Chautauqua Park and the Flatirons

A National Historic Landmark One Of Only A Handful Of Chautauquas In The United States Still Running Continuously Since The 1890s Sitting Directly Beneath The Flatirons, Five Tilted Slabs Of Fountain Formation Sandstone That Are The Symbol Of Boulder. · Boulder, Colorado

The Flatirons are five great slabs of sandstone tilted up on edge against Green Mountain, the same Fountain Formation that makes Red Rocks and Garden of the Gods, and they are so completely the symbol of Boulder that the city has spent a century arranging itself to look at them. The best place to do that is Chautauqua, which is a National Historic Landmark in its own right: a summer colony founded in 1898 by Texas schoolteachers, with a wooden auditorium, a dining hall and rows of cottages, and one of only a handful of chautauquas in the country that never stopped running. The auditorium still hosts the Colorado Music Festival each summer and has famously unimproved acoustics. Behind it, a meadow rises straight into the trailheads, and the whole thing - park, trails, meadow, view - costs nothing to walk into. Parking is the one constraint: the lots are small, they fill by mid-morning on any decent day, and a free shuttle runs up from central Boulder in season for exactly that reason.

900 Baseline Road, Boulder, Colorado, 80302, United States

The park, the meadow and the trails are open daily year-round from dawn to late evening and cost nothing. The Chautauqua Dining Hall, the general store and the cottages operate seasonally or year-round on their own hours, and the auditorium runs a summer programme. PARKING IS THE CONSTRAINT: the lots are small, fill early on any fine day, and a paid permit and a free summer shuttle from central Boulder operate in peak season. Trails may close for raptor nesting in spring.

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