Boulder City Improvement Association resurrected after 100 years By Silvia Pettem. Published in the Daily Camera (September 25, 2003).

In 1903, four civic leaders banded together to found the Boulder City Improvement Association. Its purpose was the “improvement of Boulder in health, growth, cleanliness, prosperity, and attractiveness.”

Now, a century later, four more civic activists again are picking up the slack left by budget cuts in city maintenance funds. The group’s current goals are to get medians and parks adopted by volunteers and to work with city transportation and parks staff on larger maintenance and planting issues.

The projects taken on by today’s group are similar to those of the original improvement association’s founders: Junius Henderson, Dr. William Baird, Eben Fine, and Fred White. Of their accomplishments, then Camera editor L.C. Paddock wrote, “Civic interest is a splendid thing to have, and those who have it are rare.”

One of the original group’s first tasks was to hire landscape architect W.W. Parce to landscape and provide plans for the planting of trees and shrubs in Chautauqua Park. Parce also was hired to landscape the grounds of Boulder’s two new schools (Washington and Jefferson), with the association’s hopes that all of the public school grounds would become city parks.

In addition, the association addressed streets and sidewalks, drainage and sewers, and the purity of Boulder’s domestic water. They beautified the county courthouse grounds and even held an annual “clean-up day.”

The four original improvement society founders came from differing
professions, but all were united in their desire to make Boulder a better place. Henderson was a judge-turned-professor who became curator of the University of Colorado’s natural history museum.

Baird was a medical doctor who taught pathology in CU’s medical school (when it was still in Boulder). He also had long-term philanthropic plans for Boulder, but his Baird Foundation was wiped out by the Great Depression.

Fine was a pharmacist by trade, but he earned his nickname “Mr. Boulder” for promoting the city and luring tourists with traveling slide shows. White invested in Boulder county gold mines and was a Boulder realtor.

In 1908, the improvement association brought to Boulder the well-known city planning consultant, Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. He prepared extensive recommendations for the development of city parks, the improvement of city streets, better sewage disposal, and the beautification of the banks along Boulder Creek.

The founders of the Boulder City Improvement Association II are Nancy Blackwood, John Tayer, Susan Osborne, and Dan Corson. They have resurrected the association with the same spirit of individual initiative as the original founders. Part of their mission statement reads, “to help maintain, improve, and beautify Boulder’s public lands through directed volunteer efforts, and to provide a convenient outlet for Boulder citizens in the physical betterment of their town.”

Down the road, the BCIA II’s projects include planting trees at Boulder Reservoir and teaming up with a new group, the Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, to work on natural lands in Boulder County and city open space.

For more information, email Susan Osborne at susan.osborne@colorado.edu