The Boulder Daily Camera - Guest Opinion
10 December 1994
A little over 22 years ago, on a brisk October Saturday, the residents of Skunk Creek subdivision opened their one-street access neighborhood to the city at large to celebrate Skunk Creek Street Fair and Bikeway Benefit Day, thus inaugurating Boulder's bikeway system.
Up to that time a pathway exclusively for the use of persons on foot and on bicycles existed only in the imagination of a few farsighted people in the community. Only a few months earlier, Boulder voters had turned down a bond issue, which, among other things, would have created a $1 million bikeway system serving the greater City of Boulder.
Having the encouragement and endorsement of Boulder's then mayor, Richard
McClean, a few Skunk Creek residents, spurred principally by Carolyn Hoyt and
Sally Hicks, conceived the idea of a one-day street fair to collect the monies
to build a four-foot-wide strip of asphalt, about one-half mile long, connecting
the Hollyberry cul-de-sac to the west end of NBS main campus on South Broadway.
The projected cost was $2,000, and it took a real optimist to believe that this
tiny, remote neighborhood could pull together that amount of money in a one-day
fling.
Skunk Creek had only a little more than a dozen homes then (and not many more
than that now). Almost every home hosted its own money making scheme: a flea
market, a high school rock band ("Monterrey"), a bake sale, a small
carnival featuring a pony ride, an outdoor Oktoberfest with bratwurst,
innumerable arts and crafts, and on and on. One of Boulder's more popular
restaurant businesses was launched that day. The hot crepes, sold in the bake
sale's chilly garage, made such a hit that Nancy's Restaurant was born.
Two of us stood at the top of Skunk Creek's only access and literally
extorted money from incoming drivers and all of their passengers just for the
privilege of entering the neighborhood - (walkers and bikers came in free).
Periodically one or the other of us would saunter down to the treasurer's
outdoor office to unload pockets full of cash on his makeshift table. More than
3,000 visitors shopped, had fun, and left some of their money behind.
By late afternoon, just as a few snowflakes began to fall, the street fair had
cleared over $4000. We had sufficient money to build not only the intended path
across federal government land leading to the back of the Bureau but also the
shorter strip, on NCAR property, connecting the east end of Deer Valley to Table
Mesa Drive.
Today Boulder's first bikeway is as popular as ever. Young children use it to go to school, university students use it to go to class, professionals use it to go to work, hikers use it to reach the Skunk Creek Trail leading into the Mountain Park system, and retirees can just stroll about. Every day of the year, people from a sizable sector of Boulder use the Skunk Creek bikeway. To many residents it is a vital highway that meets an essential transportation need with out the use of an automobile.
For those of us who participated in its inauguration, the bikeway is a proud achievement that helped the city government and the citizens of Boulder to recognize the need for an expanded system to serve the larger community. That success is its greatest and most enduring accomplishment.
Two inches of asphalt won't last a lifetime, nor hardly more than a decade. The edges of the old path are breaking away and grass sprouts in ever widening cracks that sprawl across its aging surface. A re-enactment of the 1972 Street Fair seems to be an unlikely solution, but the gradual decay continues and must be arrested; however, no one is discussing how that should be done. The City should work with the Federal Government and NCAR, owners of the property to see that this old treasure continues to serve the people of Boulder.
Boulder resident Howard Garcia is a physicist