19th century

1898

In February 1898, the Texas-Colorado Chautauqua Association and the City of Boulder entered into an agreement to locate the Chautauqua near Boulder, subject to the city providing sufficient area and suitable facilities. A city bond election was held on April 5, 1898 and the necessary bonds and expenditures were approved to purchase the land and build the first buildings.

The Dining Hall in Chautauqua park

On April 18, 1898 the Boulder City Council appointed a "Committee on Parks," the earliest beginning of the city's Parks Department. Later in April, the Bachelder Ranch site was selected and purchased for the Chautauqua; the grounds, one mile (1.6 km) south of the city, were named Texado Park. On May 12, 1898 construction of the Chautauqua Auditorium commenced; the Dining Hall construction started one week later. Both buildings were completed in time for the opening of the first Chautauqua season on July 4, 1898.

However, the two greatest disappointments of the initial season were first, that no residential cottages had yet been constructed; and second, that the electric streetcar line from downtown Boulder to Texado Park had not been built in time for the opening. In the first season, Colorado Chautauqua attenders were housed entirely in tents. They traveled the 1.5 miles (about 2 km) from the Boulder railway station to the Chautauqua on foot or in horsedrawn vehicles, via dirt roads that were alternately dusty and muddy.

The 1898 fee was $75 for the entire six-week season, including tuition, admission to all lectures and entertainments, all boarding and lodging, and round-trip rail fare to Boulder from any location within a 100-mile (200 km) radius of Fort Worth, Texas.

The first year's six-week program featured no fewer than 94 scheduled speeches, including addresses from the well-known evangelist T. Dewitt Talmadge, the Kentucky orator Henry Watterson, the governors of Colorado and Texas, the mayor of Boulder, and the president of the University of Colorado. Various clergymen also delivered sermons each Sunday.

The Kansas City Symphony Orchestra was in residence for the entire season, and would return many times in future years. They played a sacred concert each Sunday, and incidental music as requested, often several times a day. Various bands, pianists, and vocalists also performed.

Music classes were offered including cello, guitar, mandolin, piano, singing and chorus. The Collegiate Department of the Chautauqua offered 51 different classes in mathematics, chemistry, botany, physics, psychology, education, as well as English, Latin, Greek, French, and German language and literature.

From that first season, the Colorado Chautauqua also presented motion pictures in the Auditorium. The evening program for July 21, 1898, was "Edison's Genuine Projectoscope, Colorscopic Diorama and Wargraph, with Music, reproducing scenes of the war with Spain."

Other activities included burro and horseback rides, hikes to the nearby Flatirons on Green Mountain, stagecoach rides to Boulder Falls and Eldorado Springs, and mountain railway excursions to destinations as far away as Ward.

The activities of the 1898 Chautauqua season were to continue and expand from that date to the 1920s, except for the Collegiate Department, which was largely supplanted by the summer session of the University of Colorado beginning in 1904.

1900

Academic Hall, now the Chautauqua's offices

A couple of the cabins at Chautauqua

The Academic Hall was constructed in June 1900. Cottages built in 1900 included the Women's Christian Temperance Union cottage, which offered rooms to members at 50 cents per night. The prohibitionist cause was a continuing theme in the early days of Chautauqua lectures, as were women's suffrage, Populist politics, and a nondenominational Christian message of self-improvement.

Republican and Democratic orators were invited to give campaign speeches for their respective presidential candidates, William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. Jonathan P. Dolliver spoke on August 20, 1900 and Champ Clark the following week. This experiment was not considered a success, and overtly partisan election-year speeches would not return until 1932.

On December 20, 1900, the Texas-Colorado Chautauqua was reorganized as the Colorado Chautauqua, with an entirely local board of directors. Title to the land remained with the city of Boulder, but the Colorado Chautauqua Association operated the Chautauqua under a long-term lease, since renewed several times.

The reorganization, partly prompted by financial deficits, had both a broadening and a narrowing effect. More emphasis was placed on wooing attenders from states other than Texas, but at the same time The Colorado Chautauqua had become Boulder's own enterprise. More townspeople attended the presentations in the ensuing years. More Boulderites were also directly involved in managing the Chautauqua programs.

Early 20th century

The early years of the 20th century saw continuing growth and development of the Colorado Chautauqua. One highlight was the appearance of John Philip Sousa and his band at Chautauqua Auditorium in the fall of 1904, after the Chautauqua season was over for that year.

In the first two decades of the Colorado Chautauqua, an average of 40 full evening musical programs were presented each season, which is to say each summer. Dramatic readings from Shakespeare and Ibsen were also staples of the early 20th century Chautauqua experience in Boulder, as were operatic arias. The 1910 program featured "costumed recitals from grand opera" presented by the Chicago Operatic Company on July 4.

The famed evangelist Billy Sunday spoke to large crowds in 1909, 1924, 1925, and 1931. Other evangelists also delivered their message of fire and brimstone to the Chautauquans. According to Chautauqua tradition, all religious observance and preaching was nondenominational, but the growing tide of Fundamentalism made its influence felt through a number of Chautauqua orators as the 20th century progressed.

From the beginning of the Colorado Chautauqua, two or three motion pictures had been presented each year. But starting with the 1918 season, in the face of higher costs for lecturers and entertainers, the Colorado Chautauqua Association decided to increase the number of movies. The Association expressed the intention to maintain the quality of the live stage presentations, although those events would be fewer. They also pledged that the motion pictures selected would be the "best productions on the screen" and would be limited to films that were morally uplifting and suitable for family viewing. Since the Chautauqua lacked the financial resources to compete for first run films with the commercial movie theaters, second-run movies were selected. The 1918 Colorado Chautauqua movie menu included Oliver Twist, The Bluebird, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and The Vicar of Wakefield, among others.

From 1918 forward, about half of the evening presentations were motion pictures, the other half continuing to be lectures and live entertainment. That formula held for about ten years, after which the movies came to occupy a steadily increasing percentage of the Chautauqua presentations.

Middle 20th century

Eventually the effects of two world wars, one Great Depression, and the development of many competing entertainment opportunities (especially movies, radio, television, and the automobile) would greatly impact the nature of events held at the Colorado Chautauqua. Under financial pressure, the presentations decreased in variety. Although the Colorado Chautauqua Association continued to schedule a few lectures and musical performances (including annual appearances by groups representing SPEBSQSA and the Sweet Adelines, which persist into the 21st century), by the 1950s the vast majority of activities at the Chautauqua consisted of second-run movies in the Auditorium, presented with marginal projection and sound equipment. The Colorado Chautauqua had entered a dormant period, although some traditions continued, such as the nondenominational summer Sunday School program.

The built-up area of the city of Boulder gradually expanded, reaching the boundaries of the Chautauqua site by the 1940s. Chautauqua became part of the city, although it was still at the edge of the City of Boulder Mountain Parks. Over the years many of the cottages were winterized for year-round use. The Colorado Chautauqua became, in part, a residential district for Boulderites.

Late 20th century

The 1970s saw a crisis in the history of the Colorado Chautauqua. Attendance and revenue were declining. The buildings were deteriorating. The Chautauqua Association's 1941 lease on the land was scheduled to expire in 1981. The city of Boulder was entertaining various ideas for the Chautauqua grounds including demolition in favor of building a new convention center on the site.

In 1974, Daily Camera editor Laurence Paddock completed an application to list the Chautauqua Auditorium on the National Register of Historic Places. When this listing came about in 1978, the city shifted its planning from demolition to restoration. The historic preservation designation of the Auditorium was the turning point for The Colorado Chautauqua as it exists today.

The Colorado Chautauqua gradually returned to its roots in the late 20th century, scheduling much more live music and a modest number of additional lectures. Jazz and bluegrass concerts were introduced, with good popular success. Guest performers have included composer-pianist Peter Kater, Native American flutist R. Carlos Nakai, Doc Watson, Hot Rize, George Winston, Bill Monroe, Lyle Lovett, Randy Newman, Bobby McFerrin, Bruce Cockburn, Suzanne Vega, Bela Fleck, Roger McGuinn, Loudon Wainwright III, Michelle Shocked, and the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.

The biggest positive impact on the Chautauqua was the arrival, in 1978, of the Colorado Music Festival including the Festival Orchestra under the direction of Giora Bernstein,^[4] in residence each summer for dozens of performances. The Colorado Music Festival remains an annual summer fixture at Chautauqua (more recently under the direction of Michael Christie) into the 21st century, presenting a variety of music with the most commonly featured composers being Mozart, Stravinsky, and Beethoven.

Chautauqua audiences of the late 20th century have enjoyed lectures from Hunter S. Thompson, Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Colorado governor Roy Romer, and Congressman David Skaggs of Colorado, among others. Political campaign speeches were brought back to the Chautauqua in the 1996 season for the first time since 1932.

In response to competition from home VCRs, the second-run family films were discontinued in 1995. The Chautauqua film tradition continues, however, with a silent film series that began in 1986 and persists into the 21st century, featuring live piano accompaniment by Hank Troy^[5] and other students of Photoplay music.

The Dining Hall was refurbished in 1979 and the food service contracted out. For the first time, the Chautauqua Dining Hall became a destination restaurant (which it still is in the 21st century) and ceased to be a financial drain on the Colorado Chautauqua Association. The Dining Hall's license to serve wine and beer, however, represents something of a break with Chautauqua's prohibitionist past.

From a near-collapse in the early 1970s, The Colorado Chautauqua recovered to become a permanent part of the Boulder community and a piece of living history.

21st century

Currently, during the summer months, The Colorado Chautauqua hosts the Colorado Music Festival (CMF) in the Chautauqua Auditorium. The festival is six weeks long and showcases the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra. Due to its programming by national and international musicians, the festival recently earned recognition from the League of American Orchestras and the National Endowment for the Arts.^[6] During the summer 2020 season, the Colorado Music Festival held a series of online concerts due to the Covid-19 global pandemic.