BOULDER, Colo. -- A full moon rose over the jagged Flatiron Mountains on our last night at the Colorado Chautauqua. The air was warm and still, and we hiked up above Chautauqua's narrow streets and quiet cottages. Boulder glittered below us, spreading out to the plains.
Set in the foothills above the city, a mile south of downtown and on the edge of the Rocky Mountains' Front Range, Colorado Chautauqua is 26 acres of living history, a remnant of a nearly forgotten national movement.
From our vantage point on that clear night, the contrast between the serene Victorian Boulder of Chautauqua, and the bike commuting, organic farming, triathlon running, bustling Boulder of 2006 was starkly evident.
In 1874, on the breezy shores of Lake Chautauqua in northern New York, Lewis Miller, an Ohio businessman, and John Heyl Vincent, a Sunday school director, founded the New York Chautauqua Assembly. Their intent was to provide academic summer retreats for Sunday school teachers. As believers in the transformational power of education, Miller and Vincent did not limit their curriculum to Bible studies. History, science, art, geography, and languages were included. The Chautauqua experience was so popular that the summer seminar concept spread quickly beyond Sunday school.
Within a dozen years, there were more than 150 Chautauqua communities across rural America, educating anyone with a bit of time and money, access to transportation, and a desire to learn. Theodore Roosevelt called Chautauqua's democratic approach to education "the most American thing in America."
Today, Colorado Chautauqua is one of only three remaining in the country. The others are the original in New York and one in Ohio. Industrialization, automobiles, radio, and motion pictures contributed to the Chautauquas' decline. By the mid-1920s, most were already memories.
The Colorado Chautauqua opened on a former ranch in 1898. The original auditorium and dining hall (now a full-service restaurant) are still in use . While the first housing and classrooms were tents, by 1910 most of the 100 cottages, two lodges, community building, and two administration buildings were complete.
About 40 of the cottages are privately owned . The Colorado Chautauqua Association owns the remaining 60, and rents them year-round. The cottages run the gamut from one-bedroom cabins with spectacular views , to Craftsman cottages moved up from the city, to Victorians with miniature turrets, to rambling three-bedroom homes. A few have their original furnishings.
We stayed in Rest Cottage, built in 1900 to house temperance workers. The white shingled cottage was updated recently, and has a large child-friendly living area, chunky well-worn Arts and Crafts furniture, a more-than-adequate kitchen , and a comfortable screened porch.
