In the late 1890s, the Texas Board of Regents determined to establish a summer school for teachers in a cool climate. Because the Chautauqua Movement was such a powerful and popular cultural force in the United States at the time, the regents surmised that the best way to obtain a favorable location for the teachers’ school would be to partner with a railroad company, package the school with a chautauqua, and barter with a Colorado town for a site. Boulder city leaders wooed the Texans by offering to supply land, facilities and public utilities for the assembly. The site for what originally was called the Texas-Colorado Chautauqua was expressly chosen for its spectacular mountain setting and its health-giving environment. 

On July 4, 1898, over 4,000 people gathered for the opening day of the Colorado Chautauqua. Boulder civic leaders and Texas educators had joined together to create a cultural and educational summer retreat. A promotional brochure published at the time proclaimed, “The program embraces a period of six weeks and is by all odds the most comprehensive intellectual retreat ever presented west of the Mississippi River.” 

Located at the base of Boulder's Flatirons and one of only 25 National Historic Landmarks in the state of Colorado, the Colorado Chautauqua is one of only a few remaining chautauquas in the U.S. It is considered THE western representation of the cultural movement that swept the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is the only site west of the Mississippi that has been in continuous operation since its founding and with its original structures intact and used for their original purposes.