Milestones Icon: Open Space

Long before Boulder’s slow-growth policies of the 1960s and 1970s, its citizens championed preserving land in what has become known today as open space.

Boulder’s first open-space preservation came 1898, when the city put together a bond issue to purchase the land at present-day Chautauqua Park. Back then, the land was used for alfalfa fields and apple orchards planted by the Batchelder family.

Additional open-space purchases came in 1907 – 1,600 acres on Flagstaff Mountain – and again in 1912, with another 1,200 acres on the mountain.

As Boulder’s population doubled between 1950 and 1960, citizens looked to curb growth by preserving land and restricting development. In 1959, a “blue line” was established, above which city water would not be supplied to discourage development in the foothills.

In 1964, citizens defeated a proposal to build a luxury hotel along Enchanted Mesa southwest of Chautauqua. City council condemned the land and forced its sale to the city – the bond measure topurchase the land passed by fewer than 400 votes.

In 1967, a group of Boulder citizens led by Al Bartlett, a University of Colorado physics professor, looked to create a more widespread greenbelt around the city. They convinced voters to approve a fourteenths of a cent tax specifically to buy, manage and maintain open space. It was the first time citizens in any U.S. city had voted to tax themselves specifically for open space.

The city has since passed more bond issues and an additional three-tenths of a cent tax to preserve open space. In 2001, the city’s open space and mountain parks departments merged to manage the land, which now totals more than 45,000 acres around the city.

Despite open space’s popularity in Boulder, it can be the center of fierce debate – specifically about how the land is used. Some would like greater protections for the land, while others enjoy the trails and argue that without some recreational use, the funding would lose voter support.

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