At public events, I often hear people pass on tidbits about Boulder’s past that are unfounded. Let’s set the record straight. Here are my top five myths about Boulder’s history.

County Records and the Courthouse Fire

Recently I attended an area program about architecture and one of the panelists told the audience that all architectural house plans burned in a Boulder County Courthouse fire. Not true. Yes, there was a fire in 1932 that caused much damage to the original Boulder County Courthouse, a Victorian-style building constructed in 1882. But records were stored in a fireproof vault and none were destroyed. Perhaps documents were later misplaced or discarded, but they were not burned.

Kate Harbeck and the Humane Society

Whenever Boulder’s historic Harbeck-Bergheim House is in the news, some people mention, incorrectly, that the wealthy New York widow Kate Harbeck founded Boulder’s Humane Society. It was a well-known reality that Kate Harbeck preferred animals to people. She and her husband John Harbeck built a grand summer residence in Boulder in 1899 and they kept several dogs and horses. They even donated water troughs for animals to the city. When Kate Harbeck died in 1930, she left $50,000 to the Boulder Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Confusion ensued, as Boulder didn’t have such a group. A similar organization, the Boulder County Humane Society (now the Boulder Valley Humane Society), founded in 1902, became the beneficiary of Kate’s generous gift, according to news reports in 1931.

Allen Ginsberg and Naropa

My favorite Pac-12 basketball sportscaster Bill Walton is exuberant when sharing things he loves about Boulder. He once announced that Naropa University was founded by Allen Ginsberg. Not so, Bill. The Naropa Institute was formed under the Nalanda Foundation in 1974 by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan spiritual leader who was teaching religious studies at the University of Colorado. Trungpa recruited poets Allen Ginsberg, John Cage, Diane di Prima and Anne Waldman to establish a poetry department at the institute. Ginsberg and Waldman came up with the name Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.

Liberal Boulder?

Newcomers to Boulder are often surprised to learn that Boulder hasn’t always been liberal. The 1971 “sea change” election marked a turning point in Boulder’s politics. Up until then, Boulder was a Republican town. Local elections are non-partisan, but in 1971 four white male incumbents were replaced with a decidedly left-leaning group: Karen Paget a 26-year old progressive, Penfield Tate II, an African-American humanitarian, Ken Wright, an environmentalist and Tim Fuller, a “longhair” member of the counterculture.

The old guard was so upset that, according to a 2016 interview with Paget, they canceled the traditional Boulder City Council brunch and photo session. Paget remembered that everything the new council did was viewed with suspicion. Nevertheless, Boulder politics continued to be liberal in subsequent years. However, it would be more than a decade before a majority of Boulder County residents voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. In 1988, Boulder County voters chose Michael Dukakis over George H. W. Bush.

Chief Left Hand quotes

During the recent election, at least two Boulder City Council candidates posted the following quote that they attributed to Left Hand (aka Niwot), a Southern Arapaho leader who lived in the Boulder Valley when the first white settlers arrived:

“People, seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.”

Author Margaret Coel spent five years researching the leader’s life for her book “Chief Left Hand,” published in 1981, which stands as the authoritative biography. Coel and other respected historians find no credence to this or other quotes that some refer to as “Niwot’s Curse.” Furthermore, the candidates posted a portrait of a Native American alongside the quote when there is no known photograph of Left Hand, who was mortally wounded at the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864.