Boulder received its start in the late fall of 1858 when gold rush participants erected log cabins for shelter just below the mouth of Boulder Canyon. In January 1859, these newcomers ventured 12 miles farther west and 3,000 feet higher up to locate the mining camp of Gold Hill. Their tiny settlement at the canyon’s entrance served as a supply point for people entering and leaving the newly found gold region. Thus, Boulder’s population came to consist of businessmen, entrepreneurs, and their families, rather than the transient, unstable, rough-and-tumble elements of the mining camps. Although the community did possess its...

Early-day photographers didn’t have an easy time. Exclusive of darkroom supplies, they carried around a big camera, a heavy wooden tripod, and a box of glass plates. Their outfit weighed about 75 pounds. The excellent record we have of Boulder today is due to the skill and perseverance of Boulder’s early photographers.

Before the advent of photographic film, photographs were exposed on 5" × 7", 8" × 10", or even larger plates of glass. The larger the plate, the larger the picture, as photographs generally weren’t enlarged during processing. Boulder’s earliest photographers used “wet” plates, a process developed ca. 1851...

A. Brookfield, one of Boulder’s first prospectors, wrote in a letter to his wife, “We thought that as the weather would not permit us to mine, we would lay out and commence to build what may be an important town.” On February 10, 1859, shortly after gold was discovered near present-day Gold Hill, fifty-four men formed the Boulder City Town Company and platted 100 lots.

According to a 1903 written interview with George R. Williamson, another early prospector, a stick was driven into the middle of the present intersection of Broadway and Pearl Streets. Then, to determine a straight line...

The 100-year flood hit Boulder in 1894. Most of Boulder’s “red light district,” which covered the area along Water Street (Canyon) between the current Municipal Building and the Boulder Public Library auditorium, was destroyed. Madams blatantly moved their girls to upstairs rooms in the downtown business district. However, the brothels’ days were numbered. When the Better Boulder Party succeeded in closing Boulder’s saloons in 1907, it closed the “houses of ill repute” for good.

The Goss and Grove Street neighborhood, known as Culver’s Subdivision, did little better in the flood. The neighborhood was home to most of the city’s minorities...

The early part of the twentieth century was a turning point for Boulder as it grew, changed, and became a sophisticated city. Safely away from the floodplain, a number of prominent buildings were erected during this era. They include the Physicians Building, the Elks Building, and the second (and current) building of St. John’s Episcopal Church, all in 1905. The Curran Theatre was completed in 1906 and the Carnegie Library in 1907. The second (and current) building of the First Congregational Church was completed in 1908. The Hotel Boulderado opened on New Year’s Day, 1909.

When Isaac T. Earl was...

In the summer of 1859, a reported $100,000 worth of gold, at $20.67 per ounce, was panned and sluiced from a creek named Gold Run, near presentday Gold Hill, 12 miles west of Boulder. At the same time, miners began the harder task of prospecting for primary-source gold deposits underground. The high-grade gold ore, underground but near the surface, of the Horsfal mine supported both Gold Hill and Boulder for several years.

Then came “the slump of 1863.” Gold ore farther from the surface required more sophisticated milling, and gold was lost in the processing. American Indian uprisings on the...

Like the north-central area, the east-central neighborhood had numerous churches. Amos Bixby, an attorney, postmaster, and journalist, wrote that even before the churches were built, children were organized into Sunday schools. One was held at the home of Mr. Goss and Mr. Pell and, appropriately, was called “Gospel Hall.” The black community worshipped at several rented locations until it built the African Methodist Church on the west side of 18th Street between Pearl and Spruce Streets in 1884.

Some of the historic churches not shown include the former Pillar of Fire Church, demolished November 23, 1993. It previously was the...

When homes were being built on Mapleton and University Hills, there were still farms on the north, east, and south sides of Boulder. By 1918, however, expansion had begun to creep north as Boulder gradually outgrew the central downtown area. At first, “North Boulder” was the small area north of Mapleton Avenue, east of 12th Street (Broadway), and south of 1st Avenue (Alpine). Residential areas developed, and people boarded the streetcars to shop and work downtown.

North of Alpine and east of 12th Street (Broadway) was Joseph and Eliza Wolff’s fruit farm. Captain C. M. Tyler’s estate, east of 19th...

When Jane Sewall, daughter of the university’s first president, saw Old Main for the first time, she noted, “It loomed before us gaunt and alone in the pitiless clear light. No tree nor shrub nor any human habitation was in sight. Vast expanses of rock and sagebrush were its only surrounding.”

There was one bonus, however: the tuition was free.

As early as 1861, residents of Boulder had decided that when Colorado became a state and had a university, it should be in Boulder. A convention composed of one delegate from each mining district was held in the territorial capital...

When Marinus G. Smith was asked by Professor J. Raymond Brackett if he would live to see the tree he was planting bear fruit, Smith replied, “Old men plant trees; young men can’t wait.” Smith, whom everyone called “Marine,” donated part of his University Hill acreage to the University of Colorado. Marine Street has been named in his honor.

The “Hill,” which looked so formidable to Jane Sewall when she first arrived in Boulder, looked a lot better with some trees. Since it was out of the floodplain, University Hill, like Mapleton Hill, became a desirable place to live. Prestigious...

In 1864, the same year as the Sand Creek Massacre, James B. Viele and his son Jefferson left Illinois for Colorado Territory. Their three yoke of oxen and one yoke of cows pulled a 10-horsepower threshing machine, the first to reach Boulder.

Viele homesteaded south of Boulder but spent most of those first years taking his thresher from farm to farm to harvest wheat, barley, and oats. Five horses were hitched to each of two strong beams radiating from a vertical shaft. As the horses walked around and around in a circle, the shaft turned the mechanism of the grain...

Boulder is growing and changing every day. In the early years, Boulder struggled for an economic base, demanded the university and the railroads, developed a culture, and entered confidently into the twentieth century. In 1909, the surviving original fifty-niners were honored at Boulder’s semicentennial celebration. When they first came across the plains, they never imagined the changes they would witness in a half-century of life in Boulder. New public and commercial buildings, churches, and residences reflected a feeling of pride and permanence.

As a young city, Boulder was almost giddy. It called itself the Athens of the West and the...