When Margaret Cline and her husband moved their three children to Boulder in 1953, there were few stoplights and little traffic.
“It was gravel roads when we first moved here,” Cline, 93, said Tuesday.
She was among several hundred people who have lived in the city for 50 years or more who gathered at the Hotel Boulderado to celebrate the city’s 150th birthday.
Traffic has mounted and vacant land has been paved over as new and bigger buildings were built, some of the attendees said.
And there “is a bigger majority of people who are young,” said Cline’s son, Terry Cline, 64.
“People have come here from California, Arizona. . . . They like it here, and they are nice. We just have too many,” said Lester Green, 79, who moved to Boulder in 1954 from Ohio.
Robert Foster, 76, was born in Boulder and grew up on Walnut Street next to a tombstone carver.
Bank buildings and other large businesses now occupy the block, he said.
“This was a nice little quiet town with few stoplights,” said Green’s wife, Shirley Green, 76. In fact, her husband said he couldn’t remember any traffic lights at all.
With its vaulted ceiling, stained glass and Victorian furniture, the hotel, which opened 100 years ago, was a prefect setting for a sesquicentennial celebration.
But the “old-timers” reception wasn’t the only event in a day-long celebration of the city’s founding by a group of shareholders who established Boulder as the Boulder City Town Co.
There was a midday bell ringing featuring the University of Colorado’s Macky Auditorium carillon and bells at St. John’s Episcopal Church and Sacred Heart of Jesus Church.
Boulder schools also participated, and the Boulder 150 Committee asked residents to break out bells and noisemakers and take part as well, said Dan Corson, chairman of the Boulder Sesquicentennial Committee.
Church and school bellringers also met on the Pearl Street Mall in front of the Boulder County Courthouse, Corson said.
Boulder sesquicentennial events are scheduled throughout 2009. For more information on the Boulder sesquicentennial, go to the Boulder 150 website at .
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
