William Shakespeare wrote, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Boulder’s Parks and Recreation Department (BPR) may not have many rose bushes in our park system, but we do have quite the flowery history of park names. Thanks to the research done by 70 undergraduates and graduate students with the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of History, BPR now has a very thorough history of the naming of the city’s parks to share with our community.
In the summer of 2020, BPR partnered with CU Boulder to assess the names of their 82 parks and learn what stories the park names were celebrating, what stories might be missing, and how the park names reflect the Boulder community’s values today. Read more