From Farmland to Creative District: How North Boulder Became NoBo

May 26, 2026 / Oct 4, 2026 · 7 min read · Local History North Boulder NoBo 80304 Boulder Colorado ·

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Before the Houses: Farms North of Town

A hundred years ago, the land along North Broadway was farmland. According to a local history by About Boulder County, the site of today's North Boulder Shopping Center was once the fruit farm of Joseph and Eliza Wolff. Farther north on Broadway there was a seed company, a ranch, an orchard and smaller farms and gardens. One of them is still there.

Long's Gardens began with a man named Jesse Dillman "J.D." Long. His family history says he came west from Iowa with tuberculosis, looking for a drier climate. A doctor gave him about six months to live; he lived more than 40 more years. In 1905 he bought the Noah's Ark Store, a variety store in downtown Boulder with a seed department, and grew the seed business. He put out his first mail-order seed catalog in 1908, and the business became the J.D. Long Seed Company.

In 1916 he bought land "just north of town" on Broadway to grow the seeds and bulbs sold in the downtown store. In the late 1940s the downtown store closed, and everything moved to the North Broadway farm. As the family puts it, the farm is no longer "just north of town" but "in the middle of town."

Long's Gardens is still run by the family. J.D.'s granddaughter Catherine Long Gates runs it with her husband, Dennis Gates. It specializes in bearded iris and sells them online, by mail order, and as "dig it yourself" plants in the field. Some of the tractors J.D.'s son Everett bought in the 1940s and 1950s are still in use.

Not every farm survived. About Boulder County reports that Knudsen's Greenhouse, which mostly grew irises, was torn down in 1959 for a Chevron station at the corner of Alpine and Broadway. That corner is now a bank.

A Shopping Center With a Parking Lot

As houses spread north after World War II, shops followed. About Boulder County reports that the Ideal Market center was first called the Drive-In Ideal Market. It was built in 1958, and its name came from something new at the time: a parking lot in front of the store. Its first shops included Gene Lang's Pharmacy, Ruble's Barber Shop, Model Cleaners, Broadway Fabrics and Manual's Sweet Shop.

Boulder grew fast in these years. The Museum of Boulder timeline notes that by 1970 the city's population had reached almost 67,000 — three times what it was in 1950. In 1965, IBM built a plant on the Boulder-Longmont Diagonal, which the museum says helped make Boulder a high-tech center.

Limits on Growth

As the city grew, voters began to set limits. The Museum of Boulder timeline lists two key votes. In 1959, the "Blue Line" rules stopped city water service above 5,750 feet, to prevent building on the mountain backdrop. In 1967, Boulder voters approved the nation's first tax to preserve open space. The museum says this has prevented urban sprawl and protected mountain views, but also limited the land available for housing.

These rules kept building off the foothills. North Boulder, with flat land along Broadway, kept changing.

The "Last Frontier"

By the 1980s, North Broadway was still rough around the edges. In 1985 the Daily Camera called the area from Iris Avenue to U.S. 36 "Boulder's last frontier," a 2024 history by Boulder Weekly reports. Reporter Kurt Chandler described it as "intimate yet secretive, often coarse, sometimes refined, and never predictable."

Boulder Weekly lists what was there then: a strip club next to an RV storage lot, a seven-acre Colorado National Guard base, unpaved roads, and backyards full of donkeys, rabbits and roosters. Even the name moved. Twenty years before 2024, "North Boulder" meant the area around North Boulder Park and the Ideal Market — now called Old North Boulder. The area farther up Broadway, today's NoBo, was called "North North Boulder," or sometimes "the Dogpatch."

The 1995 Plan

North Boulder was the first part of the city to get its own plan. The city says the area was chosen first because it still had vacant land that could be built on, and the city needed to decide its future. Planning began in the fall of 1992.

It was a long fight. Boulder Weekly quotes Lisa Morzel, who joined citizen efforts on the plan and later served on City Council: "People were out with pitchforks: 'We don't want the city, we don't want your streetlights, we don't want your codes, we don't want anything.'"

The city adopted the North Boulder Subcommunity Plan in August 1995. Its vision is a "beautiful, diverse, inclusive and adaptive" North Boulder, and the city says it has "shaped the area there today." It has been amended several times, most recently in 2024, to make room for a Creative Campus near Broadway and Violet Avenue.

From a Drive-In to the Holiday Neighborhood

The Holiday neighborhood was once a drive-in movie theater. The Holiday Neighborhood says the twin-screen Holiday Drive-In operated on the site from 1969 to 1988. Boulder Weekly reports that it had moved there from 28th and Colorado, and that the field sat empty, still dotted with speaker posts, until the early 2000s.

Then the nonprofit housing authority Boulder Housing Partners led its redevelopment into a mixed-use neighborhood. Boulder Weekly reports that Holiday now has one of the highest shares of rent-capped homes in the city. The neighborhood kept reminders of the drive-in: the old Holiday sign, a rare example of the "googie" style of the 1950s, and Easy Rider Lane, named after the first movie shown there.

Artists Move In

North Broadway's older industrial buildings drew artists. At the north end of Broadway, a group of green warehouses that tenants call Emerald City became a center for studios. Boulder Weekly reports that the name comes from the property management company that runs them, and that tenants have included The Crowd Collective gallery, the Boulder Metalsmithing Association, music and photography schools, and a gear consignment shop.

In the winter of 2009, those artists organized. The NoBo Art District's history says the 2008 recession, closures downtown and construction on Broadway were hurting artists and small businesses, and Boulder's First Friday tradition was fading. Danice Crawford of Marisol Imports and artists Annette Coleman and Carol Garnand began holding monthly meetings, made a map of First Friday shows and named the evening "The NoBo Nite Out." With advice from the Boulder County Arts Alliance, the group became a membership organization: the NoBo Art District.

The district has kept growing. Its board president, Megan Mazzoni, told The Boulder Mag in 2026 that First Friday drew more than 8,000 visitors in 2024 and showcased more than 200 studios. In late 2025, the State of Colorado named it a certified creative district. Our NoBo Art District guide covers its galleries and events today.

North Boulder Today

North Boulder now has public places it lacked for decades. A small corner library opened in 2014, and Boulder Weekly reported that a full North Boulder library branch — discussed since the late 1980s — was due in June 2024. The city is designing Primos Park on Violet Avenue, set to open fully in 2029.

Some things have not changed. Long's Gardens still grows iris on Broadway, more than a century after J.D. Long bought land "just north of town." The Ideal Market center still serves the neighborhood. And North Boulder still has the mix of farms-turned-houses, warehouses and newer neighborhoods that its history left behind.