Boulder: University Hill, CU Art Museum & Rocky Flats History

The University of Colorado's art museum (located in the Visual Arts Complex at 1085 18th Street) holds a permanent collection of 5,000 works with particular strength in ancient Greek ceramics, Japanese prints, and contemporary American art. The Paul Bunyan Collection (WPA-era American art) and the Nancy Tieken Art Fund acquisitions are the best in the region outside Denver Art Museum. Free admission. The museum's architecture (1939 Tuscan Revival buildings that define the CU campus character) is itself worth the visit.

The Hill commercial strip adjacent to CU's east campus entrance (13th Street, Broadway, College Ave) has been Boulder's student and intellectual neighborhood since the university opened in 1876. The Trident Café (coffee and used books, operating since 1982) was a gathering place for Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman during the Naropa University/Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics era. The dining options range from Proto's Pizza (wood-fired, serious) to The Sink (Robert Redford's former employer, operating since 1949).

Naropa University (founded 1974 by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher) established the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics the same year — the first accredited Buddhist-inspired university in North America. Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, and William S. Burroughs all taught here. The Allen Ginsberg Library on Arapahoe Ave holds Ginsberg's archive and is open to visitors; the campus's reading series and public events continue the Beat Generation intellectual tradition. The main campus at 2130 Arapahoe Ave occupies a converted church building.

Rocky Flats operated as a US nuclear weapons facility from 1952 to 1989, producing plutonium triggers for thermonuclear warheads — at peak production, 70% of all US nuclear warhead triggers were made here. After FBI and EPA raids in 1989 discovered extensive contamination, the plant closed and a $7.3 billion cleanup was completed in 2005. The 5,237-acre site was designated a National Wildlife Refuge in 2007 and opened to public access in 2018. The refuge hosts nesting raptors, bison (reintroduced 2016), and shortgrass prairie — and the visitor center presents the Cold War history with unusual candor. The trails run through the buffer zone around the still-contaminated central 1,300 acres.

Boulder's Chautauqua (established 1898 as part of the national Chautauqua Movement — summer educational assemblies in the American progressive tradition) is the only original Chautauqua campus still operating west of the Mississippi. The 1898 Auditorium seats 1,200 for concerts and lectures; the dining hall (1898, still serving) is a landmark. The grounds at the base of the First Flatiron contain 40 original 1898-1920 cottages still occupied in summer. The Chautauqua program of summer concerts, silent films, and lectures continues the original mission.

The Colorado Chautauqua Association offers self-guided tours of the 1898-1920 cottage colony — 40 original structures in varying states of preservation, ranging from the director's cottage to the smallest one-room sleeping cabins. The Chautauqua Museum in the Community House (1924) documents the campus history including its role during World War I as a patriotic assembly ground and its near-demolition in the 1960s when Boulder voters chose preservation. The adjacent National Historic Landmark designation (2006) secured its future.

NIST's Boulder campus (325 Broadway) contains the atomic clocks that define the official US time standard and the standards laboratories that maintain physical measurement references for the entire country. Public tours (by appointment, free) visit the Time and Frequency Division where NIST-F2 (the primary US frequency standard, accurate to 1 second in 300 million years) operates. The Boulder campus also houses the primary standard for length, mass, and electromagnetic measurement. NIST's Boulder campus offers free public tours by advance reservation — book 4–6 weeks ahead through nist.gov/public-affairs/visit-nist-boulder as tour slots are limited. One of the most intellectually interesting free tours in Colorado, and entirely off the typical tourist circuit.

Boulder Canyon (US-119 west from Boulder) climbs 1,400 feet in 16 miles to Nederland — the canyon walls rise 600 feet in places, and the creek runs Class III-IV whitewater in spring runoff. The canyon road follows an 1898 wagon road; the original Colorado & Northwestern Railroad grade (now a hiking trail) parallels the road for several miles. Pullouts at Castle Rock (a granite dome above the road) and Boulder Falls (0.2-mile walk to a 70-foot waterfall) make good stops.

A late-lunch option on Pearl Street's east end — globally influenced small plates with a strong cocktail program. The kitchen sources from Colorado farms and the menu changes seasonally. Good for sharing plates after a morning of touring.