How a clubwoman and a former police chief ushered Boulder’s city council into the progressive era

In 1917, while the First World War raged in Europe, Boulder’s city government was going through turmoil of its own. City services weren’t meeting residents’ expectations. A handful of cities in the U.S. had created the city manager form of government, and Boulder decided to jump into political reform, too.   

The November 1917 election was close, but it decided Boulder’s future. A newspaper editor at the time wrote, “Boulder is thru with childish things and has become adult in its thinking.”

The new form of government replaced the previous mayor-council system and allowed Boulder to turn over the council’s management to a city manager. The manager was charged with handling the day-to-day administration of city operations and staff.  

Boulder’s outgoing council chose, as its first city manager, Edward O. Heinrich, a former police chief of Alameda, California. Meanwhile, Ida M. Campbell, a 57-year-old widow and prominent member of several women’s clubs, was elected as Boulder’s first female councilmember.

No one was quite sure what to expect on New Year’s Day 1918, when the new councilmembers and administrators were sworn into office. Heinrich, dressed in a neatly pressed three-piece suit and starched white collar, easily blended in with the men.

In the past, as soon as council meetings were underway, the men would light up their pipes and cigars. However, with Campbell present, the first item on the council’s agenda was a discussion on whether or not to smoke at all. The council voted no, and, instead, passed around a box of candy.

All of the members, including Campbell, were well-respected and had been, as one newspaper explained, “forced into the position by their friends or people who think they would make good councilmen.”  

Campbell became an outspoken advocate for parks, baseball grounds, swimming pools, a community arts center and daycare for children of working mothers. With the air clear of smoke, the new council got down to business.  

The city council and administrators met in Boulder’s City Hall, a small, white-painted brick building at 1921 14th Street, midway between Pearl and Walnut streets. (The site is occupied today by the nine-story Colorado Building, while Boulder’s current city council meets in the Penfield Tate II Municipal Building on Broadway.)   

As a former law-enforcement officer, Heinrich announced that he would enforce city ordinances, cooperate with law-enforcement agencies, and maintain complete records of arrests and complaints. Then he resigned unexpectedly, a little more than a year later.

Heinrich started a public safety program and raised water rates, allowing the city’s water department to get out of debt. Then he realized that his heart wasn’t in his job. “One’s country may inspire one to die for it,” he was quoted as saying, “but a municipality is scarcely worth the supreme sacrifice.”   

Some in the press were critical of Heinrich, but he believed that he had done his job well. His parting words to Boulder residents were, “Here built I the structure of a good government. I charge you to increase it.”  

Heinrich soon realized that his passion and overriding interest lay in criminal investigations. He returned to California, where he spent most of his life as a detective while teaching criminology at the University of California at Berkeley. By the time of his death in 1953, he had become known as “The Wizard of Berkeley” and “America’s Sherlock Holmes.”   

Ida Campbell not only served her four-year term on the council but was reelected to a term of six years. She lived out her life in Boulder.  

Of the city’s first female councilmember, one reporter called Campbell “faithful, sensible, and businesslike,” then added, “She didn’t run wild with fads — nor did she talk bonnets when the topic was bridges. She was on the job.”

Campbell died in 1950 at the age of 89 and is buried with her family in Boulder’s Green Mountain Cemetery. Both she and Heinrich, in their own ways, helped to bring Boulder’s city government into a new and more progressive era.