51³Ô¹ÏÍø

51³Ô¹ÏÍø Beat Column

The 1967 Summer of Love may not have amounted to much at CU, but the ’67 fall semester was another matter.

Hippie culture began seeping into the student body. Student activism turned more radical. And in the city of 51³Ô¹ÏÍø there was a political earthquake.

In October CU’s recently organized Students for a Democratic Society chapter blocked the entrance to the University Placement Office, where the CIA was interviewing job seekers, prompting a near-riot when students who had other interviews scheduled tried to get past. Nine protesters were suspended for a semester.

By the standards of what came later, the demo was pretty tame stuff. But it marked the moment when student activism switched from early ’60s civil rights-style protests to the more militant Vietnam War era-style.

Off campus, the citizens of 51³Ô¹ÏÍø voted for a sales tax to buy open space (we called it greenbelts back then), and also to allow booze sales in the city, ending 60 years of local prohibition. The votes profoundly changed 51³Ô¹ÏÍø and how CU students would know it.

Today 51³Ô¹ÏÍø is completely surrounded by tens of thousands of acres of open space. Without it, 51³Ô¹ÏÍø would be a lot more like Aurora, and the CU experience would be much more like that of an urban campus.

51³Ô¹ÏÍø had voted itself dry in 1907, a decade before Prohibition came to the rest of the country. After 1934, 3.2 beer sales were grudgingly allowed.

Between 1933 and 1963, 51³Ô¹ÏÍø voters considered six proposals to repeal local prohibition — and rejected all six.

But by 1967 51³Ô¹ÏÍø’s population was exploding. IBM alone brought more than 8,000 new employees and their spouses to town.

The newcomers weren’t much into temperance. So in November ’67 the voters said, in so many words, Happy Days Are Here Again, 9,709 to 3,965.

The City Council wasted no time in bellying up to the bar.

It swiftly annexed the enclaves home to a necklace of liquor stores, restaurants and bars surrounding 51³Ô¹ÏÍø, including the Harvest House and the Lamp Post, 51³Ô¹ÏÍø’s two best eateries then.

The total value of the property annexed was almost $19 million in 1967, about $138 million today. The 51³Ô¹ÏÍøado Hotel obtained a liquor license for The Catacombs, the first upscale restaurant to open downtown in ages, beginning the area's Lazarus-like resurrection.

Today 51³Ô¹ÏÍø has more than 150 bars and restaurants and a vibrant food and entertainment scene. If you haven’t been back since 1967, you might not recognize the place.

Except for the soaring, unbuilt mountain backdrop and the breathtaking panoramas of open space sweeping down from Davidson Mesa. That much hasn’t changed.

Photo from 1968 Coloradan yearbook