Chautauqua Park Historic Landmark

Chautauqua National Historic Landmark

Before radio and television, the Chautauqua Movement united millions in common cultural and educational experiences. Orators, performers, and educators traveled a national Chautauqua circuit of more than 12,000 sites bringing lectures, performances, concerts, classes, and exhibitions to thousands of people in small towns and cities. Theodore Roosevelt called Chautauquas, “the most American thing in America.”

On July 4, 1898, over 4,000 people gathered for the opening day of the Colorado Chautauqua. Boulder civic leaders and Texas educators had joined together to create a cultural and educational summer retreat.

Located at the base of Boulder’s Flatirons and one of only 22 National Historic Landmarks in the state of Colorado, the Colorado Chautauqua is one of only a few remaining chautauquas in the U.S. and it is the only site west of the Mississippi that has been in continuous operation since its founding and with its original structures intact and used for their original purposes.

The Colorado Chautauqua is considered THE western representation of a cultural movement that swept the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and continues to exemplify its original ideals – lifelong learning, love of nature, voluntary simplicity and music, oration and the arts (http://www.chautauqua.com/).

Today, you can enjoy Chautauqua in a variety of ways. Get away from it all and go for a hike, sit and read a book under a shady tree, or connect to your cultural side with the many theatrical and musical offerings at Chautauqua Park.

For more information, check out http://www.chautauqua.com/.

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