The making of Boulder Canyon: From impassable gorge to mountain gateway

Rockslides near Boulder Falls have made the popular destination unsafe to visit today, but there’s much more to see on a drive up Boulder Canyon. Take a trip back in time to view the route through the eyes of our predecessors.

In February 1859, Boulder was founded by gold seekers as a supply town for miners in the mountains. A dirt road branched off of Boulder Canyon into Fourmile Canyon, while another wound uphill through the town of Magnolia.

Boulder Canyon, west of the Magnolia turnoff, was initially considered impassable.

Then, in 1869, prospectors discovered silver at Caribou, west of present-day Nederland. Two years later, in 1871, Boulder merchants realized they had an opportunity — even an obligation — to capitalize on Caribou’s mining boom. The men formed a company and managed to build a single-lane dirt road all the way up the canyon, allowing teamsters to haul supplies to the miners.

This early road, with 33 bridges, followed the twists and turns of Boulder Creek. Occasional wider spots along the road provided turnouts for four- or six-horse teams and their heavily laden wagons. The horses (or sometimes mules) wore harness bells to alert oncoming drivers. Often, a dog ran ahead of the wagons as a lookout.

The drivers of these freight wagons paid a toll at the entrance to the canyon. Presumably, pedestrians could hike in the canyon for free, and they did.

For Boulder residents, Boulder Falls was also a place to have fun. Along with the recreationists came photographers Louis Meile and Joseph Sturtevant. They hauled 75 pounds of bulky equipment in a horse-drawn wagon that doubled as a darkroom to develop, on site, their glass-plate negatives.

At the falls, Meile and Sturtevant captured members of the Five Pie Pedestrian Club, who had hiked the eight miles from Boulder to enjoy their pies beside the crashing waters, where North Boulder Creek flows into Middle Boulder Creek.

Soon to follow were larger stages for sightseers. These horse-drawn vehicles were particularly popular for Bible school and church group excursions.

Meanwhile, four-horse teams pulling stagecoaches loaded with passengers and mail left Boulder every morning at 7 a.m., taking all day to make the 20-mile climb to Nederland. Those traveling on to Caribou stayed in the coach for four more miles. The stages stopped at a “half-way house” –– a no-longer-standing building in the canyon, past Boulder Falls. At the stage stop, the driver, the passengers and the horses could rest and enjoy a meal.

By the early 1900s, horse-drawn vehicles mingled with automobiles. The newer forms of transportation required an improved roadway. In 1914, convicts from the state penitentiary in Cañon City were brought in to widen the road. In the years that followed, Model Ts, Stanley Steamers, and large chauffeur-driven touring cars and buses transported college groups, climbing clubs and Chautauqua excursionists.

Boulder Falls was always a stop. Afterward, passengers picnicked at a symmetrically shaped 83-foot spruce called the “perfect tree.” The tree, near mile marker 30 on the south side of Boulder Creek, succumbed in the 1990s to old age and a budworm infestation. The original road also looped (and still does) around a large rock formation named Castle Rock.

Whatever the mode of transportation, all visitors wanted to take in the scenery. One of the canyon’s earliest admirers, author and journalist Helen Hunt Jackson, rode a horse through Boulder Canyon (then with the Spanish spelling of Cañon) in 1878. She was so captivated by her surroundings that she compared Boulder Creek to an allegro movement in a symphony. 

“If I tell it breathless, it is because I tell it true,” she wrote in her book “Bits of Travel at Home.” “And if I could tell it really true, the words would leap and break into foam like the creek.”

“I hold the Boulder people lucky,” she added, “not in that gold and silver are brought down to their streets every day, but that they can walk of an afternoon up into Boulder Cañon.”