Boulder, Colorado

Boulder is a home rule city in the state of Colorado, the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, with 108,250 residents at the 2020 census. It stands at the base of the Rocky Mountain foothills at an elevation of about 1,655 metres, roughly 40 kilometres northwest of Denver, and is the principal city of a metropolitan area of 330,758 people within the Front Range Urban Corridor. The valley was inhabited by Native American peoples for over 13,000 years, and the Ute held it by the 1500s. Prospectors led by Thomas Aikins founded the town in late 1858 during the Colorado Gold Rush, a town company was formed in 1859, and the city was incorporated in November 1871. The legislature chose Boulder as the site of the University of Colorado in 1861, and the university opened in 1877. Boulder is a college town with many research institutes, manages thousands of acres of protected open space west of the city, and is due to host the Sundance Film Festival from 2027.