The Story Behind the Name: Boulder County Poor Farm

You've likely driven past it many times, glancing at the impressive red brick Queen Anne-style house on 63rd Street, just south of Jay Road, without realizing its historic significance. The property which includes the house at 3902 N. 63rd Street, now consists of 78 acres, but the property once spanned the area between Haystack Mountain and Valmont Butte. This is the story of Chambers Homestead/Fort Chambers, the Boulder County Poor Farm and Hospital.

Many Indegenous peoples consider this land sacred, especially the Southern Arapaho. According to the short-lived 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the Front Range (including the Poor Farm property) was recognized as the territory belonging to the Arapaho and Cheyenne.

This is where Chief Niwot encountered prospectors hoping to find wealth during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush, which started in 1858 and lasted until the creation of the Colorado Territory in 1861. In November 1858, Chief Niwot and his tribe "were camped near Rabbit and Haystack Mountains when Captain Thomas Aikins and his 23-member Nebraska City party crossed the Left Hand Valley en route to the Gold Hill mining district," wrote Ann Quinby Dyni in her book, "About Niwot." Niwot made an agreement with the gold seekers that they were welcome to stay the winter, provided they would leave in the spring.

During the winter, Aikins's son, James, and other members of the Nebraska City party started to explore the creeks above their camp. On January 16, 1859, they found gold in a tributary of Fourmile Creek. They called the stream Gold Run, and the mining camp that took shape on a nearby ridge became Gold Hill. After news of the find reached Denver, hundreds of prospectors rushed to Gold Hill, which became the first permanent mining town in the Colorado mountains.

In February the Aikins party established Boulder City as a supply town and ignored their agreement with Chief Niwot to leave in the spring. Instead of moving on, they established roots in the Boulder Valley. Eventually Captain Aikins volunteered with Company D, 3rd Volunteer Colorado Calvary, and participated in the Sand Creek Massacre. After the Massacre, he returned to farming and was buried in Valmont Cemetery on April 16, 1878.

Meanwhile, Chief Niwot moved his people north and then east, focused on avoiding conflict with the white settlers. Despite not having been subject to any aggression from the Arapaho, the settlers built a sod fort, Fort Chambers, to protect themselves from the Indiginous people from whom they had taken land. In 1864, volunteer militia trained at Fort Chambers before joining Colonel John Chivington to carry out the Sand Creek Massacre.

How ironic the same space in which Niwot had welcomed the miners ultimately became the location where those who would later murder and dismember his people would ready and arm themselves. Even today, the historic marker for Fort Chambers distorts the reality of what actually took place, referring to a fictitious uprising.

In 1875, the Boulder County Commissioners paid rent to boarding house owners so that county residents who couldn't care for themselves had a place to live. Boulder County leased the properties of and around Fort Chambers to serve as the county poorhouse. Early Boulder contained a typical mix of hardware and mining supply stores, boarding houses and transport businesses, along with drinking and gambling establishments. It also became a popular destination for tubercular patients seeking the healing mountain air and dry climate.

Many city residents opened their homes to people requiring special care and doctors. The University of Colorado opened its doors to students in 1877, bringing an influx of professional and educational backgrounds. With this conglomeration of social, environmental and economic backgrounds there were soon residents needing financial and housing assistance. Even then, progressive Boulder understood that these institutions, which could be costly, were also successful when serving people in need.

In 1902 the former Fort Chambers property was purchased to use as the Poor Farm, where long term care for the county's indigent was provided through 1918. Fundamental to the concept of a publicly funded home, which in this instance was for the disabled, indigents, aged, and the insane, was the requirement that able-bodied residents work in return for their room and board.

Also known as the Boulder County Poor Farm and Hospital, the services were relocated due to program growth; a larger building was needed for the staff members and 30 residents. In 1918, the former W.W.Wolf farmhouse northeast of the intersection of Iris Avenue and Broadway became the next site of the Boulder Poor Farm. The former Fort Chambers property was returned to private use–first, after being purchased by Paul Hummel in 1920. and then remaining in his family until purchased by the City of Boulder in 2018.

In 2016, the Boulder City Council passed Indigenous Peoples Day Resolution #1190, which acknowledges this history and states, "Boulder has benefited directly from Indian removal policies that violated human rights, broke government treaties and forced Arapaho People from their homeland." After purchasing the land in 2018, the City of Boulder directed its Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) department to develop a management plan for the Fort Chambers site, which is now underway.

Sources:

Coel, M. (1981). Chief Left Hand. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Dyni, A. (2015). About Niwot. Arcadia Publishing.

Dyni, A. (1992). History of the Boulder County Poor Farm and Hospital. Carnegie Library for Local History. Boulder.

Hobert, I. (1914). The Indians of the Pike's Peak region: including an account of the battle of Sand Creek and of occurrences in El Paso County, Colorado, during the war with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. New York: Knickerbocker Press.

Mueller, M. (2010). Boulder: Chief Niwot's curse and the paradox of paradise. Huffington Post. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/boulder-chief-niwots-curs_b_481776 \

Right Relationship Boulder – Bringing Communities Together. Slide Presentation by Paula Palmer & Christine Yoshinaga-Itano.