) created sanitary problems, but although the site was used for some time by transients no facility was built.
Take the underpass that carries you under 6th Street. The mural gives an impression of the creek in its original "braided stream" configuration. As you come out from the underpass, notice the butterfly garden on the the north side of the path, built by the Boulder County Youth Corps. The brown metal object on the right side of the path, just east of the butterfly garden, is the latest in anti-bear garbage technology. Bears readily learn to open all kinds of garbage cans, but may not solve these, that require inserting a hand into an opening that is (we hope) too small for a paw.
The kid's fishing ponds along the path are named for Evert Pierson, sometime head of the Stocking Committee of the Boulder Fish and Game Club, and beloved community figure. The club's hatchery, still operating in the heart of town a few blocks southeast of here (see below), supplies the fish with which the ponds are stocked. The infrastructure for the ponds includes structures associated with earlier industrial canals and holding pools.
If you venture off the path and down towards the creek, after passing the ponds, you will find fragmentary remains of stonework, including (on the south side of the creek) what appears to be entrance to a cellar, sealed off and graffiti-covered. I do not know what (industrial or decorative) development these works survive.
To your left, across Canyon Boulevard, is a neighborhood that has been home to some of Boulder's influential Quakers (members of the Society of Friends). One of these was economist Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993). Born in England, Boulding worked in many places before settling in Boulder. His writings explain a good deal about Boulder:
The move to Boulder in 1967 was inspired partly &by the agreeable physical environment and climate &We found a lively university community and an active Friends Meeting,and a setting for a renewed burst of activity & Beilock, p 20.
I have really had an almost indecently good life, much better than I deserve, and it would not have been nearly as good if I had not become an American. A few years back I read avidly the novels of C.P.Snow, feeling a curious affinity for his hero, who also was a bright boy of the British working class, who stayed in England. I kept feeling I was reading about the life I might have lived if I had not become an American. It was certainly not bad, but it did not have a certain sense of largeness and a sheer human warmth that my life in America has given me, and for this I am deeply grateful, even though my primary allegiance is to this lovely blue and white planet and to the extraordinary experiment that is going on here. Beilock, p 23.
All good things come by nagging. It is not the flash of brilliance, or even the outburst of creative expression that really changes the world. It is the nagger who really changes things the man who will not take no for an answer, who keeps at it day in and day out, whose strength is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure, who is importunate like the widow in the parable, who has the vision that cannot be denied and who therefore will not be denied. KB in Forward to Gerhard Hirschfeld, The People: Growth and Survival, Chicago: Aldine, 1973. Quoted in Beilock, p 30.
The sculptures you presently come to stand in the Haertling Sculpture Garden, named for influential local architect Charles Haertling (one of his striking designs represented the future in Woody Allen's Sleeper.) As is not unusual with public art, the garden has had its share of controversy. What was meant to be its inaugural work, in 1983, was never built, following protests motivated in part by an abstract design not appreciated by many, and in part by the fact that the sculpture was to be commissioned by an artist from away, not a local. As you can see, abstract works have been installed since; the keg-like piece up the slope is "Double Arc", by Boulder artist Jerry Wingren. The sculpture of Chief Niwot, on your right, is a public favorite, and it is rare not to find a flower or two left on it as a remembrance of the man whose tolerance opened the way to white Boulder.
The sculpture-dotted greensward here was, briefly, the site of the Preston Works, built to carry out a new process for extracting gold from ore. After operating for only a few years it was destroyed in the 1897 flood. The floodwaters covered many acres of the level, low-lying ground north of the creek, west and east of here. Photographs from the time show a dismal expanse of inundated railroad yard dotted with a drowned locomotives, not works of art.
As you approach the underpass at Ninth Street, you can see (in winter, or imagine, in summer) above the south bank of the creek the elegant brick of the former Highland School. Built in fine style in 1891, this school, and several others built in the same era around the growing town, housed generations of Boulder children. Highland was sold in 1970 and is now an office building, but Whittier (1883) and University Hill (1905) are still in use as schools, and Lincoln (1903) is now part of the campus of Naropa University (see below, eventually). The decorative iron fencing and enclosed gardens at Highland are worth a look, sometime when you are walking on Arapahoe. A hitching post stands at the entrance, overlooked by a curious totem on the gate.
When you pass under Ninth Street you are entering Boulder's municipal campus. To the right, across the creek, is the West Boulder Senior Center, opened in 1979, and ahead, on both sides of the path and creek, carried overhead by an enclosed bridge, is the Boulder Public Library. Boulder's original library was a reading room established by the Women's Christian Temperance Union in 1882, moved in 1906 into a new building that, like those in many other American communities, was built with support from Andrew Carnegie. This building is still operating as a branch library, specializing in local history, at 1125 Pine Street (the author is deeply indebted to the library and its staff.) The building you see here was dedicated in 1961, after some controversy: some citizens felt that the presence of Norlin Library on the University of Colorado campus made it unnecessary for the town to have its own library. Controversy attended the expansion of the library, in 1987, when voters who had warmly approved funds to expand the library (as they thought) were faced with plans to move the main library east of town. Another vote was held, and the result overwhelmingly supported expanding the library on this site. As Karl Popper tells us, it is a delusion to think that government can proceed without mistakes and conflict; the key things are that mistakes are corrected, and that conflict isn't violent. Mostly Boulder does pretty well on these things.
If you are walking with children, now or another time, you may want to visit the collection of sculptures at the library, many based on characters from Winnie the Pooh. Reach these by crossing the footbridge you will find on your right, after passing under the library building, and looking for a gate on your right before you reach the main library entrance. Children may also enjoy seeing the many ceramic tiles, made by Boulder school children, that decorate the columns that hold up the library bridge on the south side of the creek.
Side trip to fish hatchery. If you have crossed to the south bank of the creek near the library, you can slant left to a safe crossing of Arapahoe Avenue, and then walk west, looking for Lincoln Place on your left. Walk up Lincoln Place, and watch for the Boulder Fish and Game Club hatchery on your left. Respecting the fences, you can peek in and see some of the tanks of fish. The pure water essential to trout comes from a spring that served many additional purposes in past times. Ice was cut from ponds fed by the spring along the south bank of the creek, and the Boulder City Brewery (later Crystal Springs Brewery), long predating the recent microbrewery boom, operated here from the early 1870's until prohibition was instituted in Colorado in 1916.
Continuing on the path on the north bank of the creek, as you pass the footbridge to the library you are near the point at which a short railroad spur crossed the creek, forming the south end of a wye, a triangular arrangement of tracks that permitted locomotives and cars to be turned around without using a turntable. As you picture this, keep in mind that the area to your left was a railroad yard.
Across Canyon Boulevard, to the northeast of the library, is the St. Julien Hotel. Its opening in 2005 brought to an end a search of more than two decades to find a developer for its site, which lay vacant for many, many years after being cleared for redevelopment by the city. The vacant lot was used as the popular People's Parking Lot, which was free, and very convenient to downtown restaurants.
The building ahead of you is the Municipal Building, Boulder's city hall. What is now a park-like mall between you and it was the site of Boulder s wrong side of the tracks, a shanty town called The Jungle , or Bugtown . In 1927 the city cleared the area as part of a program to create a linear park along the creek, one of the recommendations in that 1910 report from Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. Olmstead's idea was that using the land along the creek for parks would reduce flood hazard, and the city partly, but not entirely, got the point.
To your left is a pedestrian crossing that offers convenient access to the downtown, and the west end of the Pearl Street Mall. Many historic buildings are preserved along the Mall, whose restaurants and shops are an attraction for city residents but perhaps even more for visitors from elsewhere in the greater Denver area. As you look north, across Canyon Boulevard, recent buildings and construction projects are conspicuous. They show the process by which Boulder is changing quite rapidly from small-town look to city look, with mixed development, of different scales and densities, being replaced by larger buildings with less space between.
On your right you will see the Peace Garden, with amphitheater-like seating on both sides of the creek, built by the Boulder-Dushanbe Sister Cities project, of which more below (eventually), in 1990. This is a popular paddling place, and a place where people sometimes uphold the hippie traditions of the town by playing the drums.
As you approach the municipal building, watch for another footbridge across the creek. Just across the footbridge, and a few steps to the west, is a large boulder pockmarked with deep holes. As a marker on it indicates, this rock was used in drilling contests, a popular display of the skills of hard rock mining. Though this rock comes from up in the hills, similar contests were a feature of the Boulder Pow Wow, a fair held annually from 1934 to 1978. You can still see these events at the annual Miners' Days in Nederland, a town west of Boulder that is still home to working miners. Miners's Days also includes mucking out contests, in which contestants must fill an ore car with rock debris, working against the clock. The combination of subtle skill and brute power needed to excel at this is extraordinary to see.
As another reminder of Boulder's origins, from time to time some one will bring a gold pan to this stretch of the creek, and extract a little gold. Even with gold high, no-one could make a living this way today, though some say that a person with truly Thoreauvian tastes and needs, and plenty of free time, could just get by working some of the streams hereabouts.
As you pass the municipal building, on your left, spare a few thoughts for the many civic-minded people who have given generously of their time and hard work to make Boulder what it is. The original layout of the city council chambers had the council members sitting between two sections of public seating, a perfect setting for a kind of crossfire that isn't unknown even with a more conventional layout today. We should all remember Penfield Tate II, Boulder's first and only black mayor, who courageously pressed Boulder's pioneering protections for the rights of gay people in 1973, only to be have them voted down (and narrowly escape recall himself) by a public that wasn't ready to do the right thing, until almost 15 years later. In the fullness of time we will reject hatred and exclusion of gay people as we now reject slavery or antisemitism (or do we?) but we still have work to do to get there.
The underpass ahead is Broadway, Boulder's main north-south drag. Just across the creek, on this side of Broadway, is Mustard's Last Stand, where the specialty is Chicago-style hotdogs with all the condiments. Stop and have one or two if you are hungry. Across Broadway from Mustard's is Yocum's Drug Store, now occupied by restaurants and offices. Upstairs, on the south side of the building, you can make out a painted billboard from about long ago. If you have left the path to visit Mustard s you can continue south along Broadway to Alfalfa's market, a landmark to recent cultural changes in Boulder. Alfalfa's has featured health foods, including organic produce, ever since health food was a preoccupation of the counterculture. It has moved steadily upmarket, catering now to a clientele dominated by yuppies rather than hippies. Looking for traces of the store s former funky identity under the overlay of glitz is a lot of fun, as is pondering the evolution of New Age sensibilities. Even before there were hippies there were still groceries, and if you look at the Broadway frontage of the store you may be able to discern a small "supermarket" of an earlier day under the veneer.