As Boulder gears up for next year’s 50th anniversary celebration of the Pearl Street Pedestrian Mall, now is a good time to reflect on Pearl Street’s past. In a series of articles to be spread throughout the year, we’ll go back in time and view the thoroughfare that still defines the heart of downtown Boulder.
A small group of gold prospectors arrived in what would become Boulder in October 1858. The gold-seekers set up cabins and tents along Boulder Creek, then their settlement grew into a supply town for miners in the mountains. In February 1859, one of the men, A. A. Brookfield, wrote a letter to his wife Emma, back home in eastern Nebraska. He stated, “We thought that as the weather would not permit us to mine, we would lay out and commence to build what may be an important town.”
That same month, 58 prospectors (including Brookfield) signed the “Articles of Organization of the Boulder City Town Company,” requesting a charter from the governor of Nebraska Territory. (At the time, Nebraska Territory extended west through the Boulder area and encompassed land north of the 40th parallel, now Baseline Road.)
The early settlers were not surveyors. One of the charter signers simply drove a stick into the center of today’s intersection of 12th (now Broadway) and Pearl streets. Then, to determine a straight line for Pearl Street, he sighted across the stick to Valmont Butte to the east. The rest of the streets in the “original town” were laid out in a southwest-to-northeast orientation, parallel to and perpendicular to Pearl Street.
No one in modern times seems to know why Boulder’s first settlers chose the name “Pearl.” Several theories have been proposed, including that the street was named for early Boulder resident Hannah Pearl England, but she had no connection with Boulder until the 1870s. A more likely speculation (without an explanation) was suggested in 1944 by a longtime Boulder resident who wrote in a letter to a newspaper editor, “The name of Pearl Street was given in honor of the wife of one of the organizers of the town.” Perhaps so, but which one? No one knows.
In December 1859, 10 months after Boulder’s founding, the town’s population had grown to 200 men and 17 women. Only one cabin had a wooden floor, which was put to good use for the frontier town’s first Christmas dance.
Between 1860 and 1880, Boulder grew from 300 to 3,000 people. Its wooden sidewalks and dirt streets looked like those in films of the old West. Unlike the Hollywood versions, however, there was little crime and no reported gunfights. Drunks, though, were a common sight.
At the time, little was done to improve the streets. Early Boulder resident William Burger once wrote, “After rains or melting snows, Pearl Street was deep in mud. In summer it was deep with dust, and the streets were thick with droppings from horses and mules, and millions upon millions of flies abounded everywhere.”
Architecture left something to be desired, as well. Likely, the town’s residents smarted from Englishwoman Isabella Bird’s comment on a then-recent visit to Boulder when she wrote that the town was “a hideous collection of frame houses on the burning plain.” The only trees in the early days were boxelders and willows that grew wild along the creeks.
Colorado was granted statehood in 1876. Six years later, on the Fourth of July in 1882, a local newspaper reporter commented on the holiday. “It was ushered in by all manner of shooting and noises,” he wrote, “the youth of the city having ample opportunity to vent their fiery patriotism and to spend their money to an extravagant extent.”
That same day, crowds witnessed the laying of the cornerstone for the Victorian-era Boulder County Courthouse. (Following a fire in 1932, the building was torn down and replaced with today’s Art Deco-style courthouse.)
By the 1880s, additional buildings of brick and stone had begun to replace downtown Boulder’s rough wooden structures, bringing a look of permanency to Pearl Street.
Along with dry goods and other merchandise, trees were shipped in by train. Downtown, the whole city block known as “courthouse square” was lined with maple saplings. As they matured, they provided beauty and shade for shoppers and visitors. Horses pulling wagons and carriages eagerly drank from city-provided water troughs.
At night, downtown visitors carried lanterns or hung them on their carriages. By 1888, the city had provided three carbon arc lamps that ran on electricity generated by a small power plant located on the northwest corner of Spruce and 13th Street, now the location of the Hotel Boulderado.
By the end of the 19th century, Pearl Street had become a busy mix of pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles. Open irrigation ditches ran along both sides of the still-dirt street, but permanent buildings of brick and stone had replaced the older wooden structures. Boulder had grown from a dusty frontier town into a still dusty, but established, small city.
As for the Brookfields, A. A. spent his last days in the Colorado State Hospital (then referred to as “the insane asylum”) in Pueblo. Hopefully, he’s resting peacefully today, next to Emma in Boulder’s Green Mountain Cemetery.
Perhaps one of the other 57 founders had a wife named Pearl.
Silvia, always enjoy your history stories.
My hometown of Centralia, Washington, was founded in 1875 and it, too, had a downtown Pearl Street; although Main Street and Tower Avenue were the center of Centralia.
Seems that towns of that era chose similar street names: Main, Pearl, Pine, etc. I grew up in “old” Centralia at 113 N. Oak Street (lots of tree names).
Thanks for the good writing and putting Boulder’s history forward.
Joan Kuder Bell
Love Ms Pettem’s accounts of Boulder’s history and the old photos! Looking forward to more.
Silvia, years ago I took a historical tour of Boulder on a brown bus and the guide suggested that there had been a brothel on what is now Pearl Street run by the Madam, named Pearl. The place was said to have a secret entrance from the basement of an adjacent building. I assumed this was all heresay, but in a town of 200 men and 17 women there has to have been a brothel.
This is the reason.
Pearl de Vere lived in Denver for quite awhile and used her money to fund the development of towns and cities across Colorado during the Old West era.
It’s known history, and is the reason so many towns and cities in Colorado have a Pearl Street.
Thanks, Silvia (and BRL) for such a fresh and insightful retelling of Boulder’s history in its early days. Most striking to me was the 10X growth in population in the 1860s and 1870s. It almost seems to foreshadow the more than 3X growth in the 1950s and 1960s, growth that famously provoked city efforts to control it for almost six decades. Love these stories!
When I first came to boulder in the 60’s, a friend told me that Pearl was a beautiful woman of the night who compassionately nursed some minors who had contracted small pox and she was stricken and her beauty was devastated. She left town and was never heard from again. They named the street in her honor. Western myth? probably!
Yes, western myth, but it reminds me of “Silverheels.” If you Google her, you’ll learn that “She was a famously beautiful dance hall girl in the mining camp of Buckskin Joe who selflessly stayed behind to nurse miners during a devastating smallpox outbreak in 1861.” She apparently caught the disease and was disfigured, then disappeared. Buckskin Joe is in the Alma-Fairplay area of Colorado. No idea if a street was named after her, but who knows? Never heard of a smallpox outbreak in Boulder, though, in 1861. Thanks for commenting.
Robert- below is the of Silverhills
The term “Silverhills” likely refers to the Colorado legend of Silverheels and the devastating smallpox outbreak in the 1860s.The Legend: According to Colorado lore, when a smallpox epidemic struck the mining camp of Buckskin Joe (near modern-day Alma and Fairplay) in the early 1860s, most women and families fled. One dance hall performer, known as “Silverheels” for her elegant, silver-heeled dancing slippers, chose to stay behind.The Heroics: She worked tirelessly as a nurse, spending her own money on doctors and caring for the sick and dying miners.The Disappearance: She eventually contracted the disease herself. While she survived, her once-renowned beauty was said to be permanently disfigured by the pockmarks. Ashamed of her scars, she vanished from the camp entirely, never to be seen again.The Tribute: Years later, a heavily veiled and elegant woman was rumored to visit the town cemetery to leave flowers. Unable to give her a purse of gold they had collected as a token of their gratitude, the miners named a towering 13,822-foot peak near Fairplay Mount Silverheels in her honor
Thank you very much for the history on Pearl Street Mall and the wonderful photos. I have been here since the early 80s and I just love this town. Again thank you for all your research and photos
Such a pleasure to see these old photographs and have them contextualized by your research and writing. Thank you, Silvia!
Pearl Street was named after Mary Pearl.
She was an orphaned immigrant from Donegal, Ireland. At the age of 12 Mary McCullough came to Philadelphia PA,
where she worked as a maid in the home of a Doctor. At age 19 she moved to St Clair PA and married a Mr Kirk. They decided to move West. Mr Kirk passed away from Cholora in Iowa. Mary worked as a maid in a hotel in order to paid for his burial. Mary then met and married Joe Pearl. They moved to Clorado. They had started some type of business selling equipment and supplies to miners. Mr Pearl wanted to travel further west but he too died while traveling. Mary Pearl returned to Denver Colorado where she became quite wealthy. Mary Pearl was able to bring all her sibblings from Ireland to the U.S. Pearl Street is named after her in Denver and Bolder. She was my mother’s great great Aunt, decendant from Mary’s brother Michael.