🎵 Pull the sheets right off the corner
Of the mattress that you stole
From your roommate back in Boulder
We ain't ever getting older 🎵
Don’t even pretend like you don’t recognize those lyrics. I hate to say it, but when I think of Boulder, I think of this song. Don’t worry, I won’t make it Track of the Day, but I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t humming this as I walked around this place. Don’t @ me.
This has got to be one of the most random, spur-of-the-moment trips I’ve done, and I owe it all to the stranger who loaned me their car for the day. Rachel, if you’re reading this, I can’t say that I would also have been okay with letting somebody I’ve never met drive my car for a day, but I’m sure glad you were. Enjoy the M&Ms I left on your dashboard as a thank you. 😘
Boulder, Colorado: An Introduction
Boulder, Colorado. With a population of just 97,385, it’s definitely one of America’s most famous small towns. Sitting at an elevation of 5,430 feet above sea level, its reputation as a beautiful mountain town has made it a household name. But, to the un-indoctrinated among us, it may come as a surprise to learn that it’s actually not in the mountains per se… it’s a smaller moon in the orbital of the Denver metro area, and as such, it is merely mountain-adjacent. It’s pressed right up against the mountains, but it’s not actually in them. This was a surprise to me at least. The drive time from Denver to Boulder is like 40 minutes, and it’s not exactly an undeveloped stretch.
I think the first thing anybody needs to know about Boulder is that it is home to the University of Colorado’s main campus. So it’s a college town. And the founding of this university is absolutely central to its development as a population center. In fact, plans for this university were approved by the Colorado legislature in 1861. That is basically the dawn of time for the history of white people in Colorado. At that point, it was only admitted to the Union less than 2 years prior. And the largest population centers in the state were still WELL below 6-digits. So there really is no Boulder without the university.
What is Boulder like today? Well—it’s pretty, it’s affluent, and it is overwhelmingly white. There is some incredible hiking to be done, with the trailheads literally starting in the town and leading you out into the mountains, but alas, I won’t be doing any of that in this article. I had aspired to do the famed Flatirons trail, but when the time came, there was rain moving in. So today we’re only seeing the town.
Downtown Boulder
Take a moment to picture in your head what a small town in Colorado looks like it.
If you’re picturing the classic early 1900s Wild West main street, with classic square buildings and pretty brick store-fronts, then you’re picturing Boulder! You’re actually picturing a lot of small towns in this region, but Boulder is no exception. The bones of Boulder are essentially the same as anywhere else, but with one key difference. These storefronts are packed with high-end shopping and touristy restaurants, and the streets are always awash with out-of-towners.
Nevertheless, Boulder does have a great many full-time residents. College students make up a big proportion of the people you’ll see walking around this town at any given time. And then there are also plenty of young professionals who call Boulder home. When I stopped for lunch at an out-of-the-way sandwich shop, I found myself eavesdropping on a business lunch between a couple of people who work in Venture Capital (or something related). It was interesting hearing them talk about the relationships they had with entrepreneurs around the region and the challenges all of these people are facing. Clearly, there is commerce happening here. But there is also a cool artistic undercurrent that is clearly also at work. There are local theaters, and some cool pieces of street art if you know where to look.
Boulder Neighborhoods
As with anywhere I go, I am always interested to see what life is like for residents. So of course I had to do some neighborhood wandering as well. Since I was not aware of any specific neighborhood area of note, I just walked north from downtown, into the quiet, leafy residential streets. Boulder is charming! I walked for many blocks, and there were some gorgeous homes that I saw. The architectural styles represented on these streets cast a wide net from historic to modern, but overall, it definitely skewed towards an older aesthetic. I guess when I pictured Boulder in my mind I was picturing either a cozy ski lodge or something more modern… but after getting a feel for the streets of neighboring Denver, this was definitely par for the course. Although there is definitely a modern edge to these places, there is also a lot of history here! And the structures you see at the street level are a reflection of that. If there is one sweeping generality that I can safely make about this place, it’s this:
I would later learn that is one house in Boulder that is more notable than the rest. And that is the JonBenét Ramsey house.
Oh don’t know who that is? I didn’t either.
But, it turns out that JonBenét Ramsey is one of America’s most famous cold cases. The story dominated the U.S. news in 1996 and 1997 because… well, I think you’ll see why. JonBenét Ramsey was a 6-year-old child beauty pageant queen who was bludgeoned and strangled to death in her home on the day after Christmas. And within that very niche world, she was actually very celebrated. She won the titles of America's Royale Miss, Little Miss Charlevoix, Little Miss Colorado, Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl, and National Tiny Miss Beauty. It was a whole thing. To make things weirder, there was a ransom also note involved… if you’re interested in this story, you can Google it. The presiding fan theory is that her brother murdered her because he was jealous of all the attention she got, and the parents covered it up. But officially, the case remains unsolved.
Anyway, the house where all of this went down is on of these pretty Boulder streets. It’s a B-list tourist attraction here—people will go find it and snap pictures, but you can’t go in because somebody actually lives there. Which feels creepy to me, but whatever.
I hope that anecdote doesn’t cast too dark a shadow on the rest of this place! It really is very pretty. And these streets literally dead-end into the start of the Rocky Mountains, so the setting is pretty incredible as well.
That’s Boulder! Or, a piece of it at least. I had intended to hike out to the flatirons, but when I got back to my car and looked out at the mountains, there was a storm front moving in, so I decided I might as well head back to the city. So I jumped in my—er, I mean Rachel’s—car, and began the haul back to Denver. With traffic, the commute was over an hour, but the physicality and geography of the drive help keep things interesting for a flat-lander like me. It’s hard to ignore the Mountains looming on the horizon (or, in the case of the drive back to Denver, in the rear-view mirror). As I said in the previous article, there was some smoke in the air that had blown in from the California wildfires, so the visibility was abnormally low. But from Boulder, the views were about the same since the mountains were literally staring you in the face.
Up next, we’ve got another installment from Denver in the queue, and it’s a special one. Stay tuned for perhaps our most mind-blowing street art post yet!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter was born & raised in Columbus, Ohio, and started this blog when he moved from Boston to Hanoi (Vietnam) in 2014. After years based in Nashville working on his band, The Great Palumbo, he now resides in London, UK.
