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Boulder, Colorado is one of the most beautiful and tranquil spots in the U.S. The beautiful Rocky Mountains and the high altitude magically draw in the physically fit and the outdoor enthusiasts.

Boulder is a city centered on health and healthy living. It's earned the title of "skinniest" city in the country and, while that sounds wonderful on the surface, things aren't always what they seem.

Suffering in Silence

There's a secret hiding behind a concerning number of doors in Boulder. In an effort to fit into the city's skinny mold, frightening numbers of Boulderites have turned to anorexia or bulimia. According to a 2011 assessment, the University of Colorado-Boulder reported nearly triple the national average of eating disorders among women compared to other college campuses, with the number of men at almost double the national average.

A Big Weight Issue

While it's true that the whole country has seen a rise in the number of eating disorders diagnosed, Boulder is in the middle of a particularly intense development.

"I actually feel sometimes like Boulder is eating disorder-genic," says Dr. Malia Sperry Clinical Director and founder of La Luna Center in Boulder.

She says the city's near obsession with thinness and a fit physique, while well-intended, can actually translate into some pretty unhealthy social pressures. That's especially true for school-age children. At that age, all a kid wants to do is fit in with his or her peers. If they aren't skinny enough or muscular enough, a negative body image can quickly develop.

Another issue is that it's hard to tell when following a strict diet, avoiding certain foods, or undertaking extreme exercise regimens can turn into disordered eating.

"People are often like, 'Good for you for exercising all day.' It's socially acceptable, but it can get out of control," says Dr. Sperry.

"For some, it's just a way to have a socially acceptable, negative relationship with food."

Fighting Back

An unhealthy relationship with food or a negative body image can affect men and women of all ages. It's hard enough to live in a Hollywood culture that's saturated by skinny models and media outlets obsessed with pointing out the smallest of body flaws. When you add in the intensified pressures of living in the nation's "skinniest" city, things can quickly spiral out of control.

As for treatment and prevention, CU-Boulder has expanded its outreach via the Wardenburg Health Center, the primary healthcare facility for students. To help students that might be struggling with eating disorders or body image issues, the health center now has an eating disorder coordinator (who is also a psychologist), a medical clinic with doctors that specialize in eating disorders, and a registered dietitian on staff.

Learn more about the dangers of eating disorders and exercise addiction.

Images Flickr/VirgBenji

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The Nation's Skinniest City Has a Dark Side - Project Know

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Boulder, Colorado is one of the most beautiful and tranquil spots in the U.S. The beautiful Rocky Mountains and the high altitude magically draw in the physically fit and the outdoor enthusiasts. Boulder is a city centered on health and healthy living. It's earned the title of "skinniest" city in the country and, while that [...]

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Housing Boulder Action Plan

The action plan identifies City Council priorities for addressing Boulder's affordable housing challenges.

Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Update

City Council responded to community requests to encourage the creation of new Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) by requesting that staff bring forward a list of incremental changes to city regulations that better allow accessory units while still addressing potential neighborhood impacts. Council has identified this as a work plan item for the past several years. On Aug. 22, staff presented council with a list of potential regulatory changes that would remove some of the barriers to creating accessory units, including but not limited to, addressing standards regarding unit concentration, sizes, and parking. The project will include incremental and focused changes to the regulations, not wholesale changes.
To learn more about this effort, visit this page.
30th & Pearl

Formerly the home of Pollard Friendly Motors, this city owned 4.3-acre site is planned for a mix of housing affordable to low, moderate and middle income households. The project is part of Boulder Junction (a 160-acre redevelopment at the northeast corner of 30th Street and Pearl Parkway area) and is transforming into a mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented neighborhood with regional transit connections and public spaces that will benefit the entire community.

To learn more about 30th & Pearl, visit this page.

Ponderosa Community Stabilization

The Ponderosa Mobile Home Park is a 68-home diverse, primarily homeowner community located in a county enclave at 4475 Broadway. The City of Boulder has purchased Ponderosa with plans to annex the property, replace aging infrastructure, identify home replacement options that would maintain residents' housing costs at similar levels, and to ultimately transfer Ponderosa to an owner such as an affordable housing nonprofit or a resident-controlled cooperative in order to create long-term stability for the community's residents.

To learn more about this effort, visit this page.

Inclusionary Housing Update

The inclusionary housing program was adopted in 2000 in response to the city's housing challenges, updates to the program require that new residential development contribute 25 percent of the all new homes as permanently affordable; 20 percent affordable to low/moderate households and 5 percent affordable to middle income households. The program has demonstrated considerable success over the years and the 2017 updates respond to new challenges, specifically addressing the loss of middle income housing as well as exploring options for incentivizing more on-site homes.

More information is available on the Inclusionary Housing Update page.

Construction Defect Speakers Panel

In Boulder, condominiums are an important affordable homeownership option. Since the 2008 economic downturn, Front Range communities have seen little development of this housing type. Increasingly, current construction defect laws, which offer important protections for homeowners, are seen as a contributing factor in this ongoing trend.

Through panelist presentations and an audience Q and A, this public event will explore:

The impacts of current construction defect laws on condominium development in Boulder and the region.

Solutions that balance homeowner protections and Boulder's affordable housing goals and what is the city's role?

More information is available on the Construction Defect Panel page

Affordable Housing Preservation Ordinance

The purpose of this ordinance is to enable permanently affordable properties to rebuild to the number of units currently on site in situations where zoning was changed after the project was built. This preservation ordinance stands to benefit 16 known existing affordable properties with 230 or more affordable apartments that may otherwise be lost over time.

Learn more about the Affordable Housing Preservation Ordinance.

Middle Income Housing Strategy

This strategy defines a comprehensive approach to create and preserve housing choices for middle income households and puts forth an aggressive, but obtainable, goal to increase housing options for middle income households.

Middle Income Housing Strategy Document

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The action plan identifies City Council priorities for addressing Boulder's affordable housing challenges. City Council responded to community requests to encourage the creation of new Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) by requesting that staff bring forward a list of incremental changes to city regulations that better allow accessory units while still addressing potential neighborhood impacts.

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El Diario de la Gente was an independent newspaper primarily published for and by Chicanx students at the University of Colorado Boulder between 1972 and 1983. Through 62 issues, the newspaper represents the extraordinary yet complicated history of the Chicanx Rights Movement in Boulder, the state of Colorado, and the world. The authors and editors covered a wide range of topics, including boycotts and protests, the tragic events surrounding Los Seis de Boulder, and the friction between the Chicanx student community and the CU Boulder administration. The activist newspaper also served as a creative platform for poetry, art, and literature. This project, Digital El Diario, aims to highlight that history through five interdisciplinary readings of the newspaper that employ Digital Humanities methods, techniques, and values. Most of all, by way of publishing the entire corpus of El Diario, we hope others will explore, interrogate, and celebrate the history of Chicanx student activism.

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El Diario de la Gente was an independent newspaper primarily published for and by Chicanx students at the University of Colorado Boulder between 1972 and 1983. Through 62 issues, the newspaper represents the extraordinary yet complicated history of the Chicanx Rights Movement in Boulder, the state of Colorado, and the world.

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The Battle Creek Sanitarium was a world-renowned health resort in Battle Creek, Michigan, United States. It started in 1866 on health principles advocated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and from 1876 to 1943 was managed by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.

The "San", as it was called, flourished under Dr. Kellogg's direction and became one of the "premier wellness destinations" in the United States. After a devastating fire in 1902 the Sanitarium was not only rebuilt, but also enlarged. At its zenith, the sprawling health and wellness complex of more than 30 buildings situated on 30 acres accommodated near thirteen hundred guests. It housed a hospital with research facilities and a nursing school, as well as the Sanitarium Food Company, among others. Following the disfellowshipping of Dr. Kellogg in 1907, the physician stated that he and his employees were "independents" who "did not belong to any church" and that the Sanitarium promoted his theory of "biologic living" based on Adventist principles. In 1928, a distinct 14-story addition to the main building, the "Towers", was constructed.

The Great Depression forced the institution to constrict and sell assets to serve its debt. In 1942, the signature main building was purchased by the U.S. Army and converted into the Percy Jones Army Hospital. The hospital was disbanded in the 1950s, and the facility was managed by the General Services Administration. In 2003, it was re-dedicated as the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center.

In 1957, the floundering wellness institution was taken over by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which operated it under a different name until 1993, when it was sold.

The Sanitarium started on September 5, 1866, as the Western Health Reform Institute. In 1876, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg became the medical superintendent, and his brother, W. K. Kellogg, worked as the bookkeeper. As John H. Kellogg put it, they took the word " sanatorium", which then was defined as a health resort for invalid soldiers. In his words, "A change of two letters transformed 'sanatorium' to 'sanitarium', and a new word was added to the English language". Kellogg stated the number of patients grew from 106 in 1866, to 7,006 patrons during the year 1906.

In 1878, a new wooden structure known as the "Old Main" was built on the site, going through major redevelopments in 1884 and 1891. The Old Main burned down in 1902 and was rebuilt in stone, 5-story high and enlarged.

In 1928, Battle Creek Sanitarium expanded with a 14-story high-rise with 265 guest rooms, called the "Towers", facing Champion Street. The institution went into receivership in 1933, and the Sanitarium started to vacate its main facility. In 1942, the U. S. Army purchased the main building and established the Percy Jones General Hospital; the hospital closed permanently in 1953 and one year later became the Battle Creek Federal Center. Owned by the Seventh-day Adventists, the Battle Creek Sanitarium continued to operate as a psychiatric facility through the 1970s but closed its doors by the end of the decade. In 1986, the radial wings of the main building (the solarium, gymnasium and swimming pool) were razed, and the Sanitarium entered into the final chapter of its history, which formally ended in 1993. Medical records have since been microfiched and are now kept by the nearby Fieldstone Center.

Guests, staff, and buildings

Along with high numbers of patrons, there was a large number of staff at Battle Creek. Kellogg stated that "at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the number of persons employed is never less than eight hundred, and often rises in the busiest season to more than one thousand". They comprised "physicians, nurses, helpers etc". (There were 30 physicians on staff). The main buildings comprised four large buildings, chief of which was the central structure, "which affords rooming accommodations for about 400 guests...(and)...treatment rooms capable of handling more than 1,000 patients"

The sanitarium became a destination for both prominent and middle-class American citizens. Celebrated American figures who visited the sanitarium (including Mary Todd Lincoln and Sojourner Truth) would influence and encourage enthusiasm for health and wellness among the general population. "Battle Creek Sanitarium was world renowned and became the 'in' place for the rich and famous to seek their lost health, to listen to health lectures and to learn and practice the principles of a healthy lifestyle".

Therapeutic system

At the sanitarium, Kellogg explored various treatments for his patients, including diet reform and frequent enemas. He encouraged a low-fat, low-protein diet with an emphasis on whole grains, fiber-rich foods, and most importantly, nuts. Kellogg also recommended a daily intake of fresh air, exercise, and the importance of hygiene. Many of the theories of John Harvey Kellogg were later published in his book The Road to Wellness. C. W. Post also worked with Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.

Kellogg described the Sanitarium system as "a composite physiologic method comprising hydrotherapy, phototherapy, thermotherapy, electrotherapy, mechanotherapy, dietetics, physical culture, cold-air cure, and health training". To assist with diagnostics and evaluation of therapeutic efficacy, various measures of physiological integrity were utilised to obtain numerous vital coefficients, "especially in relation to the integrity and efficiency of the blood, the heart, the lungs, the liver, the kidneys, stomach, intestines, brain, nerves and muscles".

Hydrotherapy was widely utilized. Two three-story buildings, for men and women respectively, were devoted to hydrotherapy. Each building had a basement, "devoted to rectal and bowel applications and classrooms". Both buildings were connected to the main building and the 'great gymnasium'. Kellogg noted "that hydrotherapy has won a definite and permanent place in modern rational therapeutics can no longer be questioned, and the Battle Creek Sanitarium claims recognition as the pioneer in scientific hydrotherapy" in America. Indeed, while some therapies from the 19th century and early 20th century have fallen by the wayside, or remain controversial, hydrotherapy remains widely used.

Kellogg's use of hydrotherapy was a more sophisticated development of the system that was utilized in the early 19th century by Vincent Priessnitz, which, when introduced to America, was essentially a "cold water cure", although "as a tonic, cold water has no superior". "The crude, but thoroughgoing methods of the original system of Priessnitz, which prospered among the hardy mountaineers of Austrian Silesia, were much too strenuous for more delicately organized and pampered American invalids. This fact, together with the crass empiricism which characterized the use of water in the first half of the last century, when water-cures were for a time almost a fad, brought water into general disrepute as a curative means, and greatly hindered the scientific development of this invaluable agent". The Battle Creek system utilized both hot and cold water, and correlated the use of hydrotherapy with other therapeutic modalities. Among the methods used were douches, sitz baths, cold mitten frictions, salt glows, towel rubs, wet sheet rubs, wet and dry packings, compresses, "full baths of various sorts, including Nauheim baths, electro-hydric baths, shallow and neutral baths". The use of hot and cold applications was to produce "profound reflex effects", including vasodilation and vasoconstriction. These physiological mechanisms now seem fairly well understood, and underpin the contemporary use of hydrotherapy, with the reflex reactions described by some as the 'rebound phenomenon'

Phototherapy, thermotherapy, and electrotherapy

This department employed both solar and electric light, with the latter used chiefly during winter. Phototherapy held a prominent place at Battle Creek, where the first electric light bath was constructed. Regarding the application of electricity, Kellogg noted that "electricity is not capable of accomplishing half the marvels that are claimed for it by many enthusiastic electrotherapists". Nevertheless, he considered it valuable when used in conjunction with hydrotherapy, thermotherapy, and other methods.

Physical exercise was an important part of the Battle Creek system, facilitating not just the improvement of muscle tone, but also of posture, respiration, and of circulation and the facilitation of anabolic and catabolic functions enabled by circulatory processes. Exercise included such components as postural, calisthetics, gymnastics, swimming, and passive methods such as mechanotherapy, vibrotherapy, mechanical massage.

Exposure to the sun and open air were regarded as fundamentally important for health, including stimulation of the skin. Battle Creek had a large outdoor gymnasium. Again, the use of temperature differentials facilitated by water was a component, with exercise followed by a plunge into a fresh water swimming pool "just cool enough to be refreshing and invigorating". Patients were encouraged to sleep in the open air, and a range of outdoor activities were facilitated, from wood-chopping to basketball and other games, walking, trotting, and swimming lessons. Also available were skating, tobogganing, skiing, and other outdoor sports (p. 111). "Thus all the best advantages of the seashore, camping out, 'going fishing', and other forms of recreation are secured, while the patient is protected from excess by the careful guidance of his physician, and has the advantages of medical care, dietetic regulation, etc".

Battle Creek utilized information as known at that time to provide nutritional requirements for health and well-being relative to each person's requirements. Food required careful prescriptive preparation, with care also taken to ensure appetiveness and palatability were recognized. The diet lists included "scores of special dishes and hundreds of special food preparations, each of which has been carefully studied in relation to its nutritive and therapeutic properties", with the diet lists used "by the physicians in arranging the diet prescriptions of individual patients". Also, "all the so-called Sanitarium health foods" were "regularly found on the Sanitarium bill of fare, having been originally devised solely for this use".

After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 few previously well-to-do patients came to the sanitarium. Finances became very difficult for the "San" and the complex was put under receivership in 1933. The sanitarium stayed in business until after the beginning of WWII. The U.S. Army, needing a hospital, paid $2,341,000 and moved in creating Percy Jones Army Hospital. The complex was later converted into a federal center and is currently named the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center.

The Battle Creek Sanitarium was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The original listing included only the main building, a long six-story building in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, situated parallel to North Washington Avenue. The listing was expanded in 2012 to include the 1928 tower, other buildings built prior to 1953, and the site itself.

a.' A persual of the main body of the text reveals an impressive use of the available scientific methods of the day. However, the synopsis from the contents page is hard to beat for succinctness, hence the quotations.

b.' A Nauheim or 'effervescent' bath is a type of spa bath through which carbon dioxide is bubbled. It is named after the German spa town

Kellogg, John Harvey. The Battle Creek Sanitarium System: History, Organization, Methods. Battle Creek, Mich: Gage Printing Co., 1908.

Schwarz, Richard W. John Harvey Kellogg: Pioneering Health Reformer. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2006

Wilson, Brian C. (2014). Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253014559.

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The Battle Creek Sanitarium was a world-renowned health resort in Battle Creek, Michigan, United States. It started in 1866 on health principles advocated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and from 1876 to 1943 was managed by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.

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Nestled in a valley at the base of the Rocky Mountains, Boulder, Colorado, looks more like a national park than a city. Its compact, low-slung buildings follow trails and a walkable downtown from greenery to greenbelt, where its undeveloped plains evoke the Old West. Farther out still are the Ls-sprawling suburbs like Lafayette, Louisville, and Longmont-but in Boulder's center, they feel a world away. The hip coffee shops and breweries along downtown's Pearl Street are practically clichéd now, but Boulder's dichotomies-aging strip malls beside thriving offices for Google and Twitter, hiking stores blending into the Italianate campus of the University of Colorado-Boulder-are striking.

The city enacts a "virtuous economic cycle," as Conor Dougherty noted in the New York Times, "in which the university churns out smart people, the smart people attract employers, and the amenities make everyone want to stay." Until the Covid-19 pandemic, Boulder County's unemployment rates regularly dipped below 2 percent, among the nation's lowest. While some 100,000 people call Boulder home, at least another 60,000 workers commuted in every day, pre-pandemic. Boulder residents enjoy median incomes that rank among the highest in the United States. Boulder's startups have absorbed a third of all venture-capital dollars flowing into Colorado since 2013.

Yet staying in Boulder is easier if you've already lived here for decades. As is often true with in-demand cities, too little new housing supply has been built in response to soaring property values. As its older population swells and young people struggle with living costs, the odds that Boulder becomes an Aspen-like retiree community increase with every year. The city's future vibrancy depends significantly on whether the many talented newcomers who want to live here can afford to do so.

As recently as 1990, Boulder's median home values were nearly the same as in the surrounding county; now, they are more than $200,000 pricier. Boulder is Colorado's most expensive real-estate market: the median home goes for $770,000, post-Covid-a 76 percent increase from 2011-and nearly all single-family homes go for well north of $1 million. By contrast, during the years from 1960 to 1980, when more than 40 percent of the city's housing stock was built, a typical home easily went for a tenth of that price in real terms. A home purchased for $100,000 in today's dollars in South Boulder could easily go for $1.5 million today.

Boulder's housing supply is limited upward by height restrictions, outward by growth boundaries, and inward by rules and fees on land zoned 80 percent for single-family use. While Boulder limits housing expansion to 1 percent annually, a limit that it rarely reaches, the Ls are growing at double-digit rates. In effect, Boulder's affordable housing program is moving to the suburbs.

Renting is no easier. The average one-bedroom apartment goes for roughly $2,000 monthly. Some 40 percent of Boulder's renters are severely cost-burdened, spending more than half their incomes on rent (though this figure, as with the city's poverty figure, may be skewed by a 30,000-plus student population). To newcomers, Boulder's housing market increasingly resembles a barbell, with subsidized and wait-listed housing on one end and millionaire housing on the other. Obtaining reasonably priced accommodation is hard, even for well-paid technology workers.

While housing may be the city's Number One concern for newcomers, the rise in home prices has meant a financial windfall for longer-term residents; the typical senior here boasts nearly $500,000 in home equity. Longtime owners who first bought their homes on a middle-class budget have seen their property values soar by 5-, 10-, or even 15-fold.

But the housing shortage has also meant a higher cost of living-and more traffic. Boulder was once a suburb of Denver, but 200 percent job growth over the past 40 years has meant a reversal of commuting patterns into the city and a demand for pricier "lifestyle" amenities. For long-term residents, then, gains in property values have been tempered by what can feel like a slow unraveling of the community fabric.

Still, these homeowners are in an enviable position. More than 60 percent of Boulder residents don't earn enough to buy a house, including the disproportionate percentage of minorities living below the poverty line. (Minorities constitute 13 percent of Boulder's population.) Only 13 percent of children who grow up in Boulder stay as adults, a figure that drops to less than 5 percent for children of low-income families. Boulder is increasingly splitting between young and old, newcomer and long-timer, renter and homeowner, poor and prosperous. Loving Boulder is one thing-living in it is another.

Perhaps the deepest split in Boulder is generational, between older, middle-class, educated residents and a rising generation of affluent, cosmopolitan techies-and, behind them, young progressive housing advocates, who see themselves fighting for the opportunities already secured by Boulder's older, landed elites. These divisions are apparent in city council elections, which also determine the selection of Boulder's mayor. Since at least the 1980s, slow-growth forces have held sway over local elections, until 2015, when a slate of pro-housing growth council candidates broke through. In the years since, groups like Better Boulder ("sustainable and smart development") have squared off against others like PLAN Boulder ("growth should be carefully controlled"), with elections seesawing in 2017 and again in 2019.

"Boulder is splitting between young and old, newcomer and long-timer, renter and homeowner, poor and prosperous."

Boulder's housing crisis has been long in the making, arguably tracing its roots to the city's founding and a persistent conflict over whether to prioritize growing jobs or housing. Boulder's first town meeting, held in February 1859, divided between "lowers," arguing for affordable land for the waves of newcomers prospecting for recently discovered gold, and "uppers," who "felt that [Boulder] should control immigration by settling a high value on the real estate." The debate proved bitter; the uppers prevailed. When nearby homestead lands sold for $1.25 an acre, Boulder's were priced at an incredible $6,250 an acre, with more affordable parcels set aside as something like workforce housing. The Boulder City Town Company, a real-estate venture disguised as a government, imposed exacting building codes detailing everything from the placement of chimneys to the length of walls. Boulder's growth slowed to a halt, just as designed-and not for the last time.

Later, in 1910, when Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., son of the famed Central Park designer, formulated a plan for what he hoped would become a more modern Boulder, he made one recommendation clear: Boulder must be a "city of homes." Boulder would always be prosperous and intellectual, he observed, and meeting these demands would "occupy and support" a great number of jobs. (Already, tension was mounting between the priorities of jobs and housing growth.) That's why, Olmsted concluded, the "manufacture of the best possible city of agreeable homes" was "essential" and should be "the principal business which the community has before it."

Post-World War II, Boulder planned to be as large as modern-day Colorado Springs, with a population of nearly 500,000, or nearly five times larger than its present size. Postwar, Boulder was flooded with returning veterans utilizing the GI Bill and job seekers recognizing the city as a key target of increased federal spending on scientific research and military hardware. Boulder went from being the home of a single enterprise, Western Cutlery, to adding multiple labs run by the Commerce Department, as well as the nearby Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility.

The city's population doubled from 1940 to 1950 and kept growing at a rapid clip throughout the 1960s. Boulder's roads emanated eastward, following the points on a compass from the base of the Flatirons, each lengthy strip of concrete meant to serve as a conduit for future development. In short order, suburban developments began sprouting up along the newly built turnpike to Denver, promising "quality homes, comfortable living and reasonable prices."

But already, new voices emerged in reaction to the Eisenhower-era Republicans who controlled Boulder in mid-century. In 1959, voters adopted a ballot measure establishing a "blue line," or a maximum elevation for the city's water supply, an effort by a local professor to forestall growth in the city's foothills. Later, in the 1960s, voters approved the establishment of a greenbelt around the city and, in the 1970s, a 2 percent cap on housing expansion (eventually lowered to 1 percent).

In 1971, residents tried passing a ballot initiative setting a maximum population; though it narrowly failed, another referendum passed that year directed the city government to limit growth to a level "substantially below" that of the 1960s. Subsequent years would see these restrictions tightened, as preservationists swept into the city council.

Nearly 50 years later, though, the battle in Boulder is between and among progressives, older and younger. In 20 years, a quarter of the county's population will be over 60, and disproportionately likely to live in Boulder proper. The number of seniors struggling to live independently is expected to double in less than a decade; they and their peers will need support from the nurses or social-services workers struggling to afford their own living costs. Retirees are also likely to demand the sort of compact or communal living hard to build in Boulder today.

Understandably, then, housing is the topic du jour. The Daily Camera, the city's main newspaper, mentioned housing in 1,034 articles this year, up to October (nearly three times a day), and the subject found its way into countless city council meetings. Elected officials in Boulder should be keenly aware of the progressive paralysis that has mired states like California in limbo, with millions of new homes left unbuilt. Already, neighboring cities like Lakewood (Colorado's fifth-largest city) are following Boulder's lead in limiting new housing and setting growth boundaries, and an attempted 2020 ballot initiative would have placed a 1 percent annual cap on new housing permits along Colorado's Front Range.

Fulfilling Olmsted's vision for Boulder as a "city of homes" requires housing both affordable and available. Even as Boulder labors toward its goal of a housing stock that is 15 percent permanently affordable, prices remain high, thanks to an overall shortage in housing. And while the city has recently tried raising " linkage fees " to slow commercial development, it's unclear if any wealthy city has ever balanced its ratio of jobs to housing by stopping job creation-certainly not to any positive effect.

"We like baby steps in Boulder," said one local over breakfast at the Laughing Goat, an artsy coffeehouse on the main drag. That's surely true with housing, whether with the city's recent loosening of rules on backyard cottages and shared cooperative housing or the strengthening of inclusionary housing laws. Yet even these incremental reforms took political doing; and, as presently zoned, the city still only has the "capacity for 6,400 more homes and 45,000 more jobs," said Mayor Sam Weaver recently.

As Boulder seemingly prices itself out of being a livable city, local policymakers could be tempted to believe that they are faced with impossible choices over affordability, job growth, and neighborhood character. But are these false choices? Are there successful strategies for "lifting the dome" on Boulder's development, while preserving its essential beauty and character? What this city in Colorado's Rocky Mountains is experiencing is a microcosm of the pressures felt in communities around the country.

Take the "gentle" density of accessory dwelling units (ADUs). These backyard apartments are part of a class of naturally affordable, "missing-middle" housing that, like duplexes and garden apartments, were an integral part of residential neighborhoods across the country before roughly the 1940s. They're meant to blend in, consistent with the character of existing neighborhoods. When California effectively legalized ADUs in 2017, permit applications in Los Angeles rose 30-fold over just two years. This past summer, lawmakers in Oregon re-legalized duplexes across the state and fourplexes in its largest cities. California did the same for duplexes, and Minneapolis for duplexes and triplexes. Their reforms gained the support not only of "Yes In My Backyard" (YIMBY) activists and developers but of labor unions seeking side work, teachers looking for affordable housing, and senior-living groups like AARP, among others. In each case, ADUs and duplexes formed the lowest of low-hanging fruit for housing reform, and their backers sought wide coalitions for passing reform at the highest level of government possible.

In Boulder, progress has been stingier. The city has permitted a grand total of five ADUs a year since 1981. It did enact ADU reform in 2018 (with further revisions in 2020), but the measure contained the very constraints on ADU growth that California waived: neighborhood limits, discretionary review, parking requirements, and more. The fact that ADUs proved such a heavy lift in Boulder is surprising, especially considering that the city's existing nuisance laws and design standards should forestall concerns about ADUs, such as more noise or traffic from additional housing. A similar dynamic was likely at play last spring when a Boulder initiative campaign called "Bedrooms Are for People" faced council and community opposition to changing occupancy rules limiting the number of unrelated people allowed to live together under the same roof. After the group gathered the requisite number of signatures, the city council simply raised the signature requirement and declared the petitioners' campaign a lost cause-even as such resistance earned a reproachful executive order from Governor Jared Polis in July calling on municipalities to lift such occupancy restrictions so that tenants could more easily find an affordable place to live during a pandemic.

But opportunities for change remain: Boulder is among the most heavily retailed cities in the U.S., much of it sited in aging shopping centers built in the 1970s and 1980s. The city's commercial real estate is too often located far from housing, further worsening congestion. A "smart infill" approach of, say, converting retail into mixed-use development-ideally linked with better bus rapid transit and the necessary density to make walkable neighborhoods possible-is something that Boulder has already tentatively considered. At present, mixed-use takes up a vanishingly small share of Boulder's zoned land (0.52 percent) and requires an enormous amount of open space (not to mention lengthy discretionary review), which could be remedied in the city's Transit Village as well as East Boulder, bordering its greenspace. It's hard to imagine Boulder becoming seriously affordable absent a raising of the city's height limits, especially along transit corridors and commercial zones east of downtown (akin to Paris's development of La Defense). And surely, some portion of Boulder's 45,000-acre ring of open space could be opened up, as preexisting developments around the city's reservoir suggest.

While the Colorado Way is strongly localist and blanches at overweening state oversight, state and even regional bodies are well positioned, in theory, to encourage more housing supply across Boulder. Governor Polis's environmental agenda depends on freeing up compact housing supply that shortens commute times and curtails emissions. Colorado's Department of Transportation, for instance, has the leverage to drive the "balanced growth" of mobility and housing for Boulder County.

"The most celebrated architectural features of Boulder's environment would be illegal to build today."

Pro-housing coalitions are slowly exerting greater influence in Boulder's political universe. Activist groups favoring housing growth have sprung up, including the newly formed Boulder Progressives, as well as business organizations like the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. Yet technology firms and their employees largely remain on the sidelines, as do most younger voters, who stay just long enough to earn a degree or start a family. A large portion of the middle class has likewise opted out by leaving Boulder. At present, the city is a model case for what happens when local politics is highly responsive to the economic interests of "home voters." It's the combined interests of activists and business, developers and labor, and the middle class that will likely be necessary to ease restrictive land-use regulations.

The next election for Boulder's city council, in November, will be revealing. Even a single seat flip could shift the council in a pro-growth direction. And Boulder is presently updating not only its use tables-which govern the types of housing and business development allowed in each zone-but also its comprehensive plan, which allows for a change in zoning across the entire city. While the city almost never considers major policy shifts in this planning process, even the sometimes-obscure workings of government present opportunities for reform. Already, Boulder city planners are looking to the 2025 planning process as an occasion to explore new opportunities for housing development.

Boulder is now growing four times as many new jobs as new homes. The modern-day digital gold rush is staking out land made scarce by restrictive land-use regulations such that all but the most prosperous Boulderites are outbid for scarce housing and office space. Those limits on development are meant to preserve Boulder's exceptional natural beauty, mountain views, and small-town character. But as the cost of living rises ever higher, many local residents perceive significant collateral damage to the other things that make Boulder unique-its densely woven community, open and creative culture, and desire for equity.

Born a boomtown, Boulder has sought to preserve itself in the face of growth ever since. Time and again, periods of expansion were built on the exhaustion of preservation as an organizing interest, when new political coalitions formed. For such a thing to happen now in Boulder may seem unlikely, but as Minneapolis recently learned, shifts in the political winds can happen suddenly. Seattle's ADU reform took five years to bring about, following heated debates-and after decades of local citizens making their case. It's worth noting in this context that the most celebrated architectural features of Boulder's environment would be illegal to build today.

Boulder remains a place where people long to live-the city described in the Rocky Mountain News in 1865 as "presenting an eternal scene of beauty and grandeur," with all the advantages "necessary to a speedy growth of our place." Another 100,000 people could live in Boulder County by 2050, and in the next decade, the number of jobs will grow by nearly 50 percent. Upper or lower, neighbor or newcomer-they are Boulder, too.
This article is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Top Photo: Boulder's 100,000 residents enjoy median incomes that rank among the highest in the United States. (KENT RANEY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

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Nestled in a valley at the base of the Rocky Mountains, Boulder, Colorado, looks more like a national park than a city. Its compact, low-slung buildings follow trails and a walkable downtown from greenery to greenbelt, where its undeveloped plains evoke the Old West.

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Boulder County encompasses 740 square miles of the western plains and Rocky Mountains in north central Colorado. The county straddles three unique geographic zones: mountains in the west, plains in the east, and a natural trough that runs between the plains and foothills. Its western boundary, which it shares with Grand County, follows a jagged line of peaks in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The northwest corner of the county holds the southern reaches of Rocky Mountain National Park, including Longs Peak. Its eastern boundary, which it shares with Weld and Denver Counties, runs along the plains on the eastern edge of the city of Longmont. Boulder County borders Gilpin, Jefferson, and Denver Counties to the south and shares its northern boundary with Larimer County.

The county supports a population of 294,567, with much of it concentrated in the county seat of Boulder and the city of Longmont. Nestled against the foothills, the city of Boulder is home to the University of Colorado, the flagship campus of the University of Colorado system. The county is known for being the site of the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858-59. It was created in 1861, two years after prospectors discovered gold about a dozen miles up Boulder Canyon. Before the discovery of gold, the Boulder County area was frequented by several Native American groups, mainly the Ute, Arapaho, and Cheyenne.

Native Americans

Archaeological evidence suggests that Paleo-Indians roamed the mountains of the Boulder County area as early as 7,000 BC. These people likely followed seasonal migration patterns and employed hunting strategies established by older groups of Clovis and Folsom hunter-gatherers: they used creeks and streams to follow game to higher elevations during the summer, and when the first snows came, they retreated back down those same waterways to the natural sanctuary of the foothills. Near the mountain peaks, Paleo-Indians built huge stone corridors where they funneled and cornered large game; they also built stone blinds where they waited, bait in hand, to pick feathers from swooping eagles.

By the mid-sixteenth century, Ute peoples had occupied the whole of Colorado's Rocky Mountains for nearly a century. Several distinct Ute bands roamed the Front Range in what would become Boulder County: the Parianuche, or "Elk People," the Tabeguache, or "People of Sun Mountain (Pikes Peak)," and Muaches, or "Cedar Bark People." Expert hunters, Ute subsisted on elk, deer, and other mountain game. They also gathered a wide assortment of roots, including the versatile yucca root, and wild berries. In the summer, they followed elk and bison into high mountain parks, such as Allen's Park (8,500 feet). In the winter, they followed the game back to the sanctuary of lower elevations in the foothills and river valleys (5,000-7,000 feet). After the 1640s, when the Ute obtained horses from the Spanish, river bottoms became important wintering grounds, as cottonwood twigs and roots provided food for ponies.

By the early nineteenth century, the Ute found their hunting and wintering grounds contested by the Arapaho, a group of Plains Indians that had been forced out of a sedentary life in the upper Midwest by the powerful Lakota. Unlike the Ute, who rarely left their mountain homeland, the Arapaho ranged across all three ecological zones in present-day Boulder County. In the spring and early summer, they hunted buffalo on the plains; in late summer, they followed the herds into cooler, higher elevations, camping and hunting as far as the Continental Divide; in winter, they returned to the natural shelter of the trough along the foothills, where milder weather prevailed. For most of the year, Arapaho and Ute occupied the same territory, and this put them in a near-constant state of warfare.

The Cheyenne, another equestrian group of buffalo hunters, joined the Arapaho on the western plains north of the Platte River in the early 1820s. The two groups formed an alliance and fought the Ute not only for rights to hunting and wintering grounds, but also for access to the growing French and Anglo trade networks along the Front Range and western plains. But exposure to white trade goods came with a price-exposure to European diseases, such as smallpox. These diseases, against which no American Indian had immunity, decimated populations of all three prominent native groups in the Boulder County area. For example, in 1800 one group of Arapaho numbered some 10,000; by 1858, when Niwot, or Left Hand, led the group, disease had brought their numbers down to fewer than 3,000.

Niwot attended the signing of the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851, which preserved Arapaho rights to the Boulder Creek area. The treaty was brokered by his niece's white husband, Thomas Fitzpatrick, who died in 1854. After gold was found along the South Platte, few whites felt obligated to obey the treaty. As they moved into the foothills, they chopped down cottonwood trees and killed game, adding lack of shelter and starvation to the growing list of threats to all native groups in the region.

County Establishment

In the fall of 1858, Chief Niwot encountered Thomas Aikins and his group of gold prospectors camped near the mouth of Boulder Creek. Niwot had learned English from his brother-in-law, a Kentuckian who traded at Bent's Fort on the upper Arkansas, and put it to use. Aware of the Americans' intentions but preferring diplomacy to warfare, the Arapaho leader told the Aikins group in English to leave his people's territory immediately. The prospectors told Niwot they had only come for the winter and promised to leave in the spring. Against the wishes of some of his people, Niwot relented and let the prospectors stay.

That decision would prove invaluable to the prospectors and devastating to Niwot's Arapaho. On January 16, 1859, while prospecting at a site along a Boulder Creek fork, Aikins's son James and several others found gold. News of their discovery brought David Horsfal to the area, and he found an even larger deposit, the Horsfal Lode. A year later, the Boulder Creek deposits had already yielded a combined $100,000 in gold. Gold Hill, as the area of discovery came to be known, soon attracted not just gold seekers but also miners of clay-used to make brick-limestone, coal, and granite.

On February 10, 1859, not even a month after his son's discovery, Aikins founded the Boulder City Town Company. The city of Boulder was then platted on a two-mile stretch near the mouth of Boulder Canyon. In 1861, the new Colorado Territory was established, and Boulder County became one of its original seventeen counties. The same year, Arapaho leaders Niwot and Little Raven were forced to negotiate another treaty, the Fort Wise Treaty, which surrendered the Front Range to the whites and carved out a small reservation for the Arapaho and Cheyenne in southeast Colorado.

Niwot did not sign this new treaty. Unwilling to simply abandon their once-plentiful land, Niwot's and Little Raven's people spent two more lean and violent years in the Boulder Creek area before they moved to the Sand Creek camp, near Fort Lyon in present-day Kiowa County. Whites consistently assured the Arapaho and Cheyenne that they were safe near the fort; the near-starving Indians, for their part, also assured whites that they wished to camp peacefully and trade for supplies. But in 1864 Colonel John M. Chivington's 550 volunteers smashed into the Cheyenne-Arapaho camp at Sand Creek, slaughtering between 150 and 200 women, children, and elders and scalping and disfiguring the bodies. Niwot was shot down as he held up his hands and called out in English for the troops to stop. He later died at an Indian camp on the Smoky Hill River.

The southern Arapaho under Little Raven were removed to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) after the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867. In 1875 the founders of a railroad town northeast of Boulder named their new community Niwot after the fallen Arapaho leader.

Flood of 1894

On May 30, 1894, heavy rain caused Boulder Creek to rise out of its banks. The water tore through the canyon, laying waste to mines, railroad bridges, and settlements. By dawn the next day, the floodwaters crashed out of the canyon, inundating the city of Boulder. Rail and road bridges, as well as telegraph lines and many houses, were swept away, and farmland and irrigation ditches were destroyed. The city's Red Light District and other poor neighborhoods bore the brunt of the flooding, while surrounding towns, including Jamestown, Crisman, Glendale, and Springdale, also sustained severe damage. Many of those towns never recovered, as the deluge brought the county's three main industries--coal, metal mining, and agriculture--to a standstill. It took several years for the city of Boulder to fully recover.

Caribou, Nederland, and Longmont

Despite the devastating flood, by 1900 Boulder County's population had grown to more than 21,500; the mining communities of Caribou and Nederland, as well as the agricultural settlement of Longmont, were an essential part of that growth. In the mountains west of Boulder City, Nederland was founded in 1871 as Middle Boulder, serving as a mill and supply town for the nearby mining community of Caribou; that same year, on the plains some sixteen miles northeast of Boulder, the Chicago-Colorado Colony founded Longmont.

Ohioan prospector Sam Conger organized the town of Caribou around his silver strike in 1870. The multiple blizzards that pounded the area during the long winter made life in early Caribou famously harsh; in addition to bracing their buildings to withstand the destructive winds, snowbound residents often had to exit their homes through second-story windows. The same year his town was organized, Conger sold his mine to Abel Breed, another Ohio investor, for $50,000. An influx of British miners skilled in ore extraction made the mine exceptionally profitable in its early years, and in 1873 Breed sold the Caribou mine to the Nederland Mining Company for the enormous sum of $3 million. As part of the purchase the Dutch group also obtained Middle Boulder, which they renamed Nederland after their home country.

While multiple fires and the crash in silver prices in 1893 doomed the town of Caribou over the next two decades, Nederland blossomed as a tourist town, offering picturesque views of the nearby mountains and Boulder Canyon. Then, in the early 1900s, Nederland again became a hotbed of mining activity as the fortunate Conger again struck a precious metal-this time it was tungsten, a hard metal used to make incandescent light bulbs and strengthen steel. Conger's tungsten mines hummed until demand fell off with the end of World War I in 1918. Tourism again took over as the town's economic backbone.

Longmont, named for its view of Longs Peak, began as an agricultural colony on land granted to the Denver Pacific Railroad. William N. Byers, Rocky Mountain News founder and agent for the railway's land company, brokered a deal for some 23,000 acres near St. Vrain, Left Hand, and Boulder Creeks with Seth Terry, a representative from the Chicago-Colorado Colony. The colony bought an additional 37,000 acres in the area from the federal government and other parties.

In contrast to saloon-ridden mining towns like Boulder and Caribou, Longmont's founders envisioned their town as a sober agricultural community. Deeds to land in the colony originally forbade the consumption or sale of alcohol on the property. By June 1871, three months after its initial settlers arrived, Longmont had twenty-three miles of irrigation ditches and seventy-five buildings, including Boulder County's first library. After the turn of the century, Longmont farmers were producing profitable crops of wheat, pumpkins, peas, and sugar beets. Longmont was also one of the first Colorado settler towns to plot out parks, including Lake Park-subsequently renamed Roosevelt Park-the site of the Boulder County Fair from 1891 to 1978.

Coal Strikes

In addition to the metal mining around Boulder, Caribou, and Nederland, coal mining became an important part of the Boulder County economy, especially in the early twentieth century. By that time, however, exploited coal miners began to organize in unions such as the United Mine Workers of America to lobby for better pay and working conditions. This led to a series of ugly strikes in Boulder County's coal mining towns in 1903, 1910-14, and 1927.

First, coal miners in Louisville won an eight-hour day, a 15 percent raise, and safer working conditions in 1903. Then, from 1910-14, some 2,700 Boulder County miners struck, with violence between strikers, guards, and scabs curtailed by the appearance of state and federal troops. At the end of this strike, miners won a 20 percent wage increase and more improvements in mine safety. During yet another strike, in 1927, blood was spilled when company guards at the Columbine Mine fired on strikers, killing six and wounding twenty. Again, federal troops intervened to quell the violence. Ownership of the Columbine Mine passed to Josephine Roche, the previous owner's daughter, who raised wages, improved mine safety, and championed workers' rights as the state's first female gubernatorial candidate in 1934. Later in the twentieth century, the Boulder County economy shifted from mining to education and agriculture.

University of Colorado

Founded in 1861, the University of Colorado-Boulder (CU) is the state's flagship university. To build the initial campus, the Territorial Legislature gave the town $15,000 on the condition that Boulder residents match that amount themselves. The residents matched the appropriation and by 1876 had finished construction on Old Main, CU's first building. Its first president, Dr. Joseph Sewall, and his family lived in the building, which also hosted the first classes. In the spring of 1882, CU graduated its first, all-male, class of six.

By 1980, CU-Boulder's student population had reached 20,000 and faculty members worked with many prominent research institutes, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Today, the University of Colorado has campuses throughout the state, including the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, University of Colorado-Denver, and the Health Sciences Center in Denver. With a combined enrollment of 44,500, the University of Colorado system remains a prestigious and nationally respected academic institution.

Today

Boulder County remains culturally and economically diverse. A liberal pocket in an otherwise conservative state, the so-called "People's Republic of Boulder" has evolved into an active, wealthy suburban community that also prioritizes conservation; the city maintains 145 miles of hiking trails and attracts hundreds of outdoor enthusiasts each year.

Giant tech companies such as IBM and Ball Corp., an aerospace company, are headquartered in Longmont. The town has reaped the benefits of being near a major university, as it recruits many CU graduates for its burgeoning biotech, aerospace, and software and IT industries. In 2015 CU Health, citing a lack of access to emergency care across the state, began construction on a $160 million hospital at County Line Road and Ken Pratt Boulevard in Longmont.

Hay and other forage crops are the county's primary agricultural products by a wide margin; in 2012 hay and forage crops covered 23,397 acres, while the next-most plentiful crop, wheat, covered only 1,764. Boulder County is also among the top-ten poultry-and-egg-producing counties in the state.

Although it has yet to endure a catastrophe like that of the 1894 flood, Boulder County remains vulnerable to flood events. After several days of heavy rain beginning on September 9, 2013, Boulder County was one of fourteen Colorado counties to experience historically destructive flooding. Within Boulder County alone, floodwaters damaged more than 1,200 homes; took down ten bridges; washed out dozens of miles of roads, power lines, and open space trails; and killed three people, stranded over 100 more, and forced 1,600 to evacuate the flood zone. Immediately after the floods, Governor John Hickenlooper declared a state of emergency and funneled $6 million in state funds to pay for flood response and recovery.

Total repair costs from the flood are estimated at $217 million over a five-year period. Of that total, $56 million will be the responsibility of Boulder County; the rest will be reimbursed by state and federal agencies. As of September 2014, Boulder County workers, volunteers, and residents had removed 4,870 truckloads of debris, rebuilt five of the ten bridges destroyed during the storm, and repaired twenty-two miles of open space trails. In the wake of the floods, a coalition of state and local politicians, community leaders, and church leaders formed the Long-Term Flood Recovery Group of Boulder County. The group's website also provides links to mental health agencies, support groups, and financial resources to help flood victims who continue to struggle in the aftermath of the floods.

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Boulder County encompasses 740 square miles of the western plains and Rocky Mountains in north central Colorado. The county straddles three unique geographic zones: mountains in the west, plains in the east, and a natural trough that runs between the plains and foothills.

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As citizens of Colorado, we occupy lands that are recognized by treaty as the territories of Indigenous Nations including the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples. Consciously or unconsciously, we currently benefit from the historic and ongoing injustices committed against the Native peoples of this land.

The Arapaho, the main tribe of the Boulder Valley region, call themselves Hinono'eino ("our people") and refer to their tribe as Hinono'eiteen (Arapahoe Nation). While the Hinóno'éí and Cheyenne tribal headquarters are now in Oklahoma, they continue to relate to Boulder, Colorado as their homeland. The local organization Right Relationship Boulder now welcomes the Hinóno'éí (Arapaho) people back to Boulder every year on Indigenous Peoples Day for gathering, celebration, and sharing!

The Boulder Healing Hub would like to honor Chief Left Hand (Nawath/Niwot), leader of the last Hinóno'éí band to spend their winters in the Boulder Valley. Many Hinóno'éí people were massacred by the US Cavalry at Sand Creek, Colorado, in 1864. The survivors were forced out of Colorado to reservations in Wyoming and Oklahoma, where most Hinóno'éí live today.

Please join us in remembering that Boulder Valley is home to the Hinóno'éí people and to other tribes that camped, hunted, and traded here for centuries. It is also important to remember that Native people of many Indigenous nations live here in Boulder today, and that Native cultures are not simply something of the past!

Local Boulder indigenous organizations we support!

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Honoring Native Land - Boulder Healing Hub

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As citizens of Colorado, we occupy lands that are recognized by treaty as the territories of Indigenous Nations including the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples. Consciously or unconsciously, we currently benefit from the historic and ongoing injustices committed against the Native peoples of this land.

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Seventh-day Adventists have a long history in the state of Colorado-particularly in Boulder-where they have made a distinct imprint on the culture. The iconic Mount Sanitas is named for the Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium and Hospital which was originally located at the base of the mountain. The Seventh-day Adventist lifestyle, known for its emphasis on healthful and holistic living, has always been a good match for the outdoorsy and healthy culture of Boulder.

Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium and Hospital

It is no wonder that Boulder is recognized as one of the healthiest cities in America. In 1896, just 20 years after Boulder became part of the State of Colorado, the Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium and Hospital was built at 4th and Mapleton, at the foot of the mountain we now call Mount Sanitas.

Thanks in great part to the vision of Adventist church co-founder Ellen White, the expertise of John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., and the direction of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the sanitarium and hospital became widely known as an excellent place for healing the mind, body, and spirit. Dr. Kellogg prescribed vegetarian meals, natural remedies, and exercise in the fresh mountain air. The Colorado Sanitarium Food Company, right on the hospital grounds, made Kellogg's signature corn flakes, granola, and peanut butter, and included those healthful food items in its healing diets.

The sanitarium advertised its completed trail to the top of Mount Sanitas in 1902 in one of its brochures, and recommended climbing the mountain for health benefits. The original buildings of the sanitarium and hospital underwent many transformations over the years, becoming Boulder Memorial Hospital in the 1950s-still operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Even with the name change, it was for over a decade still affectionally called by staff and locals as "The San." Then in 1989, the hospital was sold to Boulder Community Hospital and Memorial Hospital relocated to Louisville as Avista Adventist Hospital. Until that time, many of the historic homes on Mapleton Hill were owned by Memorial Hospital and its many staff members.

Seventh-day Adventists still aim to incorporate some of the same health principles advocated by Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium and Hospital into their lifestyles. Among them are fresh air, sleep, exercise, healthful eating-with an emphasis on fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts, avoidance of harmful substances such as tobacco and alcohol, and trust in God as part of a faith community.

Boulder Church: An Adventist Faith Community

The first Seventh-day Adventist family came to Boulder in 1871. In 1879, a church was organized at the home of Henry Pierce at 905 Arapahoe. The first Seventh-day Adventist church building in Colorado was constructed a year later at the southeast corner of Broadway & Mapleton. The congregation moved to a brick structure at 7th and Highland in 1898. The present church (built in 1948) is located on the southeast corner the original Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium and Hospital property. The ceremony for laying the cornerstone in August 1950 was attended by several hundred people. The sanctuary, remodeled in the 1970s, is still valued by musicians today as a premier performance venue, due to the favorable acoustics. Although observing the seventh-day Sabbath (Saturday) marks a difference from most mainline churches, the Seventh-day Adventist church shares beliefs similar to other Christian churches, including The Trinity, the Bible as the basis for its tenets, and the Golden Rule as established by Jesus Christ as a general guideline for good living. Love, compassion, acceptance, honesty, dependability-these are some of the attributes Seventh-day Adventists want to be best known for in their homes, workplaces, and communities.

Boulder Junior Academy

In order to provide both an excellent general and spiritual/religious education, early Boulder Seventh-day Adventists established a private school. Its first teacher was Florence Cornell. Early classes met in the basement of the church on Highland Avenue, but soon a private home was remodeled to house the growing Boulder Junior Academy at the corner of Portland Street and 9th Street. In 1954, the school moved to 4th Street, where it remained until 2004 when it changed its name to Vista Ridge Academy and relocated to Erie to make the school more accessible to students who attend from many surrounding foothills cities. The new facilities provide for advanced computer, science, music, fine arts, and sports classes, as well as an excellent space for our core academic programs.

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Seventh-day Adventists have a long history in the state of Colorado-particularly in Boulder-where they have made a distinct imprint on the culture. The iconic Mount Sanitas is named for the Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium and Hospital which was originally located at the base of the mountain.

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Open in a different tab and listen while you explore

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area no.1 is a time based score for viola, cello, electric guitar and two percussionists (bass drum and crotales). The graphic score is derived from topographical and historical information from Dakota Ridge and the

released March 12, 2021
Iris Sidikman, Nick Deyoe, Katie Eikam and Sean Goldman

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area no.1 is a time based score for viola, cello, electric guitar and two percussionists (bass drum and crotales). The graphic score is derived from topographical and historical information from Dakota Ridge and the released March 12, 2021 Iris Sidikman, Nick Deyoe, Katie Eikam and Sean Goldman

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The trail starts on the right side of the parking lot. A really fun trail that goes up and down a lot and some steep inclines. The trail is dusty and rocky, and you can hear the road. There are no bathroom at the trailhead. So please plan accordingly!

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The trail starts on the right side of the parking lot. A really fun trail that goes up and down a lot and some steep inclines. The trail is dusty and rocky, and you can hear the road. There are no bathroom at the trailhead. So please plan accordingly!

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Hiking in Mount Sanitas: The more things change, the more they stay the same!

If you're like many Boulderites, you probably already think of the Sanitas area as a great place to hike, run, walk the dog or simply get some fresh air. But do you know how it got its name?

Boulder Colorado Sanitarium and Hospital

In the late 1800s, the campus that we now refer to as Boulder Community Hospital at 4th and Mapleton was the site of the Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium and Hospital. It was one of a series of John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek, Michigan, Sanatoriums. Kellogg, a Seventh-Day Adventist, was one of the leaders of a growing movement in 'health building and training' called the Western Health Reform Institute. The institute promoted 'hydro-therapy, exercise and a vegetarian diet' as the way to good health.

While our generation has come to understand that diet and exercise are essential to one's health and well-being, the concept was brand new and somewhat controversial in the late 1800s. Victorians were well known for five course meals, rich with meats, cream, starch, butter and sugar. In 1876, a typical breakfast could consist of steak, bacon and eggs, fried potatoes, pancakes and sausage, porridge, donuts and fruits. Dr. Kellogg believed this diet was at the root of many of the diseases that plagued his generation. Kellogg was determined to change the way Americans not only ate, but lived, and developed the Battle Creek Sanatorium as a place where the patient's lifestyle could be completely controlled. The Sanatorium became a popular and profitable method of spreading the word, and by the turn of the century, he and his brother, W.K. Kellogg began to mass produce their healthy foods (including some cereals we would recognize today!).

In 1893, Seventh-Day Adventist Elder John Fulton came to Colorado for health reasons. During his recovery, he realized Colorado was the perfect place for a Battle Creek Sanatorium and was able to convince Dr. Kellogg to start one here in Boulder. The town, he believed, was situated very well for healing, and featured a climate "as nearly perfect as can be found." In 1894, the first Sanatorium and Hospital was opened in several cottages on
University Place
. The main sanatorium building was completed in 1896.

Treatment at the Kellogg Sanatoriums was almost spa-like. Meals were of the utmost importance, and of course, cereals and grains were featured prominently. At its height, the Sanatorium had its own dairy and food factory with a natural food store here in Boulder and several in Denver. There were strict rules about what foods to combine and alcohol, tea, coffee, meat and most sugars were forbidden.

In keeping with the most modern medical discoveries, the Sanatorium also prescribed some hydro and electric therapies:
Prominent among these (forms of treatment) are the use of electricity in all its forms, massage both general and special, Swedish movements, various baths such as the electric light bath, electro-thermal bath, sprays, douches, salt glows, cold mitten friction, etc. These, together with proper exercise, proper food, pure air and pure water, constitute the true sanitarium idea - the cultivation of health. See all related photos in the Photo Gallery
In its beginning days, the Sanatorium and Hospital originally welcomed tubercular patients. Colorado was home to a number of tubercular sanatoriums because, at the time, it was believed that our altitude and climate contributed to the cure of the rampant disease. (Indeed, a number of notable Coloradoans moved here and were cured, including Enos Mills and F. O. Stanley). Because of the stigma of tuberculosis, patients were soon moved to outlying cottages. The presence of patients with this highly contagious disease ultimately proved to be bad for business, and by 1904, people with tuberculosis and other communicable diseases were no longer accepted at the Sanatorium.

The decision to exclude tubercular patients from the Sanatorium and its emphasis on diet and exercise may have contributed to the notion that the institution offered more of a 'spa vacation' than a stay in the hospital, in spite of its surgical and obstetrical facilities. In fact, in 1930, the Sanatorium advertised itself as a vacation destination in their brochure, "The Vacation Extra."

And why wouldn't people want to spend their vacation here? "The unrivaled ensemble of advantages is making the Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium justly and increasingly popular with professional workers and others who recognize in this institution the rare opportunity of combining, during the vacation period, the Sanitarium System of rational, tonic treatment with the ideal climatic conditions and the magnificent mountain, plain and canyon scenery of this National Park region." Brochures touted activities and facilities - hiking, burro rides, a swimming pool - all of which could very well be found in advertising for tourist attractions of today. In fact, hiking in the area was encouraged, and in a 1902 brochure the Sanitarium proclaimed their trail to the top of Mount Sanitas to be newly completed:
The sanitarium has just completed a trail to the very summit of the mount, a distance of nearly two miles. The slope is not so great but that nearly everyone can reach the peak by simply taking his time.... A number of trustworthy burros have been purchased, and the patients have free access to them. By means of these many are able to reach the peak who otherwise would be denied the privilege, owing to lack of strength. The donkeys not only aid the feeble but give comfort and amusement to the strong.
Obviously, getting outside and enjoying the "equable" climate of Boulder was integral to both the physical and emotional well-being of the patient. To that end, several stone structures were built just to the west of the Sanitarium probably in the mid-1910s. Unlike the original Sanitarium, these structures still stand unaltered and remind us of the area's beginnings. You can visit those structures today. And, although OSMP doesn't provide burros to make the hike up Mount Sanitas, you can climb the same trail used by patients at the Sanitarium in 1902.

Did you know?
Because the name Sanitas is derived from the word sanitarium, its pronunciation is similar: Instead of the popular san-'ee-tis, with the emphasis on the 'ee' sound, the correct pronunciation actually sounds like 'san-eh-toss, with the emphasis on the first syllable, 'san.'

Want to learn more?
Boulder's Carnegie Library has a wealth of information about the sanitarium' s history, including bulletins, brochures, photographs and personal histories!

Schlereth, Thomas J. "Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life," Harper Perennial, 1991, p. 219.

Brief History of Boulder, Colorado Sanitarium, Information provided by sanitarium, 1939 (archives Carnegie Library)

Colorado Sanitarium Bulletin, November 1902, Vol. 1. No. 1. Page 1

Colorado Sanatorium circular, 1904.

"The Vacation Extra," The Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium, The Battle Creek of the Rockies, 1930.

November 1902. Vol. 1. No 1. page 4.

Cultural Resources Program Links

Mount Sanitas Hike Maps

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If you're like many Boulderites, you probably already think of the Sanitas area as a great place to hike, run, walk the dog or simply get some fresh air. But do you know how it got its name?

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Boulder dietitian Lisa Lanzano sometimes sees clients whose palms have turned orange from eating an excess of fruits and vegetables such as mangoes, carrots and squash to the exclusion of almost all other foods.

"They think they're eating healthy," she says of the diet so high in carotenoids that it causes orange pigmentation in the skin. "(But they) don't allow themselves to the eat the food that nourishes them in a healthy way."

Such obsessively correct eating has a name - orthorexia nervosa - although it does not have official recognition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association. The term was coined in a 1997 Yoga Journal article by Coloradoan Dr. Steven Bratman. In 2000, the article was reprinted in the Utne Reader. Bratman then wrote a book, "Health Food Junkies," about the topic.

In the article, Bratman defined orthorexia nervosa as a "pathological fixation on eating proper food." Bratman, who still lives in Colorado and is now working on a master's degree in public health, says that after the publication of the article, he was excoriated over the idea that healthy eating can take an unhealthy turn. Some even accused him of working for McDonald's or agribusiness, even though he had practiced alternative medicine for 25 years.

Bratman says he rarely talks about orthorexia nowadays, but the concept has lived on among health professionals who deal with eating disorders.

Although it is not an official diagnosis, the concept of orthorexia can be a useful way for health professionals to understand the perspective of a person whose once-appropriate idea of a proper diet may have crossed the line into disordered eating.

Lanzano says she sometimes see orthorexic tendencies at work in some of her clients when they travel.

"Something is packaged in plastic instead of glass ... people will skip a meal in a travel situation. If it's not the food they believe is healthy for them, they just won't eat," she says. "That's where it starts to cross a line. Instead of taking care of themselves, it's ... abusing themselves in the name of health."

When healthy becomes unhealthy

Dr. Anita Kumar-Gill, a psychiatrist and medical director of the Eating Disorder Center of Denver, says people who have a tendency toward obsession, rumination and rigidity are more at risk than others for this type of eating disorder.

"Especially when there's a tendency toward the elimination of certain types of food and the conceptualizing of certain foods as being bad," Kumar-Gill says.

It's a warning flag if a person's eating patterns begin to interfere with normal life, and he or she starts to forbid more and more types of food from his or her diet.

As Bratman described orthorexia in his 1997 article: "The act of eating pure food begins to carry pseudospiritual connotations. As orthorexia progresses, a day filled with sprouts, umeboshi plums, and amaranth biscuits comes to feel as holy as one spent serving the poor and the homeless ... This "kitchen spirituality" eventually reaches a point where the sufferer spends most of his time planning, purchasing, and eating meals."

If such food obsession reaches a point that the calories being consumed fall below nutritional requirements and weight drops below normal levels, a person should take a close look at his or her behavior, experts say.

However, even when such obvious physical signs are present, it can be difficult for a person to see such behavior as problematic.

Kumar-Gill explains that many people with eating disorders - with orthorexic tendencies or not - are "egosyntonic," which means that the behaviors present in the disorder are closely in tune with the individual's ideal of a proper self.

"It's like a really, really tight glove on your hand," Kumar-Gill says. "You don't even know the glove is there. It's difficult to distinguish the disorder from oneself."

Clinicians sometimes find the orthorexic concept useful because it can provide a perspective on how the patient might see his or her own eating habits. Orthorexics generally see their food restrictions as part of a quest for health rather than a desire to lose weight.

"If you don't see the distinction that the individual sees, you may not be able to align with the individual clinically," Kumar-Gill says. "If you say 'You have an eating disorder,' you're going to lose (the patient.)"

With that understanding in place, however, the treatment for a severely orthorexic patient is similar to treatment for more typically expressed anorexia or bulimia, Kumar-Gill says. In the Eating Disorder Center of Denver, that would include work with psychiatrists, dietitians, and individual and a family therapist, art therapy, mindful meditation. Kumar-Gill says many eating disorders have co-morbidities, meaning that other conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder may be present. In some cases, those patients are treated with drugs.

The bigger picture

Dietitian Lanzano of Boulder's Essential Nutrition says she suggests that clients eat well, but not perfectly. That means incorporating a large variety of foods and eating the healthy things nutritionists espouse such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lean proteins. Generally avoiding pesticides, hormones and preservatives is useful, too.

She starts by asking clients what their favorite foods are. Often they list foods such as hamburgers, pizza or candy - something that they consider absolutely forbidden.

Lanzano suggests eating "joyfully, healthy and naturally."

"That means eating foods we love and trusting our bodies to handle the occasional piece of candy or pizza," she says. "If you know you love a food and never allow yourself to eat it, you're telling yourself you can't be trusted with that food."

And she adds, the human body is designed to eliminate toxins and impurities. The occasional less-than-healthful food won't tip the body into an unhealthy sate.

Taking a strict attitude about various types of food can also take it out of its cultural context, making food a collection of complex chemicals rather than something that may have been cooked with intentionality, says Dietitian Lynn Smith of Source Nutrition in Boulder.

"You can cook consciousness into food," she says. "Anyone can relate to a meal cooked by Mom or Grandma (where you felt) totally nourished."

As for Bratman, he says many people take food way too seriously.

"There's way more important things in your life than the quality of what you eat," he says. "Nobody on their death bed says 'I wish I ate less ice cream.'"
Contact Cindy Sutter at sutterc@dailycamera.com or 303-473-1335

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Orthorexia nervosa: An unhealthy obsession with eating healthy foods

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Boulder dietitian Lisa Lanzano sometimes sees clients whose palms have turned orange from eating an excess of fruits and vegetables such as mangoes, carrots and squash to the exclusion of almost all other foods. "They think they're eating healthy," she says of the diet so high in carotenoids that it causes orange pigmentation in the skin.