From the archives: How hippies rode an asteroid into Boulder

Today's show is a rerun of one of our most popular episodes ever.

Back in February, we produced this story about how Boulder ended up as a hot bed for hippies and counterculture. If you didn't catch it then, you're in for a treat.

Here's the link to the original episode, along with details about the historical clips used to produce the show: buzzsprout.com/1583656/episodes/18748944

Our theme song is courtesy of singer-songwriter Brittney Wagner. Stream her record Better off Dead here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Happy Friday, everyone. Today, we're dipping into the archives and returning to one of our most popular episodes ever, How Hippies Road an Asteroid into Boulder. I had a ton of fun producing this with Marianne Rosen earlier this year. So if you didn't catch it the first time, you're in for a treat. Before we turn back the clock, here's a quick word from today's sponsor, the Regional Air Quality Council. This summer, don't go it alone. Take simple steps for better air. Carpool or take transit where you need to go. Relax on the bus downtown for your commute, or catch the bus thing around the entire state. Road trips and errands are also more fun with company. And carpooling saves on gas too. Know when it matters most by signing up for Ozone Alerts from the Regional Air Quality Council. Learn more at Simple StepsbetterAir.org. Now, let's get to the show. Those words are often uttered by locals to playfully push back on the growth and techification that has transformed the longtime counterculture hotspot over the past few decades. But it wasn't always like this. Before the days when Boulder, Netherland, and Ward were considered a safe haven for beat poets, rock stars, and acid heads, there wasn't a whole lot of love for the weird then the 1960s happened. Today, Marianne Rosen takes us on a long, strange trip through the migration of hippies into the area, and how the art, drugs, and attitudes they brought with them changed this place for good. Marianne tells us how a near Earth asteroid, roughly three million miles away, drove a flock of hippies to Boulder and its western mountain towns in the sixties. The hippies never left, and their psychedelic vibes changed the area for good, turning it into the weird and wild place we love today. Here's Marianne.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

It is estimated that between seventy-five and a hundred thousand young people descended on San Francisco's Hate Ashbury neighborhood.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Part of the neighborhood is occupied by ordinary people, bewildered by what's going on. Part of it is occupied by a growing population of hippies.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Most were seeking a new way of life. Peace, love, freedom, new social ideas, a spurning of materialism, and a renunciation of the Vietnam War. This movement and its migration to San Francisco with its new fashion, music, art, and psychedelic rock and drugs was called the Hippie Movement. This drive began a cultural shift inspiring more forward thinking ideas about gender equality, civil rights, and environmentalism. The hippies wanted to change the world and challenge the status quo. And they did. Their heritage continues on today. But what does this have to do with the peak to peak? Nederland and Ward were both mining towns during the Colorado Gold Rush. The towns grew alongside the mining industry. Growth ceased as mining dissipated. When that peted out, Nedaland found itself in the position of having to remake itself. In the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, the two worlds collided. Colorado was already enmeshed in the nineteen fifties literary beat movement. Leaders of the movement like Alan Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, Neil Cassidy, and Ken Keasey all had connections to the Boulder Denver area. The Beat Generation was opposed to the traditional literary norms war, economic materialism, sexual repression, and conformity. They championed a bohemian lifestyle and were open to the exploration of eastern religions such as Buddhism and to multiculturalism. In Boulder, Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chukyam Chungpa Ripoche founded Naropa University, attracting many thinkers and artists, including composer Philip Glass and Alan Ginsburg, a known beat poet. Alan Ginsburg was the co founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa. Boulder was a hub for beat poetry. The Naropa University Library was later named for Ginsburg. Kerouac lived in Lakewood, Colorado while writing On the Road, a novel about cross country travels in order to find freedom and self-discovery.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

All the stories I wrote were true because I believed in what I saw. I was traveling west one time at the junction of the state line of Colorado, its arid western one, in the state line of poor Utah. I saw in the clouds huge and massed above the fiery golden desert of even fall. A great image of God with four finger pointed straight at me.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Denver was a primary destination and setting for the book. Both Alan Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac were friends with Neil Cassidy. A car thief turned writer and a central figure in the beat movement. Cassidy, along with friends including Ken Keasey, became known as the Merry Pranksters. The Merry Pranksters were a counterculture group who traveled the country in a brightly painted bus named Further. They lived communally, encouraged LSD use, and influenced the coming hippie movement. Their journey was documented in Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Cassidy was also known to have mentored the Grateful Dead. Cassidy appears in Ginsburg's poems and was also the inspiration for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Kenkezi was born and spent many of his childhood years in Colorado before moving to Oregon. It is no wonder then that Boulder was considered a safe place to escape the asteroid Icarus, which was supposed to hit the planet and end the world in 1968. Only Boulder and Tibet were supposed to survive. Hippies poured into Boulder, and the Daily Camera wrote a story under the headline Hippies Waiting for Collision with Icarus. Sylvia Petham, a historian for the paper, quoted a man named John the Freak, who stated that he and his friends were only praying that California would not slide into the sea. Boulder at the time had a very active political scene.

SPEAKER_06 9:27

Dropouts, push-outs from school. People who maybe they weren't loved too much at home, so they sought outside companionship. They tried to influence some of the high school kids and take advantage of 'em. Uh LSD, marijuana. They had a thing called mellow yellow. They took banana pills and grounded up and smoked it and got some sort of a high.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

The city was divided between the conservative establishment and the counterculture youth. Many clashes between hippies and police occurred. The arrival of the STP family did not help. This group was an assemblage of boorish street hippies. Most thought that they were burnouts, drunks, scam artists, thieves, and dealers. They saw themselves as mountain men. Whatever they were, the STP family gave hippies to some a bad name. Dirty hippie is a myth as most hippies had great hygiene, but the STP family embraced the dirty hippie stereotype. The gang became well known nationally after a nineteen year old member who went by the name Deputy Dog was shot and killed by a marshal in Netherland. Along with the peace, love, and music that the hippies brought with them to Boulder, they also brought drugs, mostly marijuana and hallucinogens, that caused clashes between residents, police, and the hippies. Overall, though, Boulder and the surrounding areas were places where one could be free and creative. The natural beauty, vibrant culture, and progressive politics made for a great place to change the world. By nineteen seventy, people under twenty four made up fifty five percent of all residents. Hippies who came because of the asteroid stayed and told friends about this beautiful area. Hippies also brought a wealth of music. Boulder was home to many talented musicians, including singer songwriter Tim Buckley and the members of Zephyr, which included a future guitar legend in Tommy Bolin and singer Candy Gibbons. Zephyr's first album came out in nineteen sixty-nine, putting Boulder on the map as a music town. Boulder continued to grow into that identity, bringing in big names such as Joe Walsh and Stephen Stills. The sink, the Fox Theater, the Stage Door, Penny Lane, and the streets themselves provided constant music. At this time, many of the hippies and musicians wanted to leave the city and headed west into the mountains to camp on U.S. Forest Service Land. The foothills west of Boulder with their peace, tranquility, and beauty were a perfect setting for those wanting an alternative lifestyle. Netherland became the place to go and then stay. Most of the traveling hippies settled in town for good. Joe Walsh of the Eagles moved to the area, and singer Dan Fogelberg lived in Netherland for many years. Other musicians in Netherland at the time were Richie Fure of Poco and Buffalo Springfield and the members of the Flying Burrito Brothers. Music venues such as the Pioneer Inn and the Gold Hill Inn were hotbeds of music. The Caribou Ranch opened in 1972, bringing artists such as Elton John, the Beach Boys, Rod Stewart, Joe Walsh, Joni Mitchell, and Chicago to just name a few. Up the road in Ward, many hippies found the independent vibe of the town to their liking, and some settled there, feeling in this small town of one hundred and twenty four a closeness to the San Francisco hippie scene, though more stayed in Netherland as some of the fifteen hundred living there. Netherland where life is better, where there was and is a tolerance for hippies and others, where one was free to pursue their own lifestyles with community support. The hippie culture and its values of peace, love, community, environmentalism and freedom had a big influence in Netherland and surrounding areas. The vibrant art and music scene has also continued. It paved the way for bands such as Leftover Salmon, Yonder Mountain String Band, and Elephant Revival, all with close ties to the town. Nonconformity has been the standard practice for many in Netherland for years, and art and music was and is still a draw. The town now is a center for local produce, there are no chains or big box stores. Local businesses with names like Mountain People's Grocery Co op, Nature's Own, Blue Owl, and Blue Moon survive. It is a sacred place that is creative, innovative, and nature driven. A town who has housed a cryogenically frozen body in a hut, elected a cat as mayor, and has a magnificent carousel with all hand carved wooden animals done by a Vietnam vet who lived in the town. A town where community is still important, part ski town, part environmental treasure, and all beauty and community. Remnants still of a culture pushed by hippies. What started as a cosmic false alarm resulted in a transformation of an entire area.

SPEAKER_05 16:46

Take a look at the world from my wallet.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

This is Marianne Rosen. Thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Thanks, Marianne. It's odd to think of Boulder and Netherland pushing back against the weird revolution, but it's also so fitting that it all started with a space rock. The Nedhead moniker for locals continues to make more and more sense. That's all for today. This episode featured clips from a 1967 CBS news report on Hate Ashbury, Jack Kerouac's appearance on the Steve Allen Show in 1959, a Boulder Public Library Oral History with former Boulder Valley's old district employee Robert Reigns, the lead song on Zever's 1969 album, Ceylon. And that last clip was Leftover Salmon playing the Boulder Theater in 2012. We'll drop the links to the full videos in the show notes. If you want to spread some pieces of love and happiness, make sure you like, subscribe, and share today's show with a friendly nethead or a boulder local. It's the best thing you can do to support the podcast. As always, if you want to get in touch, drop me a line at Tyler at the Mountain E A R dot com. We love hearing from you. This is the Mountain Air Podcast. I'm Tyler Highlin. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.