98 Fun Facts About Boulder

Boulder was founded in late 1858 by prospectors drawn to the area by what?

The Colorado Gold Rush. Gold turned up along Boulder Creek in January 1859, and the find drew more miners and merchants to the new camp.

Boulder lies at the foot of which range of the Rocky Mountains?

Front Range. Its peaks help block storms from the west, which shelters the string of cities at its foot, from Fort Collins through Denver to Colorado Springs.

Which TV series was created by two friends who met as students at CU Boulder?

South Park. As students, Trey Parker and Matt Stone made a rough construction-paper cartoon about foul-mouthed boys, and it grew into the series, set in a fictional Colorado town.

Which Native leader, linked to Boulder's first settlement, was mortally wounded in the Sand Creek massacre?

Chief Niwot. He is said to have let the prospectors winter in the valley on a promise to leave in spring; they stayed, and his band soon had to move to a reservation.

Which kind of forecast for the whole United States is issued from a NOAA centre in Boulder?

Space weather. The Boulder centre watches the Sun around the clock and alerts power grids, airlines and satellite operators when a solar storm is heading for Earth.

Boulder's 1959 'Blue Line' amendment protected the mountain backdrop by restricting what above a set elevation?

City water service. With no city water above the line, subdivisions could not creep up the foothills behind Boulder.

In 1967 Boulder voters approved a dedicated sales tax to buy what?

Open space. The tax was meant to hold back sprawl, and the land bought since now rings Boulder as a green buffer.

Why does Boulder's city charter cap new buildings at 55 feet?

To preserve mountain views. Voters wrote the cap into the charter, and zoning holds much of downtown to 35 feet, which is why Boulder's skyline stays so low.

In 2007 Boulder became the first US city to levy what kind of tax?

A carbon tax. It was charged on electricity use from April 2007 to pay for the city's climate plan, until a broader climate tax replaced it in 2023.

In 1974 Boulder's city council voted to ban job discrimination on what basis?

Sexual orientation. The backlash was swift: voters overturned the ordinance that same year and recalled a council member who had voted for it.

Which late-1970s spin-off of Happy Days was set in Boulder?

Mork & Mindy. Robin Williams's alien first turned up in a Happy Days episode, then landed a show of his own, with a real house on Boulder's Pine Street as Mindy's home.

Boulder is the gathering point for survivors of a superflu in which 1978 Stephen King novel?

The Stand. King had lived in Boulder a few years earlier, and in the novel the plague's survivors gather there to rebuild society as the 'Free Zone'.

Which film festival announced in 2025 that it would move to Boulder from 2027?

Sundance. Boulder beat rival bids from Cincinnati and from Salt Lake City with Park City, ending the festival's long run in the Utah mountains.

The Bolder Boulder, a 10-kilometre road race first run in 1979, takes place on which holiday?

Memorial Day. The course ends inside CU's football stadium, where finishers stay on in the stadium for a tribute to members of the armed forces.

Boulder's Dushanbe Teahouse was a gift from a sister city in which country?

Tajikistan. Tajik artisans built the teahouse by hand and packed it into crates, but it sat in storage for years before Boulder finally opened it in 1998.

Hundreds of Boulderites have marked New Year's Day by doing what at Boulder Reservoir?

A polar bear plunge. Rescue teams wait at the water's edge as the plungers throw themselves into the freezing water, and the dip has raised money for an Alzheimer's charity.

On Groundhog Day, Boulder's mountain-park rangers roll out Flatiron Freddy, a stuffed what?

Marmot. Freddy is a stuffed yellow-bellied marmot, a close relative of the groundhog, and has arrived for his forecast by canoe, bobsled and zip line.

Under Boulder law, exterminating which animal requires a permit?

Prairie dogs. Even the city has to apply for a special permit before using lethal control on its own farmland, and it relocates colonies where it can.

Which big-band leader studied at CU Boulder in the 1920s and has the student union's ballroom named after him?

Glenn Miller. He played in bands while he studied, then quit college to work in music full time; the student union's ballroom now bears his name.

The Comedy Central show Broad City ends with which character moving to Boulder for an artists' residency?

Abbi. She says her goodbyes to best friend Ilana and leaves New York, and the series closes with the two still talking by phone.

Which Native people held the Boulder Valley by the 1500s, about three centuries before settlers arrived?

Ute. People had wintered in this sheltered valley for thousands of years before them, moving between the mountains and the plains with the seasons.

Which downtown Boulder street became a pedestrian mall in 1977?

Pearl Street. Shopping centres had drawn business away from downtown, so the city shut four blocks to traffic, and street performers have made the mall their stage ever since.

Which government building sits on the north side of Boulder's downtown pedestrian mall?

The Boulder County Courthouse. Despite its name, no courts sit there any more; they moved out, while the county government stayed.

Which Boulder-based tea company was founded in 1969 by Mo Siegel and Wyck Hay gathering wild herbs?

Celestial Seasonings. The founders picked the herbs themselves and sold their first blends to local health-food shops, with wives and friends helping to pack the tea.

Which herbal tea, launched by a Boulder company in 1972, became its bestselling blend?

Sleepytime. The same company's Red Zinger tea gave its name to a Colorado bicycle race that later grew into the Coors Classic.

Which maker of glass canning jars started an aerospace business in Boulder in 1956?

Ball Corporation. The jar maker's offshoot began with pointing controls for rockets, went on to build instruments for the Hubble Space Telescope, and was sold to BAE Systems in 2024.

NCAR's Mesa Laboratory in Boulder supplied futuristic exteriors for which Woody Allen comedy?

Sleeper. Allen also filmed at the curving Sculptured House on a mountain west of Denver, which picked up the nickname the Sleeper House.

Which president dedicated the National Bureau of Standards laboratories in Boulder in the 1950s?

Eisenhower. The labs he opened in September 1954 became NIST's Boulder campus, where atomic clocks now keep official time for the whole United States.

Which CU Boulder football star led the NFL in rushing before spending three decades on the US Supreme Court?

Byron White. He delayed his Rhodes Scholarship by a term to play one NFL season on a record salary, led the league in rushing, then left for Oxford.

CU Boulder's live mascot Ralphie, who leads the football team onto the field, is what kind of animal?

A bison. Every Ralphie has been a female, since cows are far smaller and calmer than bulls, yet she can still run at about 25 mph.

CU Boulder has won most of its team national championships in which sport?

Skiing. CU's skiers have won more than 20 national titles, and while the rest of the athletic department changed conferences they stayed in their own Rocky Mountain ski league.

What is CU Boulder's Charles Klauder campus style of rough sandstone walls and red-tiled roofs called?

Tuscan Vernacular Revival. Klauder first drew the campus in his usual Gothic style, then dropped it for local sandstone and red tile that would suit Boulder's mountain backdrop.

In 2024 CU Boulder rejoined which athletic conference, ending its time in the Pac-12?

Big 12. CU's announcement in July 2023 opened the floodgates: within weeks seven more schools had agreed to leave the Pac-12, which was left with two members.

Which Mercury Seven astronaut was born in Boulder and studied at CU?

Scott Carpenter. On his 1962 flight he overshot his splashdown target by about 250 miles and sat in a life raft while the country waited to learn whether he had survived.

Ralphie I was kidnapped in 1970 by students from which rival institution?

The Air Force Academy. Ralphie I had the last laugh: the next year she was named CU's Homecoming Queen.

Which Star Wars droid did Boulder robot maker Sphero turn into an app-controlled toy in 2015?

BB-8. Sphero was in a Disney start-up programme in 2014 when Disney's chief executive showed its founders set photos of the droid, before the public knew it existed.

Which officiating blunder helped Colorado beat Missouri in 1990?

A fifth down. The officials lost count near the goal line, Colorado scored on the extra play as time ran out, and it went on to share the national title.

Who was Colorado's first Heisman Trophy winner, in 1994?

Rashaan Salaam. In that same 1994 season two of his teammates, Kordell Stewart and Michael Westbrook, connected on the 64-yard 'Miracle at Michigan' Hail Mary.

Deion Sanders became Colorado's head football coach in 2023 after three seasons at which university?

Jackson State. Several of his players followed him to Boulder, among them his sons Shedeur and Shilo and Travis Hunter, who won the Heisman there in 2024.

Boulder's Colorado Chautauqua, started in 1898, was a summer school for teachers from which state?

Texas. The University of Texas wanted a cooler summer spot for the state's teachers, and Boulder won the site when residents voted for a bond to buy the land.

Which Boulder university was founded in 1974 by the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa?

Naropa University. 'Take me to your poets!' Trungpa is said to have asked on reaching America, and poets duly helped him launch the school.

Allen Ginsberg helped found a Boulder writing school in 1974 that is named after which fellow Beat writer?

Jack Kerouac. Ginsberg and the poet Anne Waldman founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics five years after Kerouac's death, and Burroughs was among the Beats who later came to teach.

Daredevil Ivy Baldwin walked a tightrope across which canyon near Boulder dozens of times?

Eldorado Canyon. Baldwin, a veteran aerialist, kept crossing for about 40 years and made his last walk on his 82nd birthday; climbers now come for the same sheer walls.

Which concert venue on 14th Street opened in 1906 as the Curran Opera House?

The Boulder Theater. It began with touring plays and silent films, was remade as an Art Deco cinema in 1936, and now hosts concerts and film festivals.

The 2021 Marshall Fire destroyed hundreds of homes in Superior and which neighbouring city?

Louisville. Gusts of more than 100 mph drove a December grass fire into its subdivisions, and over 1,000 buildings burned across the area in a matter of hours.

Which fourteener, the highest peak in Rocky Mountain National Park, is also the highest point in Boulder County?

Longs Peak. John Wesley Powell's party made the first recorded climb in 1868, a year before he led his famous boat expedition through the Grand Canyon.

Which animals has Boulder hired to control weeds in its parks?

Goats. The city has brought in herds for years to graze down weeds such as thistle, and holds 'meet and bleat' days so residents can visit them at work.

What did runners in Boulder's naked Halloween run wear on their heads?

A hollowed-out pumpkin. The Naked Pumpkin Run began in 1998 and carried on until 2009, when police threatened to charge runners with indecent exposure.

Which newspaper, founded in 1890, is Boulder's main paper?

The Daily Camera. It began as a weekly, went daily within a year, and was produced at the same downtown corner for 120 years.

Which novel did Stephen King write while living in Boulder in the mid-1970s?

The Shining. King and his wife were the only guests at the Stanley Hotel in nearby Estes Park the night before it shut for winter, and the stay gave him the story.

Which 1972 Olympic marathon champion, a longtime Boulder resident, co-founded the Bolder Boulder?

Frank Shorter. His gold in Munich is credited with igniting America's running boom, and the 10K he helped start now draws around 50,000 people a year.

Which Boulder street follows the 40th parallel of latitude?

Baseline Road. Surveyors used the 40th parallel as their base line for mapping the region, and farther east the same line forms the border between Kansas and Nebraska.

Which ice field on the Continental Divide helps supply Boulder's water, alongside Boulder Creek?

Arapahoe Glacier. Boulder bought the watershed around it, and later the glacier itself, and the area is closed to the public to protect the water.

Which mountain town above Boulder hosted the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival for two decades before it moved in 2023?

Nederland. The festival grew up around Bredo Morstøl, a Norwegian whose grandson shipped his body to America in 1989 to keep it frozen; it now takes place in Estes Park.

Which architect designed NCAR's Mesa Laboratory in Boulder?

I. M. Pei modelled the towers on the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde and mixed local pinkish stone into the concrete so they would blend into the hills behind.

Which Elton John album is named after the mountain studio west of Boulder where he recorded it?

Caribou. Caribou Ranch, a studio in a converted barn in the mountains, drew acts such as Chicago and Joe Walsh until a fire shut it in 1985.

Which film critic spent decades at Boulder's Conference on World Affairs dissecting one movie shot by shot each year?

Roger Ebert. The sessions were known as Cinema Interruptus: the film ran until anyone in the audience shouted "Stop!" to talk about what was on screen.

Which mountain above Boulder carries the giant illuminated star lit every holiday season since 1947?

Flagstaff Mountain. The Junior Chamber of Commerce first strung up the Boulder Star, and the city also lights it out of season to rally the community after tragedies.

Which playwright's works fill CU Boulder's Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre each summer at a festival established in 1958?

William Shakespeare is staged there in a theatre named after Mary Rippon, the first female professor at the University of Colorado.

Which future Hollywood star worked at The Sink, a bar on Boulder's University Hill, while studying at CU in the 1950s?

Robert Redford spent a year and a half at the university, and a painting of his likeness now sits among the murals on the bar's walls.

Which Colorado Buffaloes star won the 2024 Heisman Trophy while playing both wide receiver and cornerback?

Travis Hunter played nearly 1,400 snaps on offense and defense that season, 382 more than any other player in the country.

Which rival university do the CU Buffaloes play for the Centennial Cup in football's Rocky Mountain Showdown?

Colorado State's Rams first met the Buffaloes in 1893, and the game has been staged in Boulder, Fort Collins and Denver's NFL stadium.

CU Boulder students built the dust counter aboard New Horizons, a NASA probe launched in 2006 to explore which world?

Pluto was named by Venetia Burney, an 11-year-old English girl, and the student-built instrument now carries her name.

Which 7th Heaven actress, who later married Justin Timberlake, grew up in Boulder after a childhood of frequent moves?

Jessica Biel's family lived in Connecticut and Illinois before settling in Boulder, and she trained as a vocalist before turning to acting.

In Boulder, the names Hop, Skip, Jump, Dash and Bound belong to which everyday things?

Bus routes with those names, plus one called Stampede, cross the city every ten to fifteen minutes at the busiest hours.

Which actress, best known as Charlotte York in Sex and the City, was born in Boulder in 1965?

Kristin Davis was adopted by her stepfather, a University of Colorado professor, before the family left the state early in her childhood.

Which author of Into the Wild moved to Boulder from Seattle after publishing his Everest account Into Thin Air?

Jon Krakauer used royalties from the book to found a fund at the Boulder Community Foundation as a tribute to his lost climbing partners.

CU Boulder students named a student-union grill after Alferd Packer, a prospector who confessed to what in 1874?

Cannibalism during a winter in the Colorado mountains made Packer infamous, and the grill that students named for him in 1968 has sold an 'El Canibal' burger.

Which business did Boulder outlaw in 1907 and keep illegal until 1967, after six failed votes to repeal the ban?

Liquor sales stayed banned in Boulder for decades after national Prohibition ended in 1933, although bars could sell weak 3.2 beer in the meantime.

Which Boulder-born internet entrepreneur became the first openly gay man elected governor of a US state?

Jared Polis co-founded a free online greeting-card site in 1996 and sold it three years later in a deal worth $780 million in stock and cash.

Which astronaut, the first woman of Indian heritage to fly in space, earned her doctorate at CU Boulder?

Kalpana Chawla flew two shuttle missions, in 1997 and 2003, and died when Columbia broke apart on the way home from the second.

Which Apollo 13 astronaut played football for the Colorado Buffaloes before earning his engineering degree in 1953?

Jack Swigert was elected to Congress from Colorado in 1982 but died of cancer before he could be sworn in.

Boulder County clerk Clela Rorex made national news in 1975 by issuing six licences for which kind of union?

Same-sex marriage licences went to six couples before Colorado's attorney general ordered Clela Rorex to stop, and the building where she issued them is now a national historic landmark.

Which Battle Creek doctor and breakfast-cereal pioneer set up a health sanitarium below Boulder's Mount Sanitas?

John Harvey Kellogg had his Boulder guests eat simple food, wear loose clothing and hike the slopes above; Sanitas is the Latin word for health.

CU Boulder's Fiske, opened in 1975, is billed as the largest of which kind of venue between Chicago and Los Angeles?

The planetarium was paid for by a bequest from 1917 graduate Wallace Fiske and also stages laser shows set to music under its dome.

CU Boulder's official colours are gold and which other colour, swapped for black on the Buffaloes' uniforms?

Silver was paired with gold to represent Colorado's mineral wealth, but the two looked poor together on uniforms, so black took its place.

The electronic pop duo 3OH!3, formed in Boulder in 2004, named itself after which local number?

The area code 303 covered the whole of Colorado when the duo's two members were born.

Rocky Flats, a Cold War plant on a windy plateau between Denver and Boulder, built bomb cores from which metal?

Plutonium pits, the fissionable heart of a nuclear bomb, left the plant at up to 2,000 a year until an FBI raid halted production in 1989.

Which exotic state of matter did Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman first create at a Boulder laboratory in 1995?

The Bose–Einstein condensate appeared at a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero and won the pair a share of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics.

CU Boulder chemist Thomas Cech shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for showing that which molecule can act as a catalyst?

RNA was thought only to carry instructions until Cech found it could cut its own strands, a hint that life may have started with it.

Which warm, dry winds sweep down the Rockies and bring Boulder rapid winter warm-ups?

Chinook winds take their name from a Pacific Northwest people, and the Blackfoot of the interior call them the 'snow eater'.

The Hotel Boulderado, a downtown Boulder landmark since 1909, still runs its original 1908 example of which machine?

The elevator was built by Otis, and guests reach it through a lobby famous for its stained-glass ceiling.

Which annual brewing showcase, now a Denver institution, began in Boulder in 1982 with just 24 breweries?

The Great American Beer Festival was started by homebrewing pioneer Charlie Papazian alongside a homebrewers' conference, pouring 47 beers for 800 people.

The Red Zinger Bicycle Classic, a 1970s race that ended in North Boulder Park, later took the name of which beer brand?

Coors took over as sponsor in 1980, and the race grew from three days into two weeks across California, Nevada and Colorado.

Which ski area in the mountains west of Boulder can be reached from the city on RTD public transport in ski season?

Eldora sits on the east side of the Continental Divide, so Boulder skiers can avoid the notoriously busy Interstate 70.

Which 3D modelling program was developed by Boulder startup @Last Software before Google bought the company in 2006?

SketchUp stayed with Google for six years before being sold on to Trimble in 2012.

Which three-time US Open golf champion was an all-conference defensive back for the Colorado Buffaloes in the 1960s?

Hale Irwin starred in football, baseball and golf at Boulder High School and won the NCAA individual golf title as a senior in 1967.

Which element's atoms tick inside NIST-F1, the Boulder atomic clock that served as America's primary time standard?

Cesium atoms are cooled and trapped by lasers inside the clock, which took over from an older beam design in 1999.

Which Old West scout and Pinkerton agent, hanged in Wyoming in 1903, lies buried in Boulder's Columbia Cemetery?

Tom Horn went to the gallows in Cheyenne on the eve of his birthday and was buried in Boulder that December.

Boulder's five numbered Flatirons line the east slope of which 8,148-foot summit above the city?

Green Mountain's five great slabs are counted off in order from the north, and climbers know many smaller named Flatirons on the slopes nearby.

Which Colorado quarterback threw the 64-yard Hail Mary that won the 1994 game known as the Miracle at Michigan?

Kordell Stewart's pass flew more than 70 yards in the air before Michael Westbrook caught it off a deflection with no time left.

Which coach led Colorado's football team to a share of the 1990 national title and founded Promise Keepers that year?

Bill McCartney's Buffaloes were crowned by the Associated Press, while Georgia Tech finished first in the coaches' poll.

Which startup accelerator was founded in Boulder in 2006 and ran its first program there the following year?

Techstars held that first program in 2007 with just ten companies.

Which Boulder-born admiral gave his name to a class of US Navy guided-missile destroyers while he was still alive?

Arleigh Burke never finished high school, because the 1918 influenza outbreak closed Boulder's schools, yet he rose to become the Navy's top officer.

Which blacklisted writer of Roman Holiday and Spartacus gives his name to the student-union courtyard at CU Boulder?

Dalton Trumbo studied at the university in the 1920s, and his story for Roman Holiday won an Academy Award that went to another writer acting as his cover.

Which Odessa-born physicist, an early champion of the Big Bang theory, taught at CU Boulder from 1956 until his death?

George Gamow also wrote the Mr Tompkins books, which explain physics through a bank clerk's dreams, and the physics tower on campus carries his name.

Boulder's first post office opened in 1859 under the name of which territory, before Colorado Territory existed?

Nebraska Territory then reached down to the 40th parallel, which put the young settlement just inside its border.

Which actress who played Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks grew up in Boulder and graduated from Fairview High School?

Sheryl Lee was born in Augsburg, Germany, and was working in Seattle theatre when David Lynch cast her.