Milestones Icon: IBM

On June 28, 1965, IBM broke ground on its Boulder facility and forever changed the way people associated technology with the small mountain city.

The company purchased 160 acres in 1957 along a lightly traveled, two-lane road – which is now the Diagonal Highway – that connects Boulder and Longmont. IBM left the land alone until orders for its System/360, the company’s mainframe computer, outpaced production in the company’s three New York plants. The facility formally opened on May 25, 1967.

Boulder was chosen as the manufacturing and development site for magnetic tape products and memory units for the System/360.

During its first…