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1918 |
July 5: Leonard Mark, Hugh's brother, who had been working as a desk clerk at the Hotel Boulderado, went to join the war.
August: The Spanish flu (influenza) became pandemic. Over 25 million people die over the next six months.
November 11: Germany signed an armistice agreement, ending combat in World War I.
The Spanish flu resulted in 41 deaths in Nederland and a quarantine in Boulder. |
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1919 |
Etta Mark gave birth to another "Boulderado child," a daughter named Betty.
Ladies hemlines rose six inches above the ground. |
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1920 |
September 29: First domestic radio sets arrived in U.S. stores. A console will replace the Victrola in the Boulderado lobby.
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Helen Keller
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1923 |
March 2: Time Magazine hit newstands for the first time.
May 29: The inaugural concert was played at Macky Auditorium.
October 16: Walt Disney Company founded.
Helen Keller stayed at the Hotel Boulderado while in town to speak at the University of Colorado's Macky Auditorium. Three thousand people attended to hear her.
The streets that intersect in front of the Hotel Boulderado, 13th and Spruce, were paved. Manager Hugh Mark purchased an automobile the year before, and gas cost 21 cents per gallon.
Fire escapes were added to the south, east, and west sides of the Hotel Boulderado when installing a sprinkler system proved too expensive.
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1924 |
February 14: IBM founded.
July: A married couple from Denver, the Pfieffers, checked into the Hotel Boulderado with the intention of committing a double suicide. Only Lou succeeded, and Mary Ellen was pursued and arrested for her actions, but charges were later dropped. "We were just two unlucky people who had grown tired of living." Lou's death helped fuel Boulderado ghost stories.
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Robert Frost
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1925 |
March 21: Tennessee governor signed the Butler Act, prohibiting evolution from being taught in public schools.
May 5: John Scopes arrested for teaching Darwinian evolution.
July 10: "Monkey Trial" began, with Clarence Darrow serving as Scopes' attorney.
July 21: Scopes found guilty and fined $100.
Robert Frost stayed at the Hotel Boulderado and was a frequent guest throughout the 1930s when he came to visit his daughter, a patient at the Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium.
Ladies hemlines hit knee-length.
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1926
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April: Boulder Community Hospital opened. |
Clarence Darrow |
1927 |
May 20: Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo non-stop trans-Atlantic flight from New York City to Paris.
Clarence Darrow stayed at the Hotel Boulderado.
Fred C. Smith of Boulder set a world record for continuous automobile driving (104 hours and 8 minutes).
The Curran Opera House showed the first film with sound (a "talkie"), "The Jazz Singer."
World population reached 2 billion.
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Trail Ridge Road
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1929 |
October 11: The Boulder Hotel Company paid its first dividends.
October 29: Wall Street crashed when more then 16 million shares of stock changed hands.
Construction began on the Trail Ridge Road, which crossed the continental divide.
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Electric Streetcar |
1931 |
May 1: Construction of the Empire State Building completed.
Last run of Boulder's electric streetcars. |
Boulder Courthouse |
1932 |
February 9: Hotel Boulderado guests and Boulder residents watched the Boulder Courthouse burn to the ground. Several children followed Betty Mark home from school and watched the fire from her room's balcony.
Construction for a new courthouse began almost immediately; the cornerstone from the original courthouse was removed and incorporated into the new building. Stone masons who were working on it stayed at the Hotel Boulderado.
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1933 |
February 10: Singing telegrams introduced.
March 2: The 8th Wonder of the World scaled the Empire State Building when King Kong premiered.
March 31: President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps with the mission to relieve rampant unemployment.
April 7: 3.2 beer served in the Boulderado dining room when it became legalized nationwide in anticipation of a Prohibition repeal.
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Flagstaff Mountain Amphitheater |
1934 |
July 3: Hugh Mark, "the biggest little man in Boulder," died of a sudden heart attack while sitting down to breakfast in the Boulderado dining room.
August 2: Adolf Hitler became Fuhrer of Germany.
Upon the sudden and unexpected death of Hugh Mark, Leonard Mark, W.B. Pope, and James Baker take over ownership and managerial duties of the Hotel Boulderado.
Civilian Conservation Corps finished work on Flagstaff Mountain amphitheater.
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Dust Storm |
1935 |
April 14: Great Dust Storm hit eastern New Mexico, Colorado, and Oklahoma.
May 6: Executive Order 7034 created the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression.
World War 1 Veterans Memorial statue erected on Boulder's Courthouse lawn. |
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1936 |
January 9: The Boulder Theater opened in the renovated Curran Opera House.
Construction began on the University of Colorado's Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre.
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1937 |
First traffic light installed in Boulder at the corner of 12th (now Broadway) and Pearl Streets.
New WPA-built Boulder High School opened. |
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Byron White, the All-American football player
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1938 |
October 30: Orson Welles's radio adaptation of War of the Worlds broadcast, causing panic in various parts of the United States.
Byron "Whizzer" White, later Rhodes Scholar and U.S. Supreme Court Justice, became the University of Colorado's first All-American football player.
Time Magazine declares Adolf Hitler to be "Man of the Year."
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Uranium
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1939 |
January: Bill and Winnie Hutson marry.
August 2: Albert Einstein writes to President Roosevelt about using uranium to develop an atomic bomb, which led to the creation of the Manhattan Project.
September 1: Nazi Germany invaded Poland and began World War 2 in Europe.
Robert Frost stayed at the Hotel Boulderado while in town receiving an honorary degree and leading the University of Colorado's Writers' Conference.
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1940 |
April 7: Booker T. Washington became the first African-American depicted on a U.S. postage stamp.
June 14: Paris fell under German occupation.
Bill and Winnie Hutson received the Hotel Boulderado as a wedding present from Bill's father. |
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1941 |
December 7: Japanese attack U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.
December 8: U.S. Congress declared war on Japan and brought the nation into World War 2. |
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1942 |
The Hutsons leave the Hotel Boulderado and its managership in the hands of J.W. Priestley while Bill joined the Army Air Corps. Bill served in California, Arizona, and Texas, and Winnie followed her husband. |
Duke Ellington |
1943 |
January 23: Duke Ellington played Carnegie Hall for the first time. Twenty years later, Ellington would show up at the Hotel Boulderado with a 32-member entourage and no reservations. The Boulderado gladly accommodated all of them. |
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1944 |
June 6: Allied troops landed on the beaches at Normandy. |
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1945 |
August 14: Japan surrendered after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hit with atomic bombs.
Bill and Winnie Hutson returned to the Hotel Boulderado and initiated re-modeling projects to modernize the hotel.
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1946 |
January 4: Winnie Hutson gave birth to a son, Bill, who would grow up knowing every nook and cranny of the Boulderado.
July 5: Bikinis went on sale in Paris.
Ralph Hume took over managerial duties of the Hotel Boulderado from the Hutsons. |
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1949 |
January 4-February 22: Series of winter storms hit Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada with winds up to 72 mph. Tens of thousands of sheep and cattle die.
June 8: Helen Keller, among others, was named in an FBI report as a Communist Party member. |
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1950 |
April 27: In South Africa, the Group Areas Act passed, formally segregating the races.
June 27: President Harry Truman ordered American military forces to aid in the defense of South Korea, thereby beginning U.S. involvement in the Korean War. |
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1951 |
March 29: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage.
October: The Nature Conservancy founded in Boulder with the aims to preserve plants, animals, and ecosystems by protecting the lands and waters.
October 15: I Love Lucy debuted on CBS.
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1952 |
Secret Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Factory opened 8 miles south of Boulder.
Denver-Boulder Turnpike opened.
Nearly 58,000 cases of polio reported in the United States, resulting in 3,145 deaths and 21,269 cases left with mild to disabling paralysis.
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1953 |
February 28: James Watson and Francis Crick announced their discovery of the DNA molecular structure -- the double helix.
March 19: The 25th Academy Awards ceremony became the first to be broadcast on television.
March 26: Jonas Salk announced his polio vaccine.
June 19: The United States executed the Rosenbergs for spying for the U.S.S.R., the first American civilians to be executed for espionage.
July 27: The United States, China, North Korea, and South Korea sign an armistice agreement ending the Korean War.
December 30: First color TV sets went on sale in the United States for $1,175.
Water bond issue for $2 million passed to build Boulder Reservoir in the northeast part of town. |
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Boulder Canyon Highway
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1954 |
February 23: First mass vaccination of children against polio began.
April 1: President Dwight Eisenhower authorized the creation of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
May 17: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregated schools are unconstitutional.
The $2 million Boulder Canyon highway, an all-paved mountain road between Boulder and Nederland, was dedicated.
Dial phone service inaugurated in Boulder by Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph. |
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1955 |
February 11: Boulder Reservoir opened after contruction completed. The water came from the Colorado-Big Thompson Project.
September 24: President Eisenhower suffered a coronary thrombosis while vacationing in Denver.
December 1: Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white person. |
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1956 |
June 29: President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act, creating the Interstate Highway System.
September 9: Elvis Presley first performed on The Ed Sullivan Show.
September 13: An IBM team invented the hard disk drive, which was able to hold 5 MB of data. |
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1957 |
March 1: Dr. Seuss published The Cat in the Hat.
October 4: The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth.
Railroad passenger service to the old depot in downtown Boulder ended. |
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1958 |
July 29: U.S. Congress created NASA.
Colorado suffered from a grasshopper plague and a special session of the legislature was called to solve the problem.
For the first time in history, the total passengers carried by air exceeded the total passengers carried by sea in trans-Atlantic service.
First annual Colorado Shakespeare Festival held at the Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre.
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Original Boulderado Ceiling with Staircase |
1959 |
February 10: Boulder's Centennial.
July 21: PLAN Boulder County organized and secured passage of a "Blue Line" to prevent development along the mountain backdrop. Homes could not be built above a certain spot in the foothills because the city refused to provide water above the Blue Line.
July 31-August 5: Boulder's Centennial Celebration included decorations, parades, and pageants.
November1: Part of the original stained-glass ceiling in the lobby of the Hotel Boulderado fell during a heavy Halloween snowstorm.
Boulder became the first city in Colorado to have Direct Distance Dialing service, enabling customers to dial calls throughout the nation without an operator's assistance.
The average cost of new homes in Boulder soared to a record $12,755.
World population reached 3 billion.
Pantyhose introduced.
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Atomic Clock |
1960 |
April: Bill Hutson died from an insulin overdose.
July 4: Fifty-star flag debuted after Hawaii became the 50th state the year prior.
September 5: Muhammad Ali won the gold medal for boxing at the Summer Olympics.
September 26: Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy participated in the first televised presidential debate.
The remainder of the Boulderado's stained-glass ceiling was removed to make room for the "new and modern" red, white, and blue Plexiglas.
The atomic clock was introduced at the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder.
Boulder-Longmont Diagonal (a.k.a. Highway 119) completed.
The Denver Broncos accepted as a pro-football team.
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Louis Armstrong |
1961 |
August 13: Construction on the Berlin Wall began.
December 11: U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War officially began when the first American helicopters arrived in Saigon with 400 U.S. personnel.
Ed Howard took over managerial duties for the Hotel Boulderado when he and his wife, June, leased it from Winnie Hutson.
Louis Armstrong stayed at the Hotel Boulderado.
Traffic code amended in Boulder to give bicyclists rights as well as obligations under Motor Vehicle regulations.
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Byron White, the Supreme Court Justice |
1962 |
May 24: Scott Carpenter, NASA astronaut from Boulder, piloted the Aurora 7.
August 5: Nelson Mandela arrested for leading workers to strike after living on the run for 17 months.
October 14-November 20: Cuban Missile Crisis
Byron "Whizzer" White nominated by President Kennedy to the U.S. Supreme Court and was confirmed later that year.
An Orbiting Solar Observatory that was built and developed in Boulder launched into orbit. |
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1963 |
February: Ed Howard bought the Hotel Boulderado.
May: Ed Howard installed the Boulderado's sprinkler system, saving it from condemnation.
July 1: Zip codes introduced in the United States. The Hotel Boulderado was assigned 80302.
August 28: Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.
November 22: President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas. |
