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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, fiftyfour 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 for Pearl Street, “a sighting [was made] across this stick to the black spur in the prairie, known as Valmont Butte.” Recent surveys have shown, however, that Walnut (then Front) Street, which parallels Pearl Street, is directly in line with the highest point of the butte. Colorado, and even Colorado Territory, didn’t exist in 1859. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had placed “Boulder City” in Nebraska Territory, which belonged to the Indians. But the prospectors stayed anyway. In 1855, Congress had passed the Bounty Law, which gave veterans of the Revolutionary War and/or their widows 160 acres of public land in “the West.” The following year, Maine resident Sarah Weston, the ninety-three-year-old widow of veteran Joseph Weston, applied for and received Land Warrant 36557. It’s not clear what happened next, but land grants were transferable. It is believed that a member of the Parlin or Bixby families, both neighbors in Maine who moved to Boulder, may have purchased the land grant. At some point, it was sold or transferred to Judge Peter M. Housel, who later received a patent from the U. S. government for the southwest quarter of section 30, which became downtown Boulder. The town, consisting of a few log cabins, was centered around 12th (Broadway) and Pearl Streets. Except for a few cottonwoods, willows, and box Downtown Business District The Pearl Street Mall 7 b o u l d e r : e v o l u t i o n o f a c i t y 8 elders along Boulder Creek, there were no trees. Isabella Bird, an adventurous Englishwoman who traveled through Boulder on horseback a few years later, called Boulder “a hideous collection of frame houses on the burning plain.” Gold miners in Gold Hill and Ward were dependent on Boulder for their supplies. Boulder grew steadily following the 1869 discovery of silver at Caribou and gold-bearing telluride ores at GoldHillin1872.Brickandstonecommercialbuildings began to replace the frame businesses on Pearl Street. (A building was called a “block” if it contained two or more storefronts.) Street merchants delighted Pearl Street crowds with flaring gaslights and displays of ventriloquism in order to sell hair restoratives, electric belts for rheumatism, and other cure-alls. Boulder,withminingandagricultureasitsbase, became a sophisticated city in the early 1900s. The business district, comprising late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century buildings, was nestled between the new residential areas on Mapleton Hill and University Hill. Hardwoods and fruit trees were imported from the East. Perhaps to ensure tree planting, downtown streets included those named Spruce and Pine. In 1890, Front Street was renamed Walnut Street. To obtain the best drinking water, the city purchased the watershed of the Arapaho Glacier and later the glacier itself. A $200,000 steel pipeline brought the 99.996 percent pure water all the way from an intake pipe on Boulder County Ranch, now Caribou Ranch, to the Chautauqua and Sunshine Reservoirs in Boulder. All over Boulder, drinking fountains were installed that read “Pure Cold Water from the Boulder-Owned Arapahoe [sic] Glacier.” The only drinking fountain still marked today is in the Hotel Boulderado. By the early twentieth century, shoppers could buy just about anything they wanted in Boulder. For women, there were imported perfumes, diamond lockets, plumed hats, button shoes, and even rust-proof corsets. Both dress goods and ready-towear clothing were available. Stores stocked gourmet foods such as oysters, a selection of coffee, and choice and smoked meats. The Seventh Day Adventist Church, operators of the Boulder Colorado Sanitarium, manufactured its own line of whole-grain cereals and health foods. During Thanksgiving week 1909, Boulder celebrated the fiftieth anniversary (semicentennial) of the settlement of Boulder County. Pharmacist and photographer Eben G. Fine arranged for a band of Utes to come from southern Colorado to join in the festivities. He succeeded in getting “Buckskin Charlie” and...

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