BOULDER’S WATERWORKS

One of the surge chambers for the pipeline was on the Betasso Ranch, purchased from
Walter Blanchard by Steven Betasso, in 1915. 131 Steven was a miner-turned-rancher who
had immigrated from Italy in 1883. With his sons Richard and Ernest, he expanded his
property and raised cattle. Steven died in 1939 and is buried in Boulder’s Green Mountain
Cemetery. Richard and Ernest inherited the property.
The Betasso surge chamber measured 10-by-20-square feet and had a 60,000 gallon capacity.
Two diversion chambers were covered by a sheet-metal building. (The original surge
chamber, built in 1906, had been rebuilt in 1949. It remained in use until 1964, when it was
replaced with a pressure-reducing valve at the time of completion of the Betasso Water
Treatment Plant.) 132
Despite the country’s desire for peace and prosperity following the end of World War II,
the U.S. government feared that the Soviet Union would acquire atomic weapons. They
did, and what we now know as the Cold War was begun. In order to build up our country’s
own arsenal of atomic weapons, the federal government opened the Rocky Flats plant of
the Atomic Energy Commission, just south of Boulder, in 1952. In the intervening years,
the covert facility was clouded in controversy and is now shut down, but in its infancy it
meant new jobs and unprecedented growth for Boulder.
The news of the site selection caught the community’s residents by surprise. According
to census records, Boulder’s population, in 1950, was only 19,999. The large new plant’s
expected impact on the small town received national attention. In April 1951, one month
after the AEC disclosed the location, a California newspaper predicted Boulder’s boom in
an article titled “Atomic plant to end town’s lazy, quiet life.”
Growth in the 1950s
In the early 1950s, the Dow Chemical Company was chosen as the federal government’s
prime contractor to machine a plutonium component for use in atomic weapons. The
first building to go up was a guard house, with a tight-lipped foreman who instructed his
watchmen to mount a 24-hour vigil against all visitors.
The Denver-Boulder Turnpike opened in January 1952. That same month, a frustrated
Rocky Mountain News reporter visited the Rocky Flats site. The next day, he wrote, “The
41-million-dollar Rocky Flats plant of the Atomic Energy Commission will start producing
– whatever it will produce – shortly after it is completed – whenever that is. Just what will
be produced will probably not be known until a free world can examine atomic progress
without fear.”
Regular operations at Rocky Flats began in April 1952. By November 1953, the plant employed
1,200 people attracted by the high (for the time) wages of $2.31 per hour. The employees’
housing needs quickly stimulated Boulder’s real estate market and also increased
the demand for the City’s schools, water and sewer lines, and other services.
The secretiveness and security of the weapons facility didn’t seem to bother local residents.
Many, at the time, believed that nuclear war was imminent, and that Rocky Flats provided
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