Milestones Icon: Pearl Street Mall

Since Boulder’s founding on Feb. 10, 1859, Pearl Street has been the center of the city.

Surveyors drove a stake into the middle of Broadway and Pearl and sighted across to Valmont Butte, to the east, to determine a straight line for Pearl Street, according to local historian Silvia Pettem.

The street was believed to be named for the wife of one of the town’s 54 founders, but another rumor has its name stemming from “Madam Pearl” at a brothel along the street’s western edge.

Throughout its history, the street surface itself has undergone several changes. It started as dirt road, later with boardwalks along the shops for pedestrians, which were eventually replaced with flagstone. In 1891, tracks were laid down Pearl Street for a horse-drawn streetcar, which in a decade went electric. Larger streetcars, as part of the Interurban Railroad, serviced Pearl Street in 1908, running all the way to Denver.

In 1917, Pearl Street became the first street in Boulder to be paved. It was also the location of the city’s first streetlight at Pearl and Broadway. As the automobile became more popular, the streetcars were removed, and downtown Boulder went through a downturn in the 1950s and 1960s, with customers frequenting shopping centers instead.

“You could shoot a machine gun down Pearl Street at 5:15 p.m., and you wouldn’t hurt anybody,´ said Carl Worthington of the 1960s Pearl Street, in a 2002 interview with the Boulder County Business Report. Worthington was one of the original envisioners to make Pearl Street a pedestrian mall.

The central core of Pearl Street – between 11th and 15th streets – was closed to traffic in June 1976. It opened as a brick-surfaced pedestrian mall in August 1977 at a cost of $1.85 million. Some of the trees on the mall today were stored in the coolers at Coors Brewing Co. in Golden, to keep them dormant until ready to plant.

Today, the Pearl Street Mall is the city’s strongest retail core for locally owned stores.  It is also a source of entertainment with numerous outdoor concerts, interactive fountains and children playgrounds.

 In the summer, street performers and buskers provide an extra flare on Pearl Street with the likes of Zip Code Man – tell him your ZIP code, he’ll tell you your town – and those who can balance themselves on wheels, juggle fire, or throw single playing cards from the ground to a roof three stories high.

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