All of the basic rules for success were there: an old mining town, inexpensive housing, a booming economy, and Boulder Canyon had been paved. Nederland could have been the first Aspen, the first stronghold of the rich and famous, but that was not to be. Instead, the counterculture made it's way to town and Nederland has never recovered.

The first Volkswagen beetle climbed the narrows, in second gear, in 1964, and the end came quickly. For the two hippies who emerged from that fateful beetle, reproductively inclined, and  whose values and norms of behavior were very different from those of the then current Nederland society of miners, cowboys, hookers and outlaws. And they brought weed. It didn't take long for the counterculture to take a hit in Nederland. And it was a big hit, with music, sex and comedy that insulted the war, the government, and incited generational conflict and rejection of older or "adult" values. 

Photo courtesy of Karl Allen Lugmayer

The outlaws, of course, embraced this. The prevalent culture and a counterculture could coexist in an uneasy symbiosis, holding opposite positions on valuable issues that are essentially important to each of them. But a counterculture can contribute useful functions for the prevalent culture, such as "articulating the foundations between appropriate and inappropriate behavior" and providing a safe haven for women who were just discovering liberation in a new way. Cowboys were a hot commodity apparently, and they fell into the trap as well. 

At that time, there was still a chance that the wealthy and famous would come and make Nederland the Boulder West, with real sidewalks, but no, Caribou Ranch opened and "Rocky Mountain Way" ushered in the seventies, with arrival of musicians, who are genetically modified organisms, with higher crop yields, but with concerns of long-term ecological impacts, chronically broke condition, and "can I sleep on your couch?" With the arrival of the musicians, came the "old town syndrome" where somehow it became ok to have twenty musicians living together in a two bedroom house, with dogs that nobody really owned, and sleeping in upright bass bags. (long-term ecological impacts). The origin of this subsubculture goes back many years, like the phallic songs sung during Dionysiac festivals, as mentioned by Aristotle, who was one of my roommates in old town, at this time. While we wore out the grooves on the record, The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get, Nederland institutionalized Hippy culture.  

In the early 1990s a housing boom began, and with it, the Boulder county enforcers, began to make some new rules, with a focus on strict environmental, safety, and size regulations for unincorporated areas, including the 2021 International Residential Code (IRC) and mandated deconstruction/recycling. Everybody decided never to deconstruct anything, (histerical perspective) and that there were enough extension cords so the electricians never replaced any of the 1955 wiring.