Silvia Pettem, Author at The Boulder Reporting Lab

Author Archives: Silvia Pettem

Silvia Pettem has spent decades researching and writing about Boulder County history. She's also the author of more than 20 books, including Separate Lives: Uncovering the Hidden Family of Victorian Professor Mary Rippon; In Search of the Blonde Tigress: The Untold Story of Eleanor Jarman; and Someone's Daughter: In Search of Justice for Jane Doe, Updated Edition. Silvia's goal for her history column is to offer readers new perspectives on Boulder and the world around them and leave them with an appreciation of the past. She welcomes reader comments and questions and can be reached at silviapettem@gmail.com.

Known as ‘Rocky Mountain Joe,’ Joseph Bevier Sturtevant roamed Boulder with a camera from the 1880s to 1910, capturing the people and places that now define the city’s early history.

Author Archives: Silvia Pettem

He roamed Boulder with a camera for decades. Now his photos define the city’s past.

Mary Rippon, CU Boulder’s first female professor, hid her husband and child to keep her job

Inside Boulder’s forgotten sanitarium, where guests sought health and got strange cures

Five decades of change at North Boulder’s Broadway shopping center — now Pekoe café is leaving

When Boulder was ‘The Place to Live’: How the city marketed itself for decades to newcomers

CU Boulder was almost built somewhere else — one reporter captured how it all began

When electric trains connected Boulder and Denver in under an hour

Boulder’s Columbia Cemetery becomes a living history lesson during Wreaths Across America

The rise and fall of Boulder’s Broken Drum Tavern — the city’s last 3.2 bar, on Pearl Street

Meet Boulder’s first female taxi drivers — and the fearless rides that made them local legends