Boulder is Colorado’s eleventh-most populous city, twenty-five miles northwest of Denver, nestled against the foothills of the Front Range. Home of the University of Colorado (CU), the city has a population of 97,385 and is the seat of Boulder County…

Boulder County encompasses 740 square miles of the western plains and Rocky Mountains in north central Colorado. The county straddles three unique geographic zones: mountains in the west, plains in the east, and a natural trough that runs between the…

The 1894 Boulder flood was a natural disaster that reshaped the landscape of Boulder County, wiping out some communities and forcing others to come together to rebuild. Like other extreme weather events, the 1894 deluge played an integral role in the…

Carol Taylor is a local historian and researcher with expertise creating compelling public programs and interpretive writing for historical exhibits. She has worked with partners such as the Native American Rights Fund, National Park Service, Colorado…

Clara Brown (c. 1803–85) was an ex-slave who became a philanthropist, entrepreneur, and humanitarian in Denver and Central City. She is said to be the first African American woman to have traveled West during the Colorado Gold Rush. While in Central City…

Established in 1898 on what was then a barren mesa south of Boulder, Colorado Chautauqua has been providing education and entertainment programs for well over a century. Originally founded by Texas educators, the Chautauqua in Boulder was part of a…

The Front Range is a corridor of the Rocky Mountains and surrounding land stretching 200 miles from the Wyoming border on the north to the Arkansas River on the south. The western border of the Front Range consists of a collection of high mountain ranges…

Gold Hill was established in 1859 as the first permanent mining camp in the Colorado mountains. Located at an elevation of about 8,300 feet in Boulder County, the town experienced several booms and busts before settling into a small-scale tourist economy…


 The Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) is the oldest research institute at the University of Colorado. It studies the connectivity of cold desert ecosystems, like the ones found on Rocky Mountain peaks. INSTAAR was one of the…

Joseph “Joe” D. Neguse (1984–) is a politician who represents Colorado’s Second Congressional District, which includes Boulder, Fort Collins, and most of the northern Front Range. A member of the Democratic Party, Neguse is the first African American…

Oliver Toussaint “O. T.” Jackson (1862–1948) was an entrepreneur and prominent member of black communities in Denver and Boulder during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1910 he founded Dearfield, an-all black agricultural settlement…

From the 1850s to the 1920s, gold and silver mining drove Colorado’s economy, making it into an urbanized, industrial state. The rapid development of Colorado’s mineral resources had political, social, and environmental consequences. The mining of gold…

In September 2013, Colorado’s Front Range, from Fort Collins south to Colorado Springs, experienced some of the most dramatic and devastating floods in state history. In the hardest-hit areas, the rainfall beginning September 9 and ending September 16…

Silvia Pettem is a longtime Boulder County resident who has been poking around historic sites for at least forty years. Her research and writing has evolved into two niches –– Boulder County history and missing persons/unidentified remains –– and she has…