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 20 years the Boulder campus saw significant growth and was responsible or the development and manufacturing of many of the company’s products, including magnetic tape drives, high-speed ferrite core memories, plastic storage containers for half-inch magnetic tape, photocopiers, floppy disks, system printers, and copier and printer supplies.

IBM switched directions in 1986, and the Boulder campus began to transform into a development, business systems and distribution center. The process took eight months and cost IBM $120 million.

IBM has undergone several expansion projects, including a $6.5 million project in 2005.

In 2008, it opened an 115,000-square-foot, $350 million energy-efficient “green” data center. IBM received a $100,000 rebate of local fees and taxes from the city of Boulder for the project.

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