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As a Boulder-born Fairview High School graduate and one of just a few second-generation faculty members at ���������� Boulder, it is nearly impossible for me to imagine either the town or the university in isolation. Looking back at ����������’s first 50 years as we approach its sesquicentennial anniversary, however, it’s clear that nothing was inevitable about this marriage.��

As Boulder postmaster and former newspaper owner Amos Bixby��, the city’s founders understood that making the fledgling town the university’s home “would bring here the best class of citizens — the intellectual, the cultured, the moral, coming both for the education of their children and for the sake of the society that clusters about prosperous seats of learning.” Realizing this prescient vision, though, took time.��

���������� remained relatively small, underfunded and isolated through its early decades, though it did provide Boulder with its first high school, known as the “preparatory department.” Together with agriculture, mining and commercial development, ���������� also helped to fuel Boulder’s growth from 3,000 inhabitants in 1880 to more than 6,150 by 1900. By the turn of the century, the university boasted a faculty of 92, a student body of 850, and a full slate of athletic, artistic and social offerings. Perhaps the clearest illustration of ����������’s significance to Boulderites, though, came in 1899. After a deep economic depression caused property values and tax revenues to nosedive statewide, local citizens raised $20,000 to keep ���������� afloat.��

���������� had already become Boulder’s main claim to fame. It also fueled development near its growing campus, particularly after the founding of the��Texas-Colorado Chautauqua in 1898. Boulder’s first streetcar line connected town and gown. By 1905, enough people had moved to the area west of Broadway to support the construction of University Hill school for 1st through 8th grades; and by the 1920s, The Hill was assuming familiar form as a hub of student-centered businesses. Boulder and the university had grown together to such an extent that 50 years after ����������’s founding, it was no longer possible to imagine the one without the other — much as it is today.��

Thomas Andrews is director of ���������� Boulder’s��Center of the American West and professor of history.

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Photo courtesy ���������� Heritage Center